The Rise or Decline of Social Acceptance? Perspective from U.S. Presidential Elections, 2012 to 2020

Abstract

Recent acts of racial violence, the growing visibility of nationalized white power movements, and a drift toward a number of more restrictive laws and Supreme Court rulings have raised troubling questions about the significance and influence of social acceptance in the United States. Focusing on voters and elections, an important strain of scholarship has argued that declining acceptance of minority groups and marginalized communities contributed to the political rise of Donald Trump and his 2016 election to the presidency. However, the argument that low levels of social acceptance benefited Republican candidates is premised on a basic yet untested assumption: that social acceptance has decreased over the time period covered by the past several elections. In this study, we offer a new and systematic evaluation of this assumption through an analysis of change in the level of social acceptance within the American electorate and its political influence from the 2012 through 2020 elections. The analysis focuses on key target groups that include racial minorities, women, immigrants, and gay and lesbian individuals. We find that voters adopted more supportive and inclusive positions toward these marginalized social groups, resulting in a substantial increase in social acceptance over time. Contrasting further with much of the commentary regarding the rise of Donald Trump, our analysis indicates that these trends in social acceptance served to hurt Trump and to help his Democratic opponents. Supplemental analyses find little evidence that social desirability influences the measures of social acceptance or their estimated influence on voter choice.