Abstract
We examine the role of moral foundations and system justification in explaining support for Donald Trump in the 2016 general election using data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. A number of important findings emerge. First, we find that there are important partisan and ideological differences when it comes to moral foundations and system justification. Second, we find that moral foundations predict support for Trump above and beyond traditional determinants of vote choice such as ideology, partisanship, religiosity, and demographic characteristics. Third, we find that a measure of political system justification is not related to vote choice in our sample. This casts doubt on the idea that support for Trump was mostly about protesting the political system. This paper adds to the growing body of research showing that psychological concepts and theories are important in understanding voter decision-making in the 2016 presidential election and in elections more generally.
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Articles
- Moral Foundations, System Justification, and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election
- Explaining and Predicting Midterm Congressional Election Outcomes: Factoring in Opposition Party Strategy
- Dumping Trump and Electoral Bumps: The Causes and Consequences of Republican Officeholders’ Endorsement Decisions
- Using Journal Impact Factor to Assess Scholarly Records: Overcorrecting for the Potter Stewart Approach to Promotion and Tenure
- Deconstructing Popular Mythologies about Millennials and Party Identification
- Ready for Hillary?: Explicit and Implicit Sexism in the 2016 Presidential Election
- “One Difficulty…of a Serious Nature”: The Overlooked Racial Dynamics of the Electoral College
- The Myth of the Bipartisan National Popular Vote Plan
- Book reviews
- Review of Choosing the Leader: Leadership Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives
- Review of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Articles
- Moral Foundations, System Justification, and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election
- Explaining and Predicting Midterm Congressional Election Outcomes: Factoring in Opposition Party Strategy
- Dumping Trump and Electoral Bumps: The Causes and Consequences of Republican Officeholders’ Endorsement Decisions
- Using Journal Impact Factor to Assess Scholarly Records: Overcorrecting for the Potter Stewart Approach to Promotion and Tenure
- Deconstructing Popular Mythologies about Millennials and Party Identification
- Ready for Hillary?: Explicit and Implicit Sexism in the 2016 Presidential Election
- “One Difficulty…of a Serious Nature”: The Overlooked Racial Dynamics of the Electoral College
- The Myth of the Bipartisan National Popular Vote Plan
- Book reviews
- Review of Choosing the Leader: Leadership Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives
- Review of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America