Research study on Trump voters

[Opti]

www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/new-research-on-trump-voters-they-re-not-the-sharpest-tools-in-the-box/ar-AAVoNEA?ocid=msedgntp

As part of his research, Sherkat evaluated the political decision-making and cognition of Trump's voters, using a 10-point vocabulary exam. In a guest essay at the website Down with Tyranny, he explains what this vocabulary test revealed about white Trump voters:



Overall, the model predicts that almost 73% of respondents who missed all 10 questions would vote for Trump (remember, that is controlling for education and the other factors), while about 51% who were average on the exam are expected to vote for Trump. Only 35% of people who had a perfect score on the exam are predicted to be Trump supporters.

Recent research by Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University, demonstrates that America's democracy crisis may be even more intractable than the above evidence suggests. In his recent article "Cognitive Sophistication, Religion, and the Trump Vote," which appeared in the January 2021 edition of Social Science Quarterly, Sherkat examined data from the 2018 General Social Survey and concluded that there are substantial negative differences between the thinking processes and cognition of white Trump voters, as shown in the 2016 presidential election, as compared to other voters who supported Hillary Clinton or another candidate, or who did not vote at all.



Sherkat observes that Trump support has been linked to religion and level of education, but until now not to "cognitive sophistication," which was found "to have a positive effect on voting, but a negative effect on choosing Trump." He notes that "philosophers and political elites have debated the potential effects of mass political participation" for generations, concerned "about the unsophisticated masses coming under the sway of a demagogue." In effect, this debate was always about the quality he calls cognitive sophistication, since citizens who lack it "may not be able to understand and access reliable and valid information about political issues and may be vulnerable to political propaganda":


Worth reading. 

[Tennesseer]

Speaking of white Christian fundamentalists:

Trump privately works to keep a key cog of his political machinery intact
Openly discussing a 2024 run, the former president has welcomed key religious leaders at his private club.
03/23/2022 10:27 AM EDT

This past Friday afternoon over lunch, a group of evangelical leaders met with former President Donald Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.

The meeting, organized by Trump’s informal spiritual adviser and televangelist Paula White-Cain, was described by Trump advisers as a routine drop-in visit for the former president who has opened up his private resort to a parade of political meetings and fundraisers with GOP candidates, consultants and deep-pocketed donors.

“It’s very informal, and they talk and they pray,” one adviser said of the meeting. “It’s not something he broadcasts.”

But as Trump teases a 2024 run, his continued contact with white evangelical Christian leaders in phone calls and regular meetings at Mar-a-Lago is evidence that he is committed to keeping the coalition that first delivered him to the White House intact.

It’s a group that Trump recognized early on would be critical for his political trajectory — not just because a cosmopolitan, thrice married, former Playboy cover star who curses and throws out cruel insults to his political enemies lacked a certain appeal to that crowd, but because that crowd is the bedrock of modern Republican politics. Since leaving office, that relationship hasn’t changed.

Unlike other politicians, who need Trump’s endorsement or money, it is Trump who likely needs the support of evangelicals should he mount another campaign for president — especially as questions mount over whether the former president’s influence in broader GOP circles is waning.

“I wouldn’t say President Trump has a lock on the support of the evangelical community,” said Tony Perkins, the evangelical president of the Family Research Council who has remained in contact with Trump since he left the White House. “I think he has a strong platform to run on — on what he has done — but I still think people are going to be looking for a vision for the future, so he will have to do that alongside the other candidates vying for their support.”

According to an attendee, Friday’s meeting was organized by the National Faith Advisory Board, led by White, which aims to continue the work of the Trump White House’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Neither White nor a spokesperson for the group responded to a request for comment. Attendees at the intimate Mar-a-Lago meeting on Friday included influential evangelical leaders like pastor Jack Graham, James Dobson and Ralph Reed, chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Rest of article here:  Trump privately works to keep a key cog of his political machinery intact

[busymom]

I'm sorry, but I had to laugh when Trump was said to have a "strong platform".  What platform?  There was no official Republican platform for the 2020 election.  

[weltschmerz]

“Talented and well-practiced in every vice, a stranger to compassion or empathy, a liar and a cheat so complete in perfidy that he has elevated his dishonesty to hold it up as an ersatz moral principle, violent, so long as he can order someone else to do the dirty work, grotesque in body, graceless in action, in possession of a wounded self-regard so colossal as to smother any spark of grace, treasonous, not only to country, but to every ally he has ever had, the poisoned fruit and rankest flower of racism and contempt for women, and utterly devoid of shame for his moral and spiritual bankruptcy.

That is your leader. That is to whom you give your money. That is who you follow and laud. That is whose banner you willingly carry. Why? Because he is a mirror, not a lighthouse. You see yourselves in him. He is what you would be, if you had inherited money and could shed the last vestiges of conscience and shame.

- Advocatus Peregrini

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

“It’s very informal, and they talk and they pray,” one adviser said of the meeting. “It’s not something he broadcasts.”




If there was any time a Biblical flood would be appropriate this is it.  

[pulmonarymd]

If Trump is a Christian, I am the Queen of Sheba. That term no longer has any meaning

[mollyanna58]

Trump claims to be all sorts of things that he is not, including Christian.

[pulmonarymd]

Mar 24, 2022 14:24:45 GMT -5 mollyanna58 said:

Trump claims to be all sorts of things that he is not, including Christian.

It is not Trump claiming to be a Christian that I have a problem with. We all know he only tells the truth by accident. It is these self-professed Christian leaders doing it that I find offensive

[Opti]

The problem of the contemporary American fascist right is rooted in education and information. And this problem is not simply about attainment of some quantity of education, but of the quality and content of education, how that leads generations of white Christian Americans to process information about a wide range of issues. The segregation academies that proliferated in the mid-1960s and accelerated in the 1970s have taught millions of Americans a radically skewed version of American and world history and encouraged a continued segregated society. The homeschooling movement augmented this division, and further denigrated the value of knowledge.



White fundamentalist Christians have always segmented their communities from the rest of America, and even exert considerable control over public educational institutions, particularly in rural areas and in the states which embraced slavery. White fundamentalist Christians distrust mainstream social institutions like education and print media, and they actively seek to eliminate public education and to provide alternative sources of information. As a result, people who identify with and participate in white Christian denominations and who subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs have substantial intellectual deficits that make them easy marks for a wide variety of schemes — from financial fraud to conspiracy theories.

I was really hoping to have a discussion on the easy marks that are currently Trump voters, not Trump. Trump won't last forever, but what created these people endures and has consequences. Its making sense to me now why so many "financial" newsletters or adverts for are slanted to conservative scare tactics. They sell to people who aren't wise enough to realize the info is crap or not worth much. How do we as a society reverse the dumbing of America? How do we make evaluating information something most of our citizens can do? 

[pulmonarymd]

Mar 24, 2022 14:33:39 GMT -5 Opti said:

The problem of the contemporary American fascist right is rooted in education and information. And this problem is not simply about attainment of some quantity of education, but of the quality and content of education, how that leads generations of white Christian Americans to process information about a wide range of issues. The segregation academies that proliferated in the mid-1960s and accelerated in the 1970s have taught millions of Americans a radically skewed version of American and world history and encouraged a continued segregated society. The homeschooling movement augmented this division, and further denigrated the value of knowledge.



White fundamentalist Christians have always segmented their communities from the rest of America, and even exert considerable control over public educational institutions, particularly in rural areas and in the states which embraced slavery. White fundamentalist Christians distrust mainstream social institutions like education and print media, and they actively seek to eliminate public education and to provide alternative sources of information. As a result, people who identify with and participate in white Christian denominations and who subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs have substantial intellectual deficits that make them easy marks for a wide variety of schemes — from financial fraud to conspiracy theories.

I was really hoping to have a discussion on the easy marks that are currently Trump voters, not Trump. Trump won't last forever, but what created these people endures and has consequences. Its making sense to me now why so many "financial" newsletters or adverts for are slanted to conservative scare tactics. They sell to people who aren't wise enough to realize the info is crap or not worth much. How do we as a society reverse the dumbing of America? How do we make evaluating information something most of our citizens can do? 

It is just a continuation of that same closed mindset that allows parents to say, "Why send them to college, if you do they do not come back". Trump has been the prototypical snake oil salesman. There is a reason he said he loves the uneducated, they are much easier to fleece. Education makes people question their beliefs. It is easier to keep them ignorant, they remain compliant.

For the first time in our history, we have a party that is openly derisive of any attempt for people to improve themselves. Look at what they vote for. They don't want to pay taxes, so their schools suck. They do not want to have their kids learn anything that makes them uncomfortable, so the emphasis on Don't say Gay and CRT is a natural outgrowth. You have faux religious leaders preaching the prosperity bible: you deserve it so you do not need to sacrifice. It is no accident that we have gotten here. Conservative politicians have driven the bus.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Mar 24, 2022 14:27:01 GMT -5 pulmonarymd said:

Mar 24, 2022 14:24:45 GMT -5 mollyanna58 said:

Trump claims to be all sorts of things that he is not, including Christian.

It is not Trump claiming to be a Christian that I have a problem with. We all know he only tells the truth by accident. It is these self-professed Christian leaders doing it that I find offensive

I had someone tell me he is a "baby Christian".  Once I got done eye rolling and choking back the vomit it was explained that Trump may be an awful human being BUT he announced that he has found Jesus.  That means every bad thing he did before he was elected is erased and he is a new man.

Gee who knew?  By those standards Hitler could have said "sorry for the mass genocide Jesus!" and walked right into heaven.

Which is what proves Trump and his evangelical parade has absolutely NOTHING to do with Christianity.  

[pulmonarymd]

Mar 24, 2022 14:52:44 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Mar 24, 2022 14:27:01 GMT -5 pulmonarymd said:

It is not Trump claiming to be a Christian that I have a problem with. We all know he only tells the truth by accident. It is these self-professed Christian leaders doing it that I find offensive

I had someone tell me he is a "baby Christian".  Once I got done eye rolling and choking back the vomit it was explained that Trump may be an awful human being BUT he announced that he has found Jesus.  That means every bad thing he did before he was elected is erased and he is a new man.

Gee who knew?  By those standards Hitler could have said "sorry for the mass genocide Jesus!" and walked right into heaven.

Which is what proves Trump and his evangelical parade has absolutely NOTHING to do with Christianity.  

I know since I was raised Catholic that I am not a Christian(not sure how that works, but there you go), but I learned that to be absolved of your sins you had to make penance and show that you mean it. It required some sacrifice.

But as I said, I am not a Christian according to many.

[Tennesseer]

Mar 24, 2022 14:55:09 GMT -5 pulmonarymd said:

Mar 24, 2022 14:52:44 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

I had someone tell me he is a "baby Christian".  Once I got done eye rolling and choking back the vomit it was explained that Trump may be an awful human being BUT he announced that he has found Jesus.  That means every bad thing he did before he was elected is erased and he is a new man.

Gee who knew?  By those standards Hitler could have said "sorry for the mass genocide Jesus!" and walked right into heaven.

Which is what proves Trump and his evangelical parade has absolutely NOTHING to do with Christianity.  

I know since I was raised Catholic that I am not a Christian(not sure how that works, but there you go), but I learned that to be absolved of your sins you had to make penance and show that you mean it. It required some sacrifice.

But as I said, I am not a Christian according to many.

A co-worker and good friend who transfered from New Jersey to here in Memphis was Roman Catholic (was as in now deceased (I believe from Covid in its early days)). She went to her first Christmas party hosted by her VP and his wife, both Southern Baptists.

The VP's wife struck up a conversation with my friend when she found out she was new to Memphis. The VP's wife asked my friend if she had joined a church. My friend replied she had and then mentioned a local Roman Catholic church. When the VP's wife heard the name of the church, she responded with "Oh...you're not a Christian." My friend said she rolled her eyes upon hearing that nonsense.

[NastyWoman]

Mar 24, 2022 11:45:32 GMT -5 busymom said:

I'm sorry, but I had to laugh when Trump was said to have a "strong platform".  What platform?  There was no official Republican platform for the 2020 election.  

What? What? Did you already forget DC the has-been's platform? And it is so simple. It is paraphrasing the three musketeers: all for one and everything for the has-been. Long live the rules of the golden shitter! (I think that about covers it)