One, single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter
supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s
authoritarianism.
That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have
been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations.
And because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American
electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible
that Trump’s fan base will continue to grow.
My finding is the result of a national poll I conducted in the last
five days of December under the auspices of the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, sampling 1,800 registered voters across the
country and the political spectrum. Running a standard statistical
analysis, I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and
religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred
candidate. Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically
significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the
former was far more significant than the latter.
Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American
electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most
widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still
debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians
obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond
aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. From
pledging to “make America great again” by building a wall on the border
to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United
States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.
Not all authoritarians are Republicans by any means; in national
surveys since 1992, many authoritarians have also self-identified as
independents and Democrats. And in the 2008 Democratic primary, the
political scientist Marc Hetherington found that authoritarianism
mattered more than income, ideology, gender, age and education in
predicting whether voters preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.
But Hetherington has also found, based on 14 years of polling, that
authoritarians have steadily moved from the Democratic to the Republican
Party over time. He hypothesizes that the trend began decades ago, as
Democrats embraced civil rights, gay rights, employment protections and
other political positions valuing freedom and equality. In my poll
results, authoritarianism was not a statistically significant factor in
the Democratic primary race, at least not so far, but it does appear to
be playing an important role on the Republican side. Indeed, 49 percent
of likely Republican primary voters I surveyed score in the top quarter
of the authoritarian scale—more than twice as many as Democratic voters.
Political pollsters have missed this key component of Trump’s support
because they simply don’t include questions about authoritarianism in
their polls. In addition to the typical battery of demographic, horse
race, thermometer-scale and policy questions, my poll asked a set of
four simple survey questions that political scientists have employed
since 1992 to measure inclination toward authoritarianism. These
questions pertain to child-rearing: whether it is more important for the
voter to have a child who is respectful or independent; obedient or
self-reliant; well-behaved or considerate; and well-mannered or curious.
Respondents who pick the first option in each of these questions are
strongly authoritarian.
Based on these questions, Trump was the only candidate—Republican or
Democrat—whose support among authoritarians was statistically
significant.
So what does this mean for the election? It doesn’t just help us
understand what motivates Trump’s backers—it suggests that his support
isn’t capped. In a statistical analysis of the polling results, I found
that Trump has alreadycaptured 43 percent of Republican primary
voters who are strong authoritarians, and 37 percent of Republican
authoritarians overall. A majority of Republican authoritarians in my
poll also strongly supported Trump’s proposals to deport 11 million
illegal immigrants, prohibit Muslims from entering the United States,
shutter mosques and establish a nationwide database that track Muslims.
And in a general election, Trump’s strongman rhetoric will surely
appeal to some of the 39 percent of independents in my poll who identify
as authoritarians and the 17 percent of self-identified Democrats who
are strong authoritarians.
What’s more, the number of Americans worried about the threat of
terrorism is growing. In 2011, Hetherington published research finding
that non-authoritarians respond to the perception of threat by behaving
more like authoritarians. More fear and more threats—of the kind we’ve
seen recently in the San Bernardino and Paris terrorist attacks—mean
more voters are susceptible to Trump’s message about protecting
Americans. In my survey, 52 percent of those voters expressing the most
fear that another terrorist attack will occur in the United States in
the next 12 months were non-authoritarians—ripe targets for Trump’s
message.
Take activated authoritarians from across the partisan spectrum and
the growing cadre of threatened non-authoritarians, then add them to the
base of Republican general election voters, and the potential electoral
path to a Trump presidency becomes clearer.
So, those who say a Trump presidency “can’t happen here” should check
their conventional wisdom at the door. The candidate has confounded
conventional expectations this primary season because those expectations
are based on an oversimplified caricature of the electorate in general
and his supporters in particular. Conditions are ripe for an
authoritarian leader to emerge. Trump is seizing the opportunity. And
the institutions—from the Republican Party to the press—that are
supposed to guard against what James Madison called “the infection of
violent passions” among the people have either been cowed by Trump’s
bluster or are asleep on the job.
It is time for those who would appeal to our better angels to take
his insurgency seriously and stop dismissing his supporters as a small
band of the dispossessed. Trump support is firmly rooted in American
authoritarianism and, once awakened, it is a force to be reckoned with.
That means it’s also time for political pollsters to take
authoritarianism seriously and begin measuring it in their polls.
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