Going right?, part 2

 I want to follow up on my previous post, which proposed that the recent rightward move of Black, Hispanic, and less educated voters might have a common cause--concern about foreign affairs.  My idea is that these groups tend to have a more suspicious view of the world--to feel that you can't count on other people and have to look out for yourself.  When applied to foreign affairs, this means an affinity for an "America first" approach--don't get involved unless our interests are at stake, and when we do get involved, rely on military or economic threats rather than diplomacy and alliances.  That's exactly in line with Trump's view of foreign policy.  So Trump has an advantage with these groups in this sphere (I don't call it an issue, since it's more of a general orientation than a policy position).  Most voters aren't that concerned with foreign affairs most of the time, so if things were going well, it wouldn't have much influence.  But now, with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the rise in illegal immigration, people are more concerned, and Trump's approach makes sense to a large number of voters.

So that's my idea--what about evidence?  I alluded to some last time, but didn't give details.  On the "suspicious view of the world," there are three questions that have been regularly included in the General Social Survey, whether "most people can be trusted, or that you can't be too careful in life," "most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves," and "most people would try to take advantage of you if they had a chance, or would they try to be fair."  If you make an index of positive views of human nature by counting "can be trusted," "try to be helpful," and "try to be fair" answers, the means are:

Black            0.9
Hispanic       1.0
NH White     1.6

Non-grad       1.4
Coll Grad       2.0

The GSS doesn't have many questions on foreign affairs, but one was included regularly until 2006:  "Do you think it will be best for the future of this country if we take an active part in world affairs, or if we stay out of world affairs?"  More recently, a question asking if they agree or disagree that international organizations are taking too much power from the American government has been asked several times.  The table shows opinions by scores on the index:

       Active part           Taking power (yes minus no)
0     54%                          17
1     60%                          13
2     69%                          -3
3     82%                          -30

So general views of people are strongly related to these foreign policy opinions.  The racial/ethnic and educational differences in general views of people are longstanding and haven't changed much, which suggests that an "America first" policy has always had the potential to appeal to less educated people and racial minorities (and repel educated people).  However, from the 1940s until the rise of Trump, that kind of policy was almost universally rejected by elites of both parties, so it wasn't offered as a choice.  

Going right?

 There's been a lot of talk recently about Blacks and Latinos shifting to the Republican party (an example).   Most of the accounts I've seen say that it results from a weakening of party loyalty, so that Black and Latino conservatives start moving to their "natural" home.  However, you would expect that to be a gradual process, much of it the result of generational replacement--why would it be happening now more than it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago?  I looked at the Echelon Insights surveys, which ask people about their views of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, comparing the latest one available (Feb 2024) to October 2021, which I chose as the baseline so that we would be past Biden's "honeymoon" and the reaction to January 6 would have had time to fade.  The figure shows change in mean favorability (4=very favorable, 3=somewhat favorable, 2=somewhat unfavorable, 1=very unfavorable), for groups that were included in  reports (party, race/ethnicity, sex, income, education).

Biden's ratings have declined among most groups, and Trumps have risen, but three stand out:  blacks, Hispanics, and people without a college degree.  These groups have had the largest anti-Biden and pro-Trump shifts.  People without a college degree are different from Blacks and Hispanics because they already gave strong support to Trump--that is, the decline of party loyalty explanation can't account for their change.  Is there any common factor that might explain the recent shift of these three groups?  I think that it might be the increase in foreign conflicts and illegal immigration.  

As I've mentioned before, many people think that other countries take advantage of the United States--they we try to be fair but they don't.  The political importance of this feeling is likely to increase when times are tough--people will think that under the circumstances we can't afford to worry about other countries and their problems and need to focus on our own national interests.  This point is relevant to the group shifts because blacks, Hispanics, and less educated people tend to be more suspicious of others--less likely to think that other people can be trusted or will generally treat you fairly--and the differences are big by the standard of individual-level survey data.  That suggests that they will respond more strongly to the kind of appeals that Trump makes.  But it also suggests that they may shift strongly in the other direction if Biden seems to be getting things under control.  

The road to Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump now has enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination for the third time.  How did we get here?  One view is that it came out of the blue--Trump staged a "hostile takeover" of the Republican party by appealing to ordinary voters, and the Republican leadership has gone along because they can't stop it.  Another view, which I think is the correct one, is that it's the culmination of a long development--that by 2016, the party was ready for someone like Trump.  Of course, it's hard to identify a precise starting point for a long-term shift, but some popular choices are Nixon's "Southern strategy" and Reagan's election in 1980.  I want to suggest another possibility-- the 1990 budget agreement, in combination with George H. W. Bush's 1988 "no new taxes" pledge at the Republican convention and his loss in the 1992 election.  The obvious effect of this experience was to strengthen Republican opposition to raising income tax rates, but I think it had a larger effect.

The figure shows net public support (favorable minus unfavorable opinions) for the proposed budget agreement in October and November (the last Congressional vote was October 27, and Bush signed it on November 5).  On the whole, public opinion was negative, but not all that negative--averaging across the ten surveys that asked, 36% were in favor and 41% opposed.  The figures were more negative in the two final surveys, but they just asked about views of the budget agreement with no further detail, while all of the previous surveys said something about bipartisan agreement.  People like bipartisanship, so it's likely that the difference in responses was because of the difference in questions rather than because of a real change in attitudes towards the agreement.  Opinions were also getting more favorable over time until the last two questions, which suggests that people were happy that Congress seemed to be getting things done.*  That is, people didn't like the idea of a tax increase, but liked the idea of parties working together on a plan to reduce the budget deficit.   

 The result of this episode was that the Republicans became less willing to cooperate with Democrats in being "responsible"--doing things which most knowledgeable people say are necessary but which the public is inclined to oppose.  Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress set aside politics (Bush's "read my lips" pledge) to do the "responsible" thing, and it wound up hurting them.  That started a move towards a strategy of uniform opposition--make the Democrats do it and don't give them the cover of bipartisanship.  Of course, this isn't an absolute--there are some cases in which the "responsible" thing is in line with Republican ideology, but they have become less common as the party has increasingly turned against "elites" and experts.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

*There were two questions that had more detailed descriptions of what was in the agreement, which are indicated in the figure. The descriptions were different, and the second one sounds more favorable to me than the first, which may explain some of the difference between them.  But the evidence for a time trend is still pretty strong if you set them aside.  

Two part twos

 1.  My last post observed that in 1970, people with higher incomes were less likely to say that people who are successful get ahead because of luck, but that in 2016 no relationship was visible.  How about education?  In 1970, there was no relationship between education and opinions after you controlled for income.  In 2016, there was:

                        Luck
Not HS grad     19%
HS only            16%
Some college    10%
College grad     14%
Grad educ         16%

That is, the middle levels of education were least likely to say that luck was what mattered.  This supports my general point about people at the top becoming less likely to assert their superiority (also see this post).

2.  In January, I tried to understand the persistence of Republican support for Donald Trump by comparing it to views of Watergate.  Views on whether Watergate was a "very serious matter" or "just politics" shifted towards "a very serious matter" during the earlier part of the Watergate investigation, but then stabilized.  They were pretty evenly divided in the summer of 1974 (not long before Nixon resigned) and in several later surveys that asked people to look back.  

In that post, I said "Of course, Nixon was ineligible to run for President,  but no one said he should remain a major voice in the party and no one sought his endorsement when running for office."  I later found some questions from 1979 that were prefaced "there has been some talk of President Nixon getting back into active political life" and then asked what they thought about several possible ways.  (I don't remember whether there actually was such talk or whether the people doing the survey just thought it was an interesting question).  The percent saying it would be a good idea for him to:

                                                              Republicans      Independents     Democrats

Run for office                                          18%                   14%                     7%
Be appointed to high post                       14%                   10%                    5%
Speak out on issues                                 55%                    33%                   27%
Take active role in party                         31%                     19%                   14%

About 8 or 9 percent said they weren't sure--that was pretty constant across all the party/question combinations.  So a substantial number of Republicans supported the idea of Nixon taking "an active role in the workings of the Republican party," and some even thought he should run for office.  

  After Trump's loss, Republican elites seemed to expect their voters to spontaneously turn against him, and then be surprised that he retained substantial popular support (or interpreted it as evidence that he had a unique personal appeal).  This example shows that they shouldn't have been surprised:  Nixon had significant support from Republican voters even after he had acknowledged wrongdoing, resigned, and kept a low profile for several years.  

Why was elite behavior different in the two cases?  The most apparent factor is that in the 1970s there was a stronger core of leadership that could speak for the majority of the party in Congress.  But I think that there's also another:  there's now a stronger sense of "team spirit" among both politicians and opinion leaders.  That is, Republicans were reluctant to make common cause with Democrats.  As a result, even those who aren't Trump supporters have promoted the idea that he's being unfairly treated, that Democrats have done similar things in the past or are trying to do them now--e. g. Ross Douthat's indignation about efforts to remove Trump from the ballot ("antidemocratic and incompetent at once, signifying ... a general elite fear of the voting public").  That makes it easier for ordinary Republicans to conclude that it's all "just politics."

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

The secret of success

 In 1939, the Gallup poll asked "Do you think people who are successful get ahead largely because of their luck or largely because of their ability?"  They asked the question again in 1970, and CBS news asked it in March and September 2016.  

                Luck         Ability        DK/NA
1939         16%            80%           4%
1970           8%            86%           6%
3/2016       14%            81%          6%
9/2016       11%            80%           6%

At each time, overwhelming majorities said that ability was the major cause.  That's important in itself, but differences by social standing are also of interest.  The 1939 survey contained an interviewer rating of economic standing, and people who ranked higher were more likely to say that ability was what mattered.  The 1970 and 2016 surveys didn't have the interviewer rating, so that can't be used for comparison, but both the 1939 and 1970 surveys asked about occupation, so you can compare occupational differences:

The figure shows the log of the odds ratio of ability to luck answers by occupational group.  I classified the occupations as higher to lower:  business and professionals, then farmers and white collar workers, then skilled manual workers, with semi- and unskilled manual workers at the bottom.  At both times, people in "higher" occupations were more likely to say ability, but the relationship seems weaker in 1970--the estimated slope is about 1/2 to 2/3 as large, and there is more scatter around the line.  

The 2016 survey didn't ask about occupation, but it did ask about income, which can be used to compare it to 1970.  Of course, the income categories were different, but there happened to be 11 each time, so to keep things simple I'll just number them as 1 through 11.

There was a clear relationship in 1970--people with higher incomes are more likely to say that success depends on ability--but not in 2016.  

Over the whole period, the relationship between social standing and opinions about the cause of success has become weaker, and maybe even disappeared.  Rather than looking down on the working classes, as critiques of "meritocracy" claim, people in the upper and middle classes have become less likely to assert their superiority.  I've argued this before, but didn't have such direct evidence.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research--with special thanks for obtaining the 2016 survey]