The ideal president

The usual explanation of why Donald Trump did well among less educated ("working class") white voters was that they are profoundly discontented and thought that he might help them with their problems.  I don't think that this fits the facts very well.  First, people are not all that discontented with the state of society, as distinct from politics.  Second, people did not see Trump as particularly concerned with "people like you" (he trailed Clinton in that respect).*  I suspect that the explanation is that a style of tough talk and not caring if you offend people is, and probably always has been, more popular among less educated people (and also among men)--they are more likely to see it as refreshing and honest rather than as evidence of unfitness.

I looked for questions about the qualities or behavior that people wanted or expected in a president, and to my surprise found only one relevant survey.  None of the questions directly involved the issue I was concerned with, but I thought they were interesting in their own right.   The introduction was:

HERE IS A SERIES ON YOUR MENTAL IMAGE OF THE IDEAL
PRESIDENT:

I’D LIKE YOU TO PICTURE IN YOUR MIND THE IDEAL PRESIDENT
OF THE UNITED STATES:

The questions were:

WHAT WOULD BE THE IDEAL AGE FOR HIM TO BE ELECTED PRESIDENT?

The median was 50.  The most popular were 50 (32%), 45 (20%), and 55 (12%).  Only about 10% said 56 or older.

  WOULD IT BE VERY IMPORTANT THAT HE BE A FAMILY MAN, OR NOT SO IMPORTANT?  

74% very Important

WOULD IT BE VERY IMPORTANT THAT HE HAS A COLLEGE
EDUCATION, OR NOT SO IMPORTANT?

85% very important

WOULD IT BE VERY IMPORTANT THAT HE ATTEND RELIGIOUS
SERVICE REGULARLY, OR NOT SO IMPORTANT?

83% very important

WOULD IT BE VERY IMPORTANT THAT HE BE A SCHOLARLY MAN,
OR NOT SO IMPORTANT?

66% very important

WOULD IT BE VERY IMPORTANT THAT HE BE EXPERIENCED IN
POLITICS, OR NOT SO IMPORTANT?

80% very important

WOULD IT BE VERY IMPORTANT THAT HE BE DIGNIFIED IN
APPEARANCE, OR NOT SO IMPORTANT?

73% very important

WOULD IT BE VERY IMPORTANT THAT HE STICK TO THE POLICIES
OF HIS PARTY, OR NOT SO IMPORTANT?

44% very important

Having a college education was the one that was most widely seen as important, even ahead of attending religious services.**  People who had less education were somewhat more likely to see it as very important.


It would be interesting to repeat this survey now (of course, it would need a change to gender-neutral language).



*I haven't broken these data down by education; I hope to do that in the future.

**Harry Truman did not have a college degree, and in fact never attended an academic college (he attended a "business college" for a year after high school).  He was the last president without a college degree.  In thinking about this post, it occurred to me that his seven predecessors also had college degrees, six of them from elite institutions (Harvard for both Roosevelts, Yale for Taft, Princeton for Wilson, Stanford for Hoover, and Amherst for Coolidge).

The owl of Minerva, part 2

One of the striking things about the 2016 election was that the gap between more and less educated voters became much bigger.  Compared to the 2012 election, less educated voters shifted towards the Republican, more educated voters towards the Democrats.  The American National Election Study asked about vote in 2012, and I used that and 2016 vote to create a six-way classification:  non-vote to Trump, Non-vote to Clinton, Obama to Trump, Obama to Clinton, Romney to Trump, Romney to Clinton.  There was a bias towards recalling a vote for Obama in 2012 (see my previous post), but my concern here is with opinion differences among the groups, and for that purpose the bias is probably not harmful.

I focused on the OC, RT, and OT groups.  Common sense suggests that the Obama-Trump group--people who voted for a Democrat once and a Republican once--will be in between the people who voted for a Democrat both times and a Republican both times.  I looked at average opinions on a lot of issues and that is generally the case.  However, there are some exceptions.  There was one on which the OT group was more "Democratic" than the Democrats:  spending on Social Security.  With 1 meaning that spending should be increased, 1.5 that it should be kept the same, and 2 that it should be reduced, the average for OC voters was 1.19, RT was 1.28, and OT was 1.15.  

There were a number for which the OT group was more "Republican" than the Republicans.  Two involved spending:  crime prevention (OT most favorable to more spending) and science and technology (OT least favorable to more spending).  Four involved "feeling thermometers" about different groups:  Jews, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and Blacks.  On all of these, OC was most favorable, and OT least favorable.  Finally, on rating blacks has hard-working versus lazy, OT voters were more negative than RT.  

The differences on spending for Social Security and crime are consistent with what Trump said in his campaign.  He didn't say much about science and technology, but he certainly didn't give the impression that he was interested in spending more in that area.  

The differences in the feeling thermometers are more puzzling.  Trump talked a lot about illegal immigration, with an emphasis on Mexico, so lower ratings for Hispanics aren't surprising.  However, he didn't say much about blacks, and what he said implied that conditions were the result of faulty government policy rather than the fault of blacks themselves.  Some people said that he appealed to anti-Semitism, but I didn't find their examples convincing.*  I don't recall that he said anything about Asian-Americans.  A lot of people said that Trump appealed to ethnic prejudice of all kinds, and this might seem to support them.  However, the pattern didn't show up on most issues related to race and ethnicity.  For example, there was a feeling thermometer towards the Black Lives Matter movement.  OC voters were 66, RT were 22, and OT voters were in between with 37.  That is, it was only on the general ratings of groups that OT voters were more extreme.

My thought is that it has to do with what people now call "political correctness," or what used to be called "respectability":  the things people know that they are supposed to think and say.  The "respectable" position is that you should show positive feelings towards every ethnic and religious group that's part of the "American community."  But there are some people who are are prejudiced or at least feel "I'll tolerate them, but don't tell me I have to like them."  Trump was the first major party candidate in a long time who didn't care about being respectable, which would be appealing to people like that, apart from any specific statements or proposals.

*From Ian Buruma in the NY Times Magazine:  "Incendiary references to a 'global power structure' that was robbing honest working people of their wealth were illustrated by pictures of George Soros, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein. Perhaps not every Trump supporter realized that all three are Jewish. But those who did cannot have missed the implications." 

That was some uptick

I wasn't going to post again this soon, but this morning I read an interview with Heather Ann Thompson, a professor at the University of Michigan and author of a well-received new book on the 1971 uprising in Attica prison.  It reads
[interviewer] You point out not only that the war on crime was a bipartisan effort — it started with L.B.J. but grew under Nixon — but also that it wasn’t really in response to a crime uptick, as many Americans thought at the time. [Thompson] It was pure rhetoric. It was a policy choice, not a crime imperative. . . . The civil rights movement comes North, and all of a sudden, Johnson starts to sound like Bull Connor, right?

Here is a graph of the murder rate from 1960-75:

Here is motor vehicle theft, which is measured pretty accurately because there are car registration records.

For other crimes, there's more possibility of changes in reporting rates, but here are a couple of others.

Finally, here is the number of prisoners in state and federal institutions:

Putting these together, there was a large and sustained increase in crime beginning in about 1960, while the number of people in prison declined between 1960 and 1972.  Of course, Thompson is right to say that  the "War on Crime" was a policy choice; maybe there were better choices that could have been made.  But to say it "wasn't really in response to a crime uptick" is like saying the New Deal "wasn't really in response to an unemployment uptick."

Sources:  FBI Uniform Crime Reports 
Historical Statistics on Prisoners in State and Federal Institutions,Yearend 1925-86

The owl of Minerva

The American National Election Studies 2016 data has been released.  There is a lot which can and will be done with these data, but I'll start with some basic things.
     1.  The ANES asked people how they voted in 2012, and I originally intended to write about the relationship between 2012 and 2016 vote.  However, about half the the non-black, non-Hispanic people* who said that they voted in 2012 reported voting for Obama.  That's too high--the actual figure would be a little over 40%--suggesting that a significant fraction of the people who recalled voting for Obama actually voted for Romney.  So I'll leave that aside.
   2.  A lot has already been said about the relationship between education and vote, but here is the table:

          Didn't Vote  Clinton  Trump   Johnson  Stein Other
HS or less     37%        21%      38%     1.6%  1.3%  1.3%
Some college   22%        24%      47%     3.8%  1.0%  1.1%
College grad   11%        46%      36%     4.3%  0.7%  2.0%

Although most accounts focused on Trump's support among people with a high school diploma or less (which journalists like to call the "working class"), he did even better among people with middle levels of education.  The major contrast is between college graduates and everyone else.  Most people with no post-secondary education don't vote at all (the figures for non-voting in the ANES are too low, partly because some people say that they voted when they actually didn't, and partly because the sort of people who don't participate in surveys are less likely to vote).
  3.  Income is more complicated.  On the average, Trump voters had lower incomes than Clinton voters.  After controlling for education, there was no clear difference, but after adding a control for being married, it was back again.  (Married people were substantially more likely to vote for Trump and have higher family incomes).  However, the effect of income seems to differ by education.  Here is a figure showing estimated support for Clinton by education, income, and marital status.  (Income is measured by 28 categories, going from under $5,000 to over $250,000--9 is about $25,000; 15 is about $50,000, and 23 is about $100,000).

I was surprised by how much difference marital status made--I knew it had become a fairly important factor but didn't think it would be that big.  Income has more effect among college graduates.  Another way to put it is that education makes only a little difference among people with low incomes, but a lot of difference among people with high incomes.
4.  The ANES also includes a variable for occupation, but this is a preliminary release, and doesn't include the occupation variable yet.  The occupation variable might help to illuminate the educational differences among people with high incomes.

*all of the analyses are limited to people who are neither black nor Hispanic

The popular kind of populism

In March, the Gallup Poll asked a series of questions starting with "Now, I am going to read several actions either taken or proposed by President (Donald) Trump. For each one, tell me if you agree or disagree with it, or if you don't know enough to have an opinion."  They are, going from most to least approval:
                                                                                                                                              A   D   DK
require companies to provide family leave for parents 
                             after the birth of a child?  81% 10%    9%

enact a $1 trillion program to improve US 

    infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and tunnels?  76   12    12

significantly cut federal income taxes for the middle 

                 class?                                   61   26     13

provide federal funding for school-choice programs that 

allow students to attend any private or public school?    59   26     14

increase military spending by $54 billion?                47   42     11

replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as 

     Obama-care, with a new healthcare plan?              44   44     12

stop all refugee resettlement in the US for 120 days?     40   46     14

impose a 90-day ban on issuing new US travel visas for 

     citizens of six Muslim-majority nations?             40   47     13

reduce the corporate income tax rate                      38   43     19

authorize construction of the Keystone XL and 

                      Dakota Access pipelines?            36   39     25

begin the construction of a wall between the 

             US and Mexico?                               36   56     7

eliminate US funding for international organizations 

     that promote or provide abortions?                   35   53     12

put a hiring freeze on most civilian jobs in the 

                 federal government?                      33   46     20

end US participation in the Trans-Pacific trade 

              Partnership or TPP?                         27   30     43

require that for every new federal government regulation 

     put in place, two existing regulations 

     must be eliminated?                                  27   46     27

The striking thing is that he has not taken any action, or even seriously talked about taking action, an the two proposals that are most popular.  In contrast, he has done something on many of the less popular measures.  

I should offer a couple of qualifications.  First, the extremely high popularity of the first two items is probably partly because of the lack of attention they have received. If they were really on the table, opponents would mobilize to make their case and some of the support would fade.  Second, the survey didn't ask about some things that probably are popular, like stepping up deportations.  Still, it is striking that Trump has pushed the parts of his program that people are no more than lukewarm about, and not the parts that people seem to like.  

This relates to the issue of whether we could get a realignment along the lines proposed by R. R. Reno or David Brooks, which you could call "open" versus "closed."  The "open" side would be in favor of immigration, internationalism, and multiculturalism and be liberal on most social issues.  The "closed" side would be nationalist and traditionalist.  On economics, the open side would support redistribution to the poor; the closed side would favor aid to "worthy" people--people with jobs (especially in manufacturing and construction), farmers, small business, veterans.  The open side would be more sympathetic to market mechanisms; the closed side would favor direct government intervention.  The social bases of the parties would shift:  Brooks says "imagine a Republican Party after Donald Trump, led by a younger candidate without his bigotry and culture war tropes. That party will begin to attract disaffected Sanders people who detest the Trans-Pacific Partnership and possibly some minority voters highly suspicious of the political elite."

Could this happen?  In principle, I think that you could have politics oriented around a open-closed axis.  However, I'm not sure that you could get there from here.  Politics has a conservative bias, not in a liberal/conservative sense, but in the sense that keeping your "base" happy is a priority.  If Trump pushed a large public works program or strong measures for family leave, there would be a revolt in the Republican party.  What about a realignment from the other side?  Suppose someone who was America-first, nativist, and socially conservative won as a Democrat.  They would presumably make public works and family leave priorities.  But after that, why move on to things that would not be as popular and would cause a split in the party?  They might make some changes at the margin, but wouldn't go too far.  So even if an open-closed alignment makes sense in principle, I don't think it will become dominant--the left-right alignment will remain dominant, although open/closed will continue as a secondary one.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]