Monday, October 5, 2015

Who are Trump's voters? Dumb Folks



In a great piece in USA Today, Ilya Somin, a Professor of Law at George Mason University shed some light on who are the Trump voters.

Personally, it's not a surprise. His supporters are from the same cloth as Kardashian fans... The willfully ignorant. These folks just can't seem to think or learn for themselves. While the truth's out there, they choose the latter. Here's more:
Trump’s success so far is in large part the result of an almost perfect storm of political ignorance. As a longtime celebrity, he had a built-in advantage with voters who don’t know much about politics…

Polls also consistently show that Trump’s support comes disproportionately from those with relatively low levels of education. For instance, a recent ABC/Washington Post survey found that 40% of Republican-leaning voters without college degrees support Trump, compared with only 19% of college graduates. Low education correlates with support for Trump far more than political ideology, or any other demographic variable. Education and political knowledge are not the same thing… Nonetheless, the two are highly correlated.

Political ignorance could also help explain why Trump has won the support of a large share of the generally conservative Republican primary electorate, despite his long history of liberal stances on issues such as health care, taxes, government spending and property rights. Relatively ignorant voters rarely pay close attention to issue positions and are likely unaware of the details of Trump’s record….

1 comment:

Jason Fairburn said...

So this means that low education levels = dumb folks. Guess this also means those who don't have a college degree because they can't afford to go to college must be dumb folks.

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.