From “The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy” by Christopher Beem
Behind these assessments of who, exactly, is suffering from discrimination lurks a more or less explicit sense of racial resentment. Republicans are more likely to see other races and ethnicities as threats to their way of life. For many, this feeling of racial resentment is tied to feelings of anger and betrayal about their economic condition. Part of the explanation for why things are the way they are stems from the distrust and negative stereotypes that inevitably follow our perception of them. But for Republicans more than Democrats, racial and ethnic minorities and their representatives overstate their particular disadvantages. In fact, more Republicans than Democrats believe that those groups receive special breaks and support while their own communities are disrespected and neglected.
Much has been made of the fact that while whites with a college degree supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by 30 points, among those white Americans without a college degree, Trump beat Clinton by 40 points. Such a vast disparity would appear to demand an explanation. According to Abramowitz, though, this difference is less important than it seems. In fact, if you isolate racial resentment as a variable, there is no meaningful difference between those Trump supporters who went to college and those who did not. The amount of racial resentment is equally predictive for both groups: “White voters with high levels of racial/ethnic resentment voted overwhelmingly for Trump regardless of education, and white voters with low levels of racial/ethnic resentment voted overwhelmingly for Clinton regardless of education. The only difference between the two groups is that many more people who did not go to college feel racial resentment. Still, college or no, if you do indeed feel such resentment, you are much more likely to be a Trump voter.