scholarly journals Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election

2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew L Whitehead ◽  
Samuel L Perry ◽  
Joseph O Baker
2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph O Baker ◽  
Samuel L Perry ◽  
Andrew L Whitehead

Abstract Some of the strongest predictors of voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election were Christian nationalism and antipathy toward Muslims and immigrants. We examine the interrelated influence of these three factors on Americans’ intentions to vote for Trump in 2020. Consistent with previous research, Christian nationalism and Islamophobia remained strong and significant predictors of intention to vote for Trump; however, the effect of xenophobia was stronger. Further, xenophobia and Islamophobia significantly and substantially mediated the effects of Christian nationalism. Consequently, though Christian nationalism remains theoretically and empirically distinct as a cultural framework, its influence on intending to vote for Trump in 2020 is intimately connected to fears about ethnoracial outsiders. In the penultimate year before Trump’s reelection campaign, the strongest predictors of supporting Trump, in order of magnitude, were political party, xenophobia, identifying as African American (negative), political ideology, Christian nationalism, and Islamophobia.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Baker ◽  
Samuel Perry ◽  
Andrew L Whitehead

Some of the strongest predictors of voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election were Christian nationalism and antipathy toward Muslims and immigrants. We examine the interrelated influence of these three factors on Americans’ intentions to vote for Trump in 2020. Consistent with previous research, Christian nationalism and Islamophobia remained strong and significant predictors of intention to vote for Trump; however, the effect of xenophobia was stronger. Further, xenophobia and Islamophobia significantly and substantially mediated the effects of Christian nationalism. Consequently, though Christian nationalism remains theoretically and empirically distinct as a cultural framework, its influence on intending to vote for Trump in 2020 is intimately connected to fears about ethnoracial outsiders. In the penultimate year before Trump’s reelection campaign, the strongest predictors of supporting Trump, in order of magnitude, were: political party, xenophobia, identifying as African American (negative), political ideology, Christian nationalism, and Islamophobia.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew L Whitehead ◽  
Samuel Perry ◽  
Joseph O. Baker

Why did Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election? Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations, including economic dissatisfaction, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. The current study establishes that, independent of these influences, voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic defense of the United States’ perceived Christian heritage. Data from a national probability sample of Americans surveyed soon after the 2016 election shows that greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for Trump, even after controlling for economic dissatisfaction, sexism, anti-black prejudice, anti-Muslim refugee attitudes, and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as measures of religion, sociodemographics, and political identity more generally. These findings indicate that Christian nationalist ideology—although correlated with a variety of class-based, sexist, racist, and ethnocentric views—is not synonymous with, reducible to, or strictly epiphenomenal of such views. Rather, Christian nationalism operates as a unique and independent ideology that can influence political actions by calling forth a defense of mythological narratives about America’s distinctively Christian heritage and future.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Pennycook ◽  
David Gertler Rand

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election saw an unprecedented number of false claims alleging election fraud and arguing that Donald Trump was the actual winner of the election. Here we report a survey exploring belief in these false claims that was conducted three days after Biden was declared the winner. We find that a majority of Trump voters in our sample – particularly those who were more politically knowl-edgeable and more closely following election news – falsely believed that election fraud was wide-spread and that Trump won the election. Thus, false beliefs about the election are not merely a fringe phenomenon. We also find that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a ma-jority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, although 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless. Finally, we found that levels of partisan spite and endorsement of violence were equivalent between Trump and Biden voters.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422110112
Author(s):  
Meredith Neville-Shepard

This essay illustrates how Donald Trump engaged in what I call “populist crisis rhetoric” throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and coinciding 2020 U.S. presidential campaign cycle. By performing a critical rhetorical analysis of textual fragments surrounding how Trump addressed the preventative measure of mask-wearing, I show how he rejected the role of comforter-in-chief and instead opted for the role of victim-in-chief. Specifically, turning the bare face into a litmus test of Trump loyalism, his rhetoric suggested that masks threatened masculinity and functioned as a form of anti-choice bodily oppression.


The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-650
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Carson ◽  
Spencer Hardin ◽  
Aaron A. Hitefield

Abstract The 2020 elections brought to an end one of the most divisive and historic campaigns in the modern era. Former Vice President Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States with the largest number of votes ever cast in a presidential election, defeating incumbent President Donald Trump in the process. The record turnout was especially remarkable in light of the ongoing pandemic surrounding COVID-19 and the roughly 236,000 Americans who had died of the virus prior to the election. This article examines the electoral context of the 2020 elections focusing on elections in both the House and Senate. More specifically, this article examines the candidates, electoral conditions, trends, and outcomes in the primaries as well as the general election. In doing so, we provide a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the climate and outcome of the 2020 congressional elections. Finally, the article closes with a discussion of the broader implications of the election outcomes on both the incoming 117th Congress as well as the upcoming 2022 midterm election.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 502-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Barrett-Fox

Religious right leaders and voters in the United States supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election for the same reason that all blocs vote as they do: They believed that the candidate offered them the best opportunity to protect and extend their power and create their preferred government. The puzzle of their support, then, is less why they chose Trump and more how they navigated the process of inserting Trump into their story of themselves as a “moral” majority. This self-understanding promotes and exploits feelings of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate to encourage political action. Because Trump’s speeches affirm these feelings, religious right voters were open to writing a plot twist in their story, casting Trump as a King Cyrus figure, as their champion if not a coreligionist. This article analyzes appeals to and expressions of entitlement, fear, resentment, and the desire to dominate from more than 60 sermons, speeches, and books by religious right authors, Donald Trump, and Trump surrogates. Using open coding, it identifies themes in how these emotions are recognized, affirmed, and invoked by speakers, focusing on Trump’s Cyrus effect.


Author(s):  
Vladimir E. Kosyakov ◽  

Introduction: the article contains the analysis of the unique features of Volodimir Zelensky’s presidential election campaign, the success of which is based on the image of a political leader deliberately built as totally different from the one traditional for the Ukraine’s political elite. Objectives: studying the main political trends in presidential campaigns of Volodimir Zelensky and Donald Trump, to identify common elements of their image-building strategies. Methods: comparative analysis. Results: the study verifies the effectiveness of building the counter-culture image of a political leader in the conditions of high levels of political cynicism and citizens’ distrust to their government. Conclusions: the tactics used by Donald Trump and Volodimir Zelensky during the 2016 US elections and 2019 Ukrainian elections respectively are similar at their core. The difference manifests itself in the types of political images used, as formed with respect to the candidates’ previous careers.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Stroope ◽  
Paul Froese ◽  
Heather Rackin ◽  
Jack Delehanty

Prior research found that Christian nationalism was strongly associated with voting for Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. However, the effects of Christian nationalism may depend on voters’ religiosity. We assess whether the association between Christian nationalism and Trump support differed for churchgoers and non-churchgoers and find that Christian nationalism is not significantly associated with Trump support among churchgoing voters. Instead, Christian nationalism is only significantly associated with Trump support among unchurched voters. These results suggest that while religious ideology remains a key driver of political attitudes and behavior in the U.S., its effects may have less to do with embeddedness in traditional religious organizations and more to do with the ways people use religious narratives in everyday life to construct and defend symbolic boundaries. At a time when fewer Americans attend religious services, religious narratives about Christian nationhood may have their strongest political effects when, and perhaps because, they are detached from religious institutions.


The Forum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Dickinson

Abstract More than a year after his surprise victory, scholars continue to debate why Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Two explanations – economic anxiety and racial resentment – are commonly cited. Drawing on open-ended interviews with Trump supporters and observations at multiple Trump campaign rallies, we find that both explanations, as commonly presented, do not fully capture the dynamics underlying Trump’s support. Rather than racial animosity or concern over their personal economic status, we believe that Trump’s supporters were primarily focused on what they saw as an increasingly biased political and economic system that no longer rewarded hard work and playing by the rules.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document