Affect toward Minority and Majority Groups in the Era of Donald Trump

Abstract

U.S. voters’ affect toward such minority groups as blacks, Muslims, and transgender people has become warmer in recent years. Warming affect toward minority groups is a surprise for the influential theory of affective polarization. In arguing that voters’ partisan allegiances fuel dislike of groups associated with the opposing political party, this theory predicts that it is primarily Democratic identifiers whose affect has become warmer, as affect is assumed to reflect partisanship and little more. Yet this is not what the authors find, analyzing high-quality data from the 2012–2020 American National Election Studies. Not only have Republicans (like Democrats) become warmer toward minority groups, but this influenced voter choice and contributed heavily to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Voters’ affect toward social groups may matter independently of the powerful force of partisanship. The authors discuss study limitations, alongside implications for affective polarization theory, research on Trumpism, and classical sociological scholarship on liberalization.