Why people support Trump

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It is difficult for me to understand why people support Trump. I have a friend Jane from Kentucky who I've known for many years. We don't usually talk about political things. We did today though.

I asked her questions about this. She explained some of it. As she said it is not all one thing. For instance, there are people who will absolutely not vote for anyone who supports abortion. I knew that.

She also explained that internet and even TV is very sparse there. There isn't even CNN. All there is to watch is wrestling or a religious channel. I found that shocking, but enlightening about the situation.

I want to learn more about this.
 

Clara D.

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According to a segment on NPR, a good chunk of his base is $80,000+/year college-educated whites.

The liberal-hating "I got mine so fuck everyone else" crowd (with some racism thrown in).

And there are actually fewer poor whites than is assumed. Many of them realize how bad the R's are for social programs.
 

Anya Ristow

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Lots of people there who receive television signals just fine.

I hung out in the trump subreddit in 2016. It was a surprisingly diverse, articulate, geeky, technically savvy group. A scary, but totally plausible gathering of real people. Until about the time he wrapped up the nom. Then that sub turned weird. They are clearly being managed. Some of you will hear zebras, but whatever is controlling the trump sub is way more culturally literate than the Russian trolls of 2016. I suspect there is a republican version of Correct the Record who just hasn't been discovered, yet. The early 2016 trump sub was anti-establishment, populist, even anti-republican. The late 2016 trump sub was definitely republican.

FWIW, if you asked them, "you know you're not going to get $4000, right?", you learned that they absolutely through they were going to get $4000. The temporarily embarrassed millionaire is an image they actively cultivate LOL.

ETA

According to a segment on NPR, a good chunk of his base is $80,000+/year college-educated whites.

The liberal-hating "I got mine so fuck everyone else" crowd (with some racism thrown in).

And there are actually fewer poor whites than is assumed.
Hrmmm. You mean the "I'm really getting a $4000 tax cut" anecdotes I read might have been real? That's disturbing.
 

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They break the last election's demographic here. Doesn't go into tiny details, mostly big picture, but interesting.

(I'm a bit rusty, I can't find the quote button. Heh)

"This set of facts, culled from a series of surveys conducted by one of the U.S.'s most respected public opinion research centers, leaves us with a clear picture of those behind Trump's rise to political prominence. They are primarily white, older men with low levels of education and income. They believe that immigrants and free trade deals have harmed their earning power (and they're right about the free trade deals), and they prefer an America in which white people are the majority. Trump's worldview and platform seem to resonate with them."
 

Isabeau

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Although it doesn't mean there weren't any higher educated/income earners who did vote for him.
 
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Anya Ristow

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[the trump subreddit] was [in early 2016] a surprisingly diverse, articulate, geeky, technically savvy group... [but] They are [now] clearly being managed. ... I suspect there is a republican version of Correct the Record who just hasn't been discovered, yet. The early 2016 trump sub was anti-establishment, populist, even anti-republican. The late 2016 trump sub was definitely republican
Here's an example. In early 2016 the trumpers in the subreddit championed net neutrality. When Trump's FCC shot down net neutrality, I wondered what the sub thought about it. I read somewhere that they had had a bit of a fight over it, so I visited and found...no division. They had come down against net neutrality, and were mocking it as a liberal plot or something.

Net Neutrality Is Dividing Trump Supporters on Reddit
 
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Kara Spengler

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Yesterday I was commenting on twitter about a local issue (public transit had a big SNAFU) and it happened that the person I replied to had the same first name. Because of that she followed me and, out of courtesy, I returned the favour. Then I happened to look at her profile: a donnie supporter in a big way, following breitbart, the whole mess. If she sees my tweets in all that (she follows 2k+ people, which is more than twice how many people follow her, and many of them are just media outlets and public figures anyway) she is going to quickly find out that I disagree with her on pretty much every issue she can imagine (and I suspect a few she has never heard of).
 
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Beebo Brink

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They are primarily white, older men with low levels of education and income. They believe that immigrants and free trade deals have harmed their earning power (and they're right about the free trade deals), and they prefer an America in which white people are the majority. Trump's worldview and platform seem to resonate with them."
Based on my observations, they also like that he's "a fighter" who isn't hampered by notions of diplomacy and tact. His rough, simplistic view of the world, and how to deal with it, matches their own. When the only tool you're familiar with is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
 

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In a general sense:

You'll Regret This When Chelsea Clinton Is President
They don't think presidents should have that kind of power. They think conservative presidents should. They don't think Democrats should be allowed to be president at all. Laws are for other people. In fact laws are tools that their team uses to crush your team.

#notallconservatives, whatever, but you can't prod authoritarian conservatives with your view of "consistency" because they are perfectly consistent, just in a different way than you imagine. Hypocrisy is a hilarious concept to them, and they laugh when you invoke it. They aren't hypocrites. They are perfectly consistent in their view that they have the right to rule in any way they choose and Democrats don't.
 

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Lots of people there who receive television signals just fine.
Yes, but that map is misleading because plenty of those red counties don't have that many people in them. That map somewhat resembles a population density map. Remember, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.

Here's a map of Illinois population density, based on the 2010 census:


So you can easily tell what those blue splotches in Illinois are....where the actual people are. Chicago and the Suburbs, Rock Island, Peoria, Champaign/Urbana, East St. Louis, and Quad Cities area.
 
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Brenda Archer

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Anecdotal, but all the Trump voters I’ve met have been either white men (of varying income levels) or adherents of conservative religions.

The most surprising have been POC supporters, but they were all Evangelicals. Evidently the persuasion from religion was more important than the reports they must hear about Republican racism. I don’t think this is very common, and I’m not in a position to understand it, but these people might be most of the remaining Republicans who are POC.

Women voting for Trump that I’ve met, have all been the kind that identify with religion. I haven’t met any that weren’t.

The white men tended to be either religious or have heads full of media driven conspiracy theory. One was a small businessman who was doing very well, but resented the Democratic Party machine in his town for funneling building contracts to a certain local family. Chillingly, he didn’t care about Trump Russian mafia connections even though he knew that no foreign small business can do business with the Russians and avoid getting a shakedown. This attitude is the most dangerous.

Evidently there are Americans who think they can take help from mobsters and not get burned or owned. You can’t and there’s no such thing. If we are so lucky as to have a Deep State of conservative Never Trumpers fighting these people, they have my support. I’ve never been so terrified as I am these days.

The Russians make the old Cosa Nostra look like Boy Scouts.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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Why do people vote for Trump? Because like any good demagogue he is delivering simple answers to complex questions and appeals to the emotion of many people.

His slogan "Make America great again" is the text book example for this: it indicates that America is small at the moment, which again is a very vague emotion which though deeply resonates within many people. But hey, Trump is here to bring back the former glory, so all vote Trump!

"Mexican rapists" is another prime example for this, which resonates with enough people in states not sharing a border to Mexico.

Voting for Trump is for most people a decision based on their emotions. And Trump plays on the emotional piano of the nation like a genius.

And if voting for Trump was a conscious decision for some, either because they think they might get advantages from him in the office or that he is going to do so much damage, that after him democracy needs to humbly rebuild itself completely which they do consider a good thing.
 

Kara Spengler

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Anecdotal, but all the Trump voters I’ve met have been either white men (of varying income levels) or adherents of conservative religions.

The most surprising have been POC supporters, but they were all Evangelicals. Evidently the persuasion from religion was more important than the reports they must hear about Republican racism. I don’t think this is very common, and I’m not in a position to understand it, but these people might be most of the remaining Republicans who are POC.

Women voting for Trump that I’ve met, have all been the kind that identify with religion. I haven’t met any that weren’t.

The white men tended to be either religious or have heads full of media driven conspiracy theory. One was a small businessman who was doing very well, but resented the Democratic Party machine in his town for funneling building contracts to a certain local family. Chillingly, he didn’t care about Trump Russian mafia connections even though he knew that no foreign small business can do business with the Russians and avoid getting a shakedown. This attitude is the most dangerous.

Evidently there are Americans who think they can take help from mobsters and not get burned or owned. You can’t and there’s no such thing. If we are so lucky as to have a Deep State of conservative Never Trumpers fighting these people, they have my support. I’ve never been so terrified as I am these days.

The Russians make the old Cosa Nostra look like Boy Scouts.
There seem to be Trumpists (the majority of the R party) and traditional republicans. The latter will at least engage in a debate. While most things they would never agree with a liberal on at least they could agree on some basics (foreign interference=bad, the world is an oblate spheroid, stuff like that). Trumpists seem to just disagree on everything for the sake of disagreeing.
 
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Anya Ristow

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Anecdotal, but all the Trump voters I’ve met have been either white men (of varying income levels) or adherents of conservative religions.
My mom thought Trump was an SOB but liked him over Clinton. I don't know if she voted for him. She was a New Yorker while Clinton was senator, and considered her a carpetbagger and a useless senator. A waste of the seat. She really didn't like Clinton.

My sister hasn't said she voted for Trump, but she won't let me speak ill of him.

A friend on long island says her whole extended family is Trumpsters. She's not, but she also considers Clinton a carpetbagger.

Anecdotally, Clinton winning NY was more a matter of "blue no matter who" and not "home state advantage".
 

Romana

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My mom thought Trump was an SOB but liked him over Clinton. I don't know if she voted for him. She was a New Yorker while Clinton was senator, and considered her a carpetbagger and a useless senator. A waste of the seat. She really didn't like Clinton.

My sister hasn't said she voted for Trump, but she won't let me speak ill of him.

A friend on long island says her whole extended family is Trumpsters. She's not, but she also considers Clinton a carpetbagger.

Anecdotally, Clinton winning NY was more a matter of "blue no matter who" and not "home state advantage".
She was a New Yorker and hadn't heard enough about donnie to know that he'd be 1000x worse?
 

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