I know a lot of passively racist idiots, and they don’t vote Democrat, and they definitely didn’t vote for Obama.
Certainly there were lots of reasons Obama voters may have switched to Trump, but…
Using this and other data, political scientists have argued that racial resentment is the strongest predictor of whether voters flipped from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump, and the biggest driver of Trump support among these voters.
Yes, racial resentment is the strongest predictor of the Obama-Trump vote in this survey data.
We all know racists, but it seems at least in this regard that the ones I know were more representative of racists nationally, in that at least some of them will vote for Democrats, even Black Democrats, when the Republican alternatives aren’t racist enough.
I still don’t get that. I mean even if the Republicans aren’t racist enough for you, surely the Dems aren’t going even less racist, especially the black Dems. If I were racist, I doubt I’d be voting for the Dems or black people. If I couldn’t stomach the Republicans, I would probably write-in Hitler or maybe George Wallace or something like that(again, if I were racist). No way I would vote for the Dems or any black person(again, if I were racist).
The trick is, you’re imagining yourself being a logical racist. Such a beast doesn’t exist. To an overt racist, Democrats aren’t “less racist” than Republicans. They’re both touchy-feely-hippy-dippy-Abraham-Lincoln-kumbaya-ebony-and-ivory-in-harmony wannabes – equally. So you either don’t vote or you move on to a second tier of criteria. However, that has likely changed now. After Trump, I think people will assume, for better or worse, that all Republicans are racist until proven otherwise, and those votes are now gone for the Democrats for the long term.
Racists in general, and even some white supremacists, are not single issue voters. They also have opinions on medical marijuana, the Iraq War, minimum wage, and so on. Democrats can do well on many of these issues. Not all anti-abortion voters vote for Republicans either, because abortion is not the only issue.