While cultural backlash and economic grievances both explain why Americans elected Donald Trump president of the US in 2016, cultural backlash provides more explanatory power as it accounts for the role of racism. To come to this conclusion, I will first provide an overview of the Cultural Backlash Theory and its relevance to the 2016 election. I will then demonstrate how racism in Trump’s campaign further highlighted the importance of cultural backlash. I will then demonstrate that economic grievances, specifically related to trade, did have an effect on the election outcome. And finally, I will illustrate that racism, fueled by cultural backlash, has previously affected how Americans perceived economic grievances and voted in the 2016 election. Therefore, I will conclude that while both cultural backlash and economic grievances affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, cultural backlash mattered more due to the role of racism.
Cultural Backlash Theory
A key factor in Trump’s electoral success was his ability to appeal to Americans who felt their cultural values and status were threatened. The Cultural Backlash Theory asserts that around the 1960s and 1970s, industrialized societies shifted from materialist to postmaterialist values that promoted progressive attitudes of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, freedom of expression, environmental protectionism, and human rights. As the younger cohorts began replacing the older, the traditional materialist group felt their status and privileges decline as their values became less popular. This group consisted mainly of unskilled, white working-class men, belonging to the interwar and baby boom birth cohorts. As these individuals resisted progressive changes, they staged a silent revolution against the progressive changes favoring more radical politicians and policies (Inglehart and Norris, 2016, pp. 29-32).
Trump's ability to mobilize and capture the vote of individuals opposed to postmaterialist norms and values was crucial for the success of his campaign. Trump greatly appealed to white working-class men because his campaign deeply aligned with their values of nationalism, nostalgia, and authoritarianism. Trump promised to restore the country and its values to its traditional ways prior to the cultural revolution, this was evident as his campaign promised to "Make America Great Again” by returning the country to its “golden past,” where older white men enjoyed prominent status and the US’s global leadership was unmatched (Norris and Inglehart, 2019, pp. 353-355).
Authoritarian values also played a crucial role in support for Trump. Authoritarianism is an ideology that values security, traditional values, and desires a strong leader (Norris and Inglehart, 2016 p. 10). McWilliams used cross-sectional data from an American Election Study and found that authoritarian individuals were more likely to support Trump compared to the other Republican presidential candidates (2016, pp. 717-719). As individuals most likely to have authoritarian values consist of the same demographic of the post-materialist counterculture, middle-aged, white-working class men, it makes sense that this demographic supported Trump so heavily (Norris and Inglehart, 2016 p. 10). This was apparent as Trump did especially well in constituencies predominantly consisting of white-working-class voters, such as the Midwest. It is likely that Trump was even able to capture historically democratic states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania because they are disproportionally white working-class (Gaughan, 2016, p. 5). This evidence demonstrates that cultural backlash played a significant role in Trump's success, as he was able to mobilize white working-class Americans whose traditional values and status had been threatened by post-materialism (Mutz, 2018, p.1).
Culture Backlash and Racism
Cultural backlash elicited a significant amount of racism in the US, and as Trump’s campaign heavily relayed on racism, this appealed to these individuals. As the increasingly popular norms of post-materialism threatened the status of the traditional white working-class man, this demographic responded by eliciting racism against the new counterculture. Additionally, racism was a significant part of Trump's campaign as he repeatedly demonized Mexicans as being criminals and rapists, accused Muslims of being terrorists, and stereotyped African Americans (Bobo, 2017, p. 99). Such beliefs extended to Trump's campaign promises to build a wall between the US and Mexico, deport millions of illegal immigrants, and enforce a travel ban on 7 Muslim majority countries (Norris and Inglehart, 2019, p. 354). Such views greatly affected how American’s voted, in fact, data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election found that a presidential candidates use of anti-immigration and racist sentiments played a significant role in how Democratic and Republicans voted (Hooghe and Dassonneville, 2018, p. 528-532). Therefore, as Trump's campaign focused on racist sentiments, this resonated with those who felt their cultural dominance was threatened and mobilized them to vote for Trump; this illustrates how cultural backlash affected racism and, in turn, how Trump appealed to voters with racist sentiments.
Economic Grievances
I will now demonstrate that economic grievances were an important factor in explaining why citizens voted for Trump, even though this variable was not as important as cultural backlash. I will specifically focus on the effects trade has had on the US manufacturing industry. Economic grievances refer to the winners and losers of globalization, as they are the result of broad structural changes that affect society and the workforce in an economy, and often make individuals feel worried about their financial situations (Norris and Inglehart, 2016, pp. 1-4). Postmaterialist values and globalization have increased the extent of global trade, especially in the past few decades. As the US can no longer compete with exceptionally cheap imports from China and outsourced jobs, the manufacturing industry has been hit especially hard, (the ‘losers’) and American’s in low skilled manufacturing jobs have been increasingly laid off (Autor et al. 2017, p.1). Additionally, as post-materialism significantly favors skilled and knowledge-based occupations, unskilled manufacturing workers having increasingly experienced long-term unemployment, minimal future job options, and low social mobility, giving rise to fears about ones’ economic security (Rodrik, 2018, pp. 2-3).
Due to increasing economic insecurities among unskilled American’s, especially in the manufacturing industry, Trump's campaign greatly appealed to these individuals, as he promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US (Norris and Inglehart, 2019 pp. 349-352). This was evident as voters in marginalized job sectors supported Trump in large numbers (Thompson, 2016, p. 2). A survey using data from the US Census found that the Industrial Midwest region experienced the most amount of economic distress in 2016 and that Trump also performed best in terms of vote share in this region (Monnat, 2016, p. 3). This trend is further seen in Autor et al.’s research, as they found that local US labor markets exposed to surges in Chinese import competition heavily voted Republican in the presidential elections between 2000-2016. This was especially evident in the 2016 election, as local labor markets vulnerable to economic grievances strongly favored Trump (2016, pp. 1-9). This various evidence suggests economic grievances did play a role in explaining why citizens voted for Trump, and that this relationship was especially evident regarding economic grievances related to trade in the US manufacturing industry.
Racism Impacts Economic Grievances
While economic grievances were an important factor in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, cultural backlash provides more explanatory power because cultural backlash leads to racist sentiments, which in turn affects Americans’ perceptions of economic grievances. This is evident as Tesler demonstrates that racism affects how individuals view the economy by comparing perceptions of individuals before and after Barack Obama’s presidency, the country’s first African American president. Tesler finds regardless of the actual unemployment rate (a measure of financial distress) during Obama’s presidency, individuals were more pessimistic about the economy when it was associated with Obama compared to George W. Bush (2016, pp.1-9). As respondents relied on how they subjectively perceived the economy, and these perceptions were linked to racist sentiments about Obama’s race, this demonstrates that racism is a powerful predictor of how individuals perceive the economy.
Racism fueled by cultural backlash also affected how individuals voted in the 2016 election. Data from the American National Election Studies estimates that roughly 6.7-9.2 million Americans went from voting for Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 (Skelley, 2016, p. 4). Reny et al. explored this trend by using a representative dataset of over 64,000 American voters who voted in the 2012 and 2016 presidential election. These authors found that racist attitudes and anti-immigration sentiments among respondents was a key factor distinguishing if they switched their vote. This was made further evident when they measured individuals’ traits of xenophobia and racism; individuals who switched from voting for Obama to Trump scored especially high among these characteristics. They also found that the more racially conservative a previous Obama voter was, increased the likelihood that they later supported Trump (2019, pp. 3-10). Ultimately, Trump’s campaign successfully appealed to those left behind by the rising counterculture of post-materialism. And as this group sought to restore their previous cultural dominance, these individuals were especially attracted to the racist sentiments and promised to protect their status that Trump’s campaign heavily promoted. Therefore, looking just at voters’ perceptions of economic grievances fails to demonstrate how racism affects perceptions of the economy and how voters vote. Thus, I conclude that cultural backlash provides far more explanatory power in why American voters elected Trump in 2016 compared to economic grievances alone do.
In conclusion, while both economic grievances and cultural backlash are key factors in explaining Trump’s electoral success in the 2016 presidential elections, cultural backlash provides more explanatory evidence because it accounts for the role of racism. This was made evident by first demonstrating the role that cultural backlash played in the election and how cultural backlash creates racist sentiments. I then determined that economic grievances, specifically related to trade, were also a substantial factor in explaining the election, but that they could not be considered the main factor, as racism, fueled by cultural backlashed, affected how individuals perceived economic grievances and voted in the 2016 election. I, therefore, conclude that cultural backlash was the more important factor in explaining the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.
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