chownah wrote:Post by chownah » Fri Oct 14, 2016 1:35 pm
Phena wrote:
The article, I believe makes three important points:
1. That Trump supporters have income and education above the national average
2. That a "penchant for authoritarianism – not income, education, gender, age or race –predicted Trump support"
3. That the mainstream media have been unwilling to expose the demographic of Trump's support as it aligns more closely with their own 'class'.
Isn't the Guardian considered to be sort of famous for sensationalism?...they like to print stuff that is sort of shocking and defies the current views people hold?
"Sensationalism"? I equate sensationalism more with tabloid media, the kind that never let the facts get in the way of a good story. But perhaps more relevant is the second part of your question. The Guardian may be less likely to keep regurgitating and recycling the unexamined status quo of the more tabloid mainstream media (though I would still consider The Guardian pretty mainstream but not so tabloid), then I would agree with you. I see this as a positive attribute though, and this story seems to be a good example of it.
As you seem skeptical of The Guardian, perhaps you would be more comfortable with the same understanding from another source (one that you said was more "credible" - thanks for that link btw)
The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support - His voters are better off economically compared with most Americans:
- But the definition of “working class” and similar terms is fuzzy, and narratives like these risk obscuring an important and perhaps counterintuitive fact about Trump’s voters: As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.
These figures, as I mentioned, are derived from exit polls, which so far have been conducted in 23 primary states.1 The exit polls have asked voters to describe their 2015 family income by using one of five broad categories, ranging from “under $30,000” to “$200,000 or more.” It’s fairly straightforward to interpolate a median income for voters of each candidate from this data; for instance, we can infer that the median Clinton voter in Wisconsin made about $63,000.2 You can find my estimates for each candidate in each state in the following table, along with each state’s overall household median income in 2015.3
Also...I think if you look carefully you will find that "penchant for authoritarianism" is presented as the best preditor of trump support and that this does not rule out "income, education, gender, age, or race" as being predictors. For instance....if we assume that trump supporters have higher incomes than average then in fact we can say that income IS a predictor of trump support meaning that a higher income would predict trump support....saying that income is not a predictor would be saying that there is no difference in income between trump and clinton's supporters.
Yes, I think you could interpret it that way too, but I think the point that is being made is that the appeal of authoritarianism is a stronger predictor than income and other factors.
And finally...the guardian is a british paper and perhaps you are british too,
The Guardian
was solely a British paper but it now has online editions for the UK, USA, Australia and also an international edition, using local journalists from the those countries for each edition. As I'm Australian, I generally read that edition, but of course there is a fair amount of cross-linking between editions.
I don't know, but the idea that the media or americans in general are concerned about if something "aligns more closely with their own 'class'" is definitely a british concept and I think that thinking in terms of 'class' is much more common in british society than in america.
chownah
I don't I agree with this statement regarding class and I don't think there is any evidence to support this either, but there certainly is evidence that there is greater wealth disparity in the US than Britain and a greater rate of growth in wealth disparity. The emergence of the working poor and the decline of the middle-class in the US comes to mind. This disparity would have the effect of making people more class-conscious.
Edit: just one more thing. My view is that trump supporters are seen by some to have lower incomes because they are always complaining about how bad things are economically because of current foreign trade policies and gov't regulations of industry etc. while in fact his supporters are actually mostly quite well off and they just like to complain and are greedy for more.
Yeah, good point. The more some people have the more they want. It's hard to satiate greed.