Vibe shift?, part 3

 I've written several times about a question on "How much discrimination do you think there is against blacks/black people/African Americans in our society today--a lot, some, only a little, or none at all?"  There was either no trend or a decline between 2000 and 2014, but then a clear shift towards seeing more discrimination starting in 2015.  The last time I wrote about this question was in 2019, and a survey in March 2019 had found a new high in perceived discrimination.  What has happened since then?

Perceptions of discrimination against black people have stayed high.  The two highest values were in May/June 2020, just after the killing of George Floyd.  There were three surveys during the Biden administration--the one in February 2022 found a lower value, but even that was above those found in 2009-14, and the value in February 2024 was back at 2019 levels.*

Combining the evidence from the last three posts, views of Trump are more favorable than they were in the 2016 campaign, but that's not because public opinion has become more conservative.  Of course, I've just looked at two aspects of opinion, but they are important ones, and ones that many observers have claimed were keys to Trump's victory.  I think the change in views of Trump has two major sources:  one is the experience of his first term, when there were no economic or foreign policy disasters, and the other is that Republican elected officials stuck with him, despite some wavering after 1/6/21.  Although he had serious opponents for the nomination,  Trump soon established a big lead in endorsements from  Republican elected officials.  So for the average voter, he's increasingly become a normal representative of the Republican party.   His gains over 2020 were not because voters became more conservative, but because of "retrospective voting"--things weren't going well under the Democrats, so why not give the Republicans a chance?   

*Since I collected the data, I also show perceived discrimination against whites, which has stayed about the same except for a drop in May/June 2020.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]