Not impressed with this article. That a Trump voter is not one type of a person and a Clinton voter an entirely different one is obvious. Does it turn out to be more of a mixed bag than many people liked to assume? Well, it is election season in an extremely polarized atmosphere. That there can be many devils in many details maybe everybody is aware of normally... but ye Americans have to make a binary choice of nov 8. In its own way that is tough.
There is always more to research and do polls on, every statistics raises more questions that need more research and polling.
For instance and for punfun, a nice research and poll would be in the context of this article: how many people actually believed that most Trump supporters are poor white people? Who are those believers and where are they?
It might turn out that only a relative handful strongly believed this to be the case; maybe some journalists and some of their readership. Where are the data that support the assumption from which this article draws its justification?
What would be the answer of a big enough random poll among Americans (journalists included) to this question: Do you think that most Trump supporters are poor white people? Yes/No/Maybe etc. Haven't seen a poll on that yet. Could be interesting.. and equally embarrassing.
Another problem with the article is this part:
Here they fall in the same trap they exposed when it came to economic classes. The assumption was debunked that to vote Trump you had to be white, poor and miserable... but the new assumption that replaces the old one is that to hold unfavorable views of Islam and support a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US... you need to be either a racist, a nationalist, or both. But that is equally painting people with a big brush; it would require more research and polling to get more details why, in what way they have unfavorable views of Islam and why they want a temporal ban on immigration. Maybe it turns out that 90% of them indeed have strong proven racist sentiments (despite the caveat that Islam is not a race of course)... or maybe it turns out that only 2,5% are racist? And what about being "a nationalist"? What does it mean to begin with? Just Graunadian sound bites... and same old propaganda i.e. lazy thinking!Meanwhile, the racism and nationalism that surely exist among them also exist among Democrats and higher socioeconomic strata. A poll conducted last spring by Reuters found that a third of questioned Democrats supported a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. In another, by YouGov, 45% of polled Democrats reported holding an unfavorable view of Islam, with almost no fluctuation based on household income. Those who won’t vote for Trump are not necessarily paragons of virtue, while the rest are easily scapegoated as the country’s moral scourge.
In fairness, same can be said of the infamous BBC poll after the Charlie Hebdo murders among British Muslims. When 10% of British Muslims think the murders were legit..or at least justifiable-understandable.. does that mean that when you meet 10 Muslims on a day.. one of them must be a nasty arsehole and time-bomb ready to go off? Of course not. The number of 10% is useless.. because you need to know who they are, where they are exactly. And which of them is or might be a danger to others in society. 10% is a reason for concern.. but still requires further research to be meaningful, useful to anyone. All else is just throwing around paint.
