White Voter Support for Trump
Two frameworks are useful in trying to explain the surprising 2016 election, and even the surprising nomination, of Donald Trump. One framework focuses on the macro level, covering the larger circumstances and conditions that permitted if not facilitated Trump’s election. The other framework focuses on the micro level, on the specific variables that resulted in Trump’s election. One can justly see Trump’s election as a perfect storm, a combination of many things that permitted his razor edge victory, about 70,000 votes total in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
American voters have gone to the polls five times in this young century to elect a president.… Read the rest
Obama to Trump Voters
People who voted for Obama in 2012 and for Trump in 2016, about 5.7 million voters, played an essential role in Trump’s victory. A research paper by Stephen Morgan and Jiwon Lee explore the characteristics of these voters. While their research focuses primarily on white non-Hispanic “crossover” voters they also discuss the characteristics of white non-Hispanic voters who did not vote in 2012 but voted for Trump in 2016. The authors also generate some comparisons between these two sets of voters and Romney-Trump voters.
Cross-pressured voters are those voters who are subject to conflicts and inconsistencies in whom to vote for.… Read the rest
Trump’s Rhetorical Power
I found a recent paper by Timothy Haverda and Jeffery Halley (H&H) helpful in trying to understand Trump’s nomination and election. More implicitly, it may also help understand Trump’s base of support.
H&H base their paper on Theodor Adorno’s (1903 – 1969) analysis of a 1930s preacher in California, Martin Luther Thomas.* Based on Thomas’ radio addresses, Adorno identified 33 rhetorical devices that characterized Thomas’s speeches. The paper uses three of these devices (1) lone wolf, (2) movement, and (3) exactitude of error to analyze 16 Trump speeches. The speeches cover June 16, 2015 (Trump’s presidential announcement speech) to January 2017 (Trump’s Inaugural Address).… Read the rest
Communication Style in the Republican Primaries
Several posts on this blog discuss the topic of leadership, Trump, and rhetoric. I will add to this set of posts an article by three Canadian psychologists. Ahmadian et al. discuss Trump’s communication style. The article is based on research that compares Trump with his main opponents in the Republican primaries. The authors wrote the article prior to Trump’s general election win. They examined 27 speeches each of which involved 30 minutes or more of continuous speech not prompted by a question. The speeches averaged about 38.5 minutes. All the speeches were early speeches (each candidate’s announcement speech and two other early speeches).… Read the rest
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