Racial Threat and Support for Authoritarian Leaders in the US

• In Event: Poster Session: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics II

Abstract

Political Scientists have long theorized about the relationship between racial attitudes and anti-democratic values. While a spurious connection between the two concepts involving individual personality traits, such as authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, causality remains significantly less well explored. In the present study, I exploit the sampling randomness in YouGov's 2020 daily tracking poll to explore how the events of that summer's Black Lives Matter protests shaped feelings towards Trump among Republicans. I find that the Minneapolis Police Station fire, started by protestors, was followed by a 15 percentage point increase in strong approval among Republicans in the next unique iteration of the poll. However, in the following iteration, after Trump had ordered the military to use violent means to clear protestors in front of the Whitehouse, this effect proved to be short-lived as his strong approval dropped by 13 points. These results suggest that, among Republicans, racial threat may drive support for authoritarian leaders. However, the use of violence against political opponents leads to a decrease in support, even among co-partisans. The latter finding is supported by a subsequent (brief) analysis of the January 6th attacks. These findings suggest a causal relationship between racial threat and anti-democratic values.

Author

• Spencer C Lindsay