LMAO … ok.
I strongly disagree with this study.
“During the Trump presidency, some of the most interesting and innovative thinking on the center right has come from writers and politicians sometimes called “national populists.” This group challenges Republican orthodoxy on questions of economics and suggests that a new policy agenda, focused more on working-class concerns, could realign the U.S. electorate. We consider the plausibility of their claims, examining the relevant scholarly literature and recent trends among voters. The data show that most voters who supported Trump were overwhelmingly driven by cultural rather than economic concerns. This implies that the national populist vision is unlikely to provide major electoral gains for the Republican Party. Trump’s popularity among his supporters suffered very little due to his governing mostly as a conventional Republican politician, and those of his party who have adopted more redistributive voting patterns in Congress in recent years have not realized resulting gains at the ballot box. In fact, the American public gave Trump higher marks on the economy than any other major issue, contradicting the claim that more free market economic policies create an electoral cost. We also note that continuity with previous trends, rather than electoral realignment, was the norm in recent election cycles, meaning that the idea that there has been a major shift towards Republicans becoming the “working class party” is mostly a myth. Republican success in the future will depend on the party speaking to the cultural, rather than economic, concerns of its voters, whether symbolically or in more tangible terms. This can mean championing issues that Republicans have ignored in recent years like opposition to affirmative action, in addition to facilitating the kind of backlash politics towards cultural liberalism among non-white voters that has worked so well among whites in recent decades. Economic policies that seek to address working-class concerns but hinder overall growth can alienate both voters and donors for little gain. …”
In 2016, Trump won the presidency with this coalition:
In 2020, he lost the presidency with this coalition:
Saying that Trump won 58 percent of non-Hispanic White voters in 2020 is highly misleading. Who were those White voters? Where did they live? Did they live in the swing states?
In the 2016 election, Trump won fewer conservatives, Republicans, non-Whites and upper middle class voters. He won more moderates, Independents and working class and lower middle class voters. In the 2020 election, Trump won more conservatives, Republicans, non-Whites and upper middle class voters while losing moderates, Independents, and working class and lower middle class voters. There was a definite shift to the Right in the ideology and values of White men who voted for him.
In the 2016 election, Trump’s voters were nearly equally drawn from conservatives (20.4% of the electorate) and populists (18.95% of the electorate). In the 2020 election, however, Trump’s voters were significantly more conservative and his appeal was more limited. Trump only won populists by 47 points in 2020 and Joe Biden ran up the biggest victory with Moderates and Independents in decades. Trump lost support with White men in the Center and made up for it by higher conservative turnout.
George Hawley and Richard Hanania are reading far too much into the 2016 election results. The reason that support for Trump was so strongly correlated with immigration restriction, opposition to political correctness and White identity in that election is because he struck a chord with “American Preservationists” or “Democratic Leaning Working Class voters” (DLWCs) or the “Disaffected” or “Embittered” or “Hard-Pressed Skeptics” or “Market Skeptic Republicans” or “white supremacists” or whatever political science euphemism you want to use to describe the ethnocentric White populists and nationalists who are adjacent to the Republicans. He won the Far Right vote in 2016.
In the 2020 election, the Far Right vote wasn’t there for him again. He won far more conservatives and Republicans. He won more based blacks. Conservatives went from being 1/2 of his supporters to 3/4ths of his supporters. His margin of victory with populists cratered.
Why?
It is because God Emperor Trump became Blumpf in the span of four years. He disappointed his “Far Right” base on issue after issue and governed as a milquetoast conservative Republican. The Trump presidency sucked. Trump’s 2020 campaign sucked too. The salience of social identity issues with this demographic plunged because Blumpf was perceived as weak on White identity, immigration, political correctness, campaign finance, Israel, race and crime, law and order, heritage protection, Big Tech censorship, etc. His greatest cultural accomplishment was mainstreaming homosexuality on the Right.
Donald Trump’s image had completely changed in the “Far Right” by 2020. He went from overwhelming support in the “Far Right” swath of the electorate where the actual “National Populists” are concentrated to lukewarm support and/or being bitterly controversial. Trump support in 2020 was more reminiscent of Mitt Romney’s support as the “lesser of two evils.” It was less a vote for Trump than against Joe Biden and as a result he punched at about Mitt Romney’s strength with populists.
“The main shift between 2012 and 2016 is that Republicans made gains among the populists (voters who are economically liberal and conservative on social/identity issues). In 2012, Romney outperformed Obama by about a 2-to-1 margin among these voters. In 2016, Trump outperformed Clinton by about a 3-to-1 margin among these voters. The data here strongly suggest that the increasing salience of identity issues in the campaign caused the shift. …”
In 2012, Romney beat Obama by a 2-to-1 margin with populists.
In 2016, Trump beat Hillary by a 3-to-1 margin with populists.
Well then … what was Donald Trump’s margin with populists in 2020 with Joe Biden? Does Trump beating Joe Biden by 47 points look like a 3-to-1 margin? I don’t think so.
My issue preferences changed between 2016 and 2020.
In the 2016 election, my top reasons for voting for Trump were White identity, political correctness, immigration, trade, foreign policy, campaign finance. By 2020, I had come to perceive Trump as beholden to a small group of Jewish billionaire donors for whom he was delivering a trophy case of victories advancing the MIGA agenda. Political correctness had intensified into wokeness on his watch. Immigration had been a major disappointment. The trade deficit had gotten worse. White identity was far more ruthlessly repressed in terms of violence, censorship and legal battles than in the Obama era.
Across what had previously been the Alt-Right, economics became much more salient between 2016 and 2020. The support for Andrew Yang’s campaign was an early example of this. A bitter divide opened up between populists who broke with Trump (who were branded “wignats”) and paleocons who stuck with Trump until the end (who rebranded as the “Dissident Right”). The populists became more interested in economic issues. There was a growing realization that the backlash politics that had fueled Trump and the GOP in the 2016 election simply wasn’t moving the ball on social identity issues.
If the GOP isn’t delivering the goods on social identity issues like immigration, law and order or political correctness OR economics for populist voters, what then? A huge number of them simply reverted to being non-voters. That’s what I did in the 2020 election faced with choosing between Biden or Trump. I went from being a Trump Independent voter in 2016 to being a non-voter in 2018 and 2020.
My voting history:
2000 – Al Gore
2002 – Didn’t Vote
2004 – John Kerry
2006 – Didn’t Vote
2008 – Supported Ron Paul. Voted Constitution Party
2010 – Voted Republican during the Tea Party Revolution
2012 – Supported Ron Paul. Voted Constitution Party
2014 – Didn’t Vote
2016 – Strongly supported Donald Trump because of immigration, political correctness, foreign policy, trade, campaign finance
2018 – Didn’t Vote
2020 – Didn’t Vote
The GOP could win nationalist and populist voters … IF it actually delivered the goods on social identity issues, which it hasn’t, and if it moderated its economic agenda, which it refused to do during the Trump presidency. Without Trump on the ballot, the crowd that voted for him reluctantly or with reservations or who gave him a second chance has no reason to stick around in the GOP.
I definitely agree that The Establishment Elite successfully limited Trumpism, ironically with the cooperation of President Trump, to largely non-substantive aspects.
They, The Establishment, are playing with fire, however, because when the culture goes one way, but, the politicians do not, history shows that somebody is going to wind up at the end of a rope.
I’m actually curious why you voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush.
In 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader. I hated Al Gore because he was “Mr. NAFTA” and an ideological Free-Trade Globalist.
I didn’t vote for George W. Bush because he was a typical conservative – but I had no reason to hate him and until 9/11 thought he was mostly OK. The only political controversies I remember was that he was against “partial birth abortion” which – of course – anyone who isn’t a sociopathic monster opposes.
Had I known Bush was going to blow up the World Trade Center along with his Jew Zionist “Neo-Cons” and the head of the Saudi Arabian CIA, “Bandar Bush,” – I would have opposed him more strongly.
But back in 2000 I was clueless.
@Banned…
In 2000, I voted for the Libertarian candidate, Harry Browne.
And, like you, if I had know that Bush would govern to the total antithesis of what he had said he would not (central control/domestic spying/centralized school programs/nation building) I would have rushed down to vote for Gore.
Time has revealed George Bush to be the most intellectually handicapped president of our lifetime, perhaps ever.
I was not clueless in 2000, but, like you, without The Internet, I did not have the kind of decisive political overview I have today.
That said, The Internet could not ever have sufficiently warned me about George Bush.
He campaigned as an innocuous Libertarian-leaning Dixie-style Republican, yet, governed like an authoritarian New England Yankee crackpot.
Caveat Emptor was the sign that ought to have been hung over the polls that year – Caveat Emptor.
It was well known among white nationalists before the 2000 election that Bush was particularly bad on immigration due to his actions and statements as governor of Texas.
Sweet blomp jpeg keep em coming
Hunter, as a longtime reader and infrequent commentator, re: this first report, I think it is dangerous and unwise to take any “mainstream” or “establishment” political analysis at face value or to assume the authors/analysts are acting and writing in good faith.
The CSPI “big thoughts” sound an awful lot like “dear fellow white people” lecturing to me.
I don’t think we have the luxury of laughing at them but we should make it our first principle to coldly look for the jew behind the curtain wherever we sense we are being lied to. Every. Single. Time. It is easy to find (((it))) once you start noticing the cohencidences.
From their main web page,
“The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) was formed in 2020 to help support underexplored ideas in political psychology and the social sciences. With the rise of populism, increasing polarization, and identity-based movements across the world, there has rarely been a better time to study these topics.”
From their “About Us” web page, look who we find? I’m shocked, shocked I say!
“Members of the Board
– Richard Hanania, President … has written in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
– George Hawley, Board Member, Research Fellow … has written for venues such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The New York Daily News. (You might also remember him from his recent book length slander of the various personalities of the Alt Right, a favorite of the hand wringing, money grubbing “elites” of NYC, DC and academia. BTW, you take several hits.)
– Eric Kaufmann, Board Member, Research Fellow, author of Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin/Abrams, 2018/19) and The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America: The Decline Of Dominant Ethnicity In The United States (Harvard 2004) … has written for The New York Times, Newsweek International, Foreign Affairs, New Statesman, National Review and Prospect.
– Suzie Mulesky, Research Fellow … has written for outlets such as The Washington Post and Quillette.
– Zachary Goldberg, Research Fellow …. has written for Tablet Magazine, Quillette, Scientific American, and The Fair Observer. “
Like me take a stab at this and postulate that (((The Enemy))) is starting to get worried … white identity politics and collective self-interest (aka “trumpism without trump”) isn’t going away or fading quietly … so (((they))) decided to create a “nonpartisan think tank” deep in the heart of Dixie (good ole Bama, “Roll Tide”) to use white southerners on campus and in the surrounding rural areas as lab rats to determine how best to derail, disrupt and otherwise strangle a white awakening in its crib. And also to produce propaganda drivel like this report to keep the right thinking middle and working class good whites safely flaccid and anomized on the GOP shabbos goyim reservation, and to keep the donor money flowing in.
In fact I think the research fellow (((Eric Kaufmann))), wrote a whole book about doing just this, LOL … and you know who’s laughing at whom … goyishe kop and all.
It sure will be interesting to see their IRS Form 990 next year, assuming the IRS releases it, showing where their startup money came from … probably from the Ford Foundation, Soros, Koch brothers and numerous other “small” individual donations from the (((the usual suspects))), i.e. off the books shekels from the FBI, DHS, ADL, etc.
PS, when/if you have time, please review Kaufmann’s “Whiteshift” book and provide us with your perspectives based on your studies of modernism and current events and trends.
Sincerely, WP
@WP, impressive research and valuable insight on your part. Much needed. Could you possibly contribute more often, and/or do you have a blog?
With all sincerity, OETBYM
Birkbeck College is a real nest of Jewy sociologists. But Kaufmann is interesting in that he’s conceding that whites need ethnic representation now.
Yes and it was his shift while in office that got Joe Biden elected. He dropped his Populist Nationalist ideas for usual boring Republican policies. Deo Vindice !
2020 turnout was higher because the democrats cleverly used the pandemic as an excuse to mail out everyone a ballot. 20 million more votes were cast this time than when the witch was on the ballot and the democrats knew that those with little conscientiousness that don’t bother to vote in normal elections trend democrat. Plus they farmed out every ghetto slug a ballot, wether they actually returned them or democrat operatives voted for them on the sly will probably never be known, but even though more black men than in 2016 may have voted for flamboyant Trump was cancelled out by the much higher ghetto turnout.