SOC433H5 Lecture Notes - Racialization, Class Conflict, Opinion Poll
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Lecture 4
2016 U.S Presidential election
• Electoral college votes: Trump: 306 Clinton: 232
• Popular vote: Trump 62,979,879 (46.1%) Clinton: 65,844,954 (48.2%)
• By state (electoral college) (not exactly representative of the total population)
• By county
• Urban- Rural divide
o Rural went to Trump and Urban went to Clinton
• People who had lower incomes voted for Clinton
• People who had middle or higher class voted for Trump (over 50,000)
o The middle class were scared by his inflamed rhetoric
• The country seems increasingly polarized
• Overall white people favoured Trump
o Over 90% of the people who voted for him were white
• Clinton got 88% of the Black peoples votes
o Less than Obama got
o Latinos also voted for Clinton
• Whites who were not that educated went for Trump (highschool diploma or less)
o This demographic was key to his victory
• In 2012, Obama lost whites without a college degree nationally by 25 points. Four years later,
Clinton did 6 points worse, losing these voters by 31 points. Had Clinton hit the marks that
Obama did, she would have won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Iowa fairly easily, as
well as (with narrower margins) Florida and Ohio.
• Women went to Clinton, but white women went to Trump in a big way
• Younger people went to Clinton but older people went to Trump
Media coverage of 2016 US election
• FIGURE 1: Media focused on issues that benefited Trump
• FIGURE 2: Immigration and Muslims/Islam were the two most widely covered substantive
issues of the campaign.
• FIGURE 3: Trump swamped media coverage (mostly negative, with a bit positive)
• FIGURE 4: Partisan Distribution of Media - The structure of the overall media landscape shows
media systems on the left and right operate differently. The asymmetric polarization of media is
evident in both open web linking and social media sharing measures. Prominent media on the left
are well distributed across the center, center-left, and left. On the right, prominent media are
highly partisan
• FIGURE 5: Twitter is a more partisan environment than the open web media landscape
• FIGURE 6: Facebook is more partisan than Twitter
• The media coverage tended to systematically favour trump
• Focused on issues that helped trump
• Sentences that are related to Clinton were based on scandals eg. Email scandal
• Focus on trump focused on his core issues
• Sentences by substantive topic
o Focused on muslim, Islam people
o Shows that the media coverage focused on immigration and Islam much more than any
other topic
o Trump focuses on solutions to the issued many raised by the media
o Trump focused stories are much more than other stories
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o Clinton stories are neutral and a little negative, there are more negative for Trump
▪ He is dominating the story lines
• Stories that focus on the right wing tend to focus on the radical side
• But stories that focus on the left wing are much more centered
• The trends become even more exaggerated on social media
• There is more people sharing right wing material
o Suggests that the right wing is becoming more radically right
• The more radical the framing, the more they want to share it
Global approval of US leadership plummets
• The average approval rating of U.S leadership around the world
o Dropped 18% overall
• Approval rating dropped 40% in a year in Canada
• Biggest change in approval ratings occurred in Canada. In Canada, 20% respondents said they
approved of the job performance of U.S. leadership; 76% disapproved. The Canadian respondents
approval of the job performance of the U.S. leadership dropped 40% in one year (from 2016 to
2017)!
• Germany replaced US as country with most respected leader
• The U.S. is now just behind China at 31%, and just ahead of Russia at 27%.
Lamont reading
• Trump’s campaign speech trying to focus on the themes he focused on
• Wanted white people to realise their true status in comparison to other groups
• Perception of the growing interest on radical Islamism
• Positive references to African Americans
o But talks about Urban problems which is a code for African American issues but it covert
• Negative references to donors, politicians, immigrants
• Lamont and the other piece shows how the Trump campaign mobilize immigration
• First generation immigrants, second generation and native born, crime is on the decline
• Mexican migration is on the decline in the US
• Trump was able to mobilize immigration, crime at a period where both crime and immigration is
on the decline
• Undocumented immigration reaches a peak in the 2000s but starts to decline the Obama
administration
• So the issues that trump is focusing on, is actually on the decline
Hall reading
• Looks at Brexit by looking at a broader political trend
• Rise of the populist right among working class men
• Using a cross national survey
• Argues that the combo of economic and social factors influences the focus on right wing
• Status anxiety: the lower status of white middle class males, that sense that ones status is
lowering is predictive of right wing support
• Particularly on white men that have less than a college degree
• Increase of women in the workforce
• Ethnic and racial diversity
• All of these factors makes white men feel displaced and feel that their losing their status
• Sense of status decline has been present since the 1980s
Status anxiety
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• White males who are lower educated feel like their social status is slipping and this feeling is
increasing over time
• Womens perception of social status is on the rise, but mens perception is decreasing
Discussion panel
• 1) Populism is group the focus for the larger society
• Middle class white men voted for Trump over Clinton
o Because their social status has been threatened and lowering because of their lack of
education
o They voted right wing populism
• 2) 67% of white voters voted for Trump
o talked about how trump tapped into the white working class to win
o draws on social, political and economic contexts to explain why this occurred
o racial backlash after the Obama administration
o due to fears of terrorism
o this group view themselves as the vine of society
o Trump engaged in boundary work
o boundary work: pointing out the different boundaries that the population experiences
▪ painting the white middle class as superior to these other groups
o look at the future of politics due to these boundaries
Readings:
Noam Gidron and Peter A. Hall. 2017. “The Politics of Social Status: Economic and Cultural Roots
of the Populist Right.” British Journal of Sociology. 68, S1: S57-S84.
• Increased support for the populist right
• Populism: support for the concerns of common people
• status anxiety as a proximate factor inducing support for populism, and economic and cultural
developments as factors that combine to precipitate such anxiety.
• lower levels of subjective social status are associated with support for right populist parties,
identify a set of economic and cultural developments likely to have depressed the social status of
men without a college education, and show that the relative social status of those men has
declined since 1987 in many of the developed democracies.
• tatus effects provide one pathway through which economic and cultural developments may
combine to increase support for the populist right.
• electoral support for right-wing populism has a common fea- ture: at its core lie key segments of
the white male working class
• right wing populism is rooted in both economic and cultural developments, including economic
changes that have depressed the income or job security of some segments of the population and
shifts in the cultural frameworks that people use to interpret society and their place within it.
• the attitudes of people who voted for right-wing populist causes or candidates reflect deep
concerns about both their economic situation and recent cultural developments.
• supporters of Brexit tended to be much more pessimistic about their own economic prospects and
more hostile to cultural outlooks of growing prominence in mainstream culture
• Support for parties on the political left, in particular, was rooted in this intersection between
economic circumstances and cultural frameworks that defined the working class
• people who see them- selves as economically-underprivileged also tend to feel culturally-distant
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Document Summary
In 2012, obama lost whites without a college degree nationally by 25 points. Clinton did 6 points worse, losing these voters by 31 points. The asymmetric polarization of media is evident in both open web linking and social media sharing measures. Prominent media on the left are well distributed across the center, center-left, and left. Global approval of us leadership plummets: the average approval rating of u. s leadership around the world, dropped 18% overall, approval rating dropped 40% in a year in canada, biggest change in approval ratings occurred in canada. In canada, 20% respondents said they approved of the job performance of u. s. leadership; 76% disapproved. The canadian respondents approval of the job performance of the u. s. leadership dropped 40% in one year (from 2016 to. 2017): germany replaced us as country with most respected leader, the u. s. is now just behind china at 31%, and just ahead of russia at 27%.
