I think the challenge in dealing with findings like this is that due to quirks of human psychology, this can be both true and also incredibly unhelpful to actually talk about. “You voted for Trump because you’re racist” is not a line of rhetoric that has ever changed anyone’s mind, because people will almost never frame themselves as being a bad person.
It’s incredibly frustrating, but if you want to win those kinds of voters, you have to speak to them on their own level and in their own terms, and that will often involve having to ignore things that are true, such as this. You can of course decide that those voters aren’t worth the trouble, and that’s certainly the case for plenty of voters, but the mythical “average voter” isn’t exactly going to be a saint and will absolutely be susceptible to the same social biases that the rest of us are, even if many of us like to pretend that we’re at least self-aware about it.
I think the challenge in dealing with findings like this is that due to quirks of human psychology, this can be both true and also incredibly unhelpful to actually talk about. “You voted for Trump because you’re racist” is not a line of rhetoric that has ever changed anyone’s mind, because people will almost never frame themselves as being a bad person.
It’s incredibly frustrating, but if you want to win those kinds of voters, you have to speak to them on their own level and in their own terms, and that will often involve having to ignore things that are true, such as this. You can of course decide that those voters aren’t worth the trouble, and that’s certainly the case for plenty of voters, but the mythical “average voter” isn’t exactly going to be a saint and will absolutely be susceptible to the same social biases that the rest of us are, even if many of us like to pretend that we’re at least self-aware about it.