{"id":256671,"date":"2020-05-30T23:56:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T03:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=256671"},"modified":"2020-05-30T23:56:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T03:56:05","slug":"study-trumps-support-for-police-served-as-dog-whistle-to-voters-with-racial-resentment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/05\/30\/study-trumps-support-for-police-served-as-dog-whistle-to-voters-with-racial-resentment\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Trump\u2019s support for police served as \u2018dog whistle\u2019 to voters with racial resentment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Meanwhile, Republicans who supported the police and expressed higher levels of racial resentment were more likely to choose Trump for president four years ago. Trump\u2019s candidacy appears to have suppressed turnout among Republicans with lower levels of racial resentment, the study finds. (File photo<\/a>: The White House\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new study reveals that voicing support for police can be a \u201cdog whistle\u201d politicians use to appeal to voters threatened by challenges to America\u2019s racial status quo. Donald Trump\u2019s expressions of support for police, researchers find, served as coded language that mobilized voters who were anxious about the social and economic status of white Americans in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n

The paper<\/a>, which appears in this month\u2019s edition of the journal Criminology<\/em>, shows how U.S. voting patterns in 2016 were linked to feelings about race and law enforcement — a dynamic that could play out again in this year\u2019s presidential election, says lead researcher Kevin Drakulich<\/a>, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University.<\/p>\n

Drakulich and his colleagues discovered that Democrats who supported the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement were more likely to show up at the polls in 2016 and vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. The authors write that the racial justice themes of Clinton\u2019s campaign and her support for the Black Lives Matter movement \u201cseem to have encouraged some Democratic voters with greater racial resentments to stay home on election day — whereas anti-racist Democrats voted at a very high rate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Republicans who supported the police and expressed higher levels of racial resentment were more likely to choose Trump for president four years ago. Trump\u2019s candidacy appears to have suppressed turnout among Republicans with lower levels of racial resentment, the study finds.<\/p>\n

Drakulich says it\u2019s tough to make predictions about the 2020 election because it\u2019s unclear whether and how the coronavirus pandemic<\/a> will impact turnout and voters\u2019 choices. But, he explains, Americans could again be swayed by their feelings about police and toward protestors, whose demonstrations sometimes turn violent, recent news coverage<\/a> shows.<\/p>\n

All week this week, Black Lives Matter advocates have held rallies nationwide<\/a> to protest the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis. Floyd was arrested Monday after a convenience store employee accused him of using a counterfeit $20 bill<\/a> to buy cigarettes. During the arrest, a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd\u2019s neck for nearly nine minutes<\/a>, and Floyd was \u201cnon-responsive\u201d for part of that time, CNN reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as there is still a bit of movement or some momentum toward achieving racial justice,\u201d\u00a0 Drakulich says, \u201c[and] as long as you have that energy and push on one side, there is going to be a response, which has sometimes been described as a backlash.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drakulich and his co-authors find that the political signaling Trump used when he spoke out in support for police mirrors the type of racial dog whistling conservative political candidates used during the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th<\/sup> century. They explain in their paper that a dog whistle is \u201ca seemingly neutral statement that has special meaning to a subset of voters with a specific set of shared views.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom this perspective,\u201d they write, \u201crhetoric about the police may be employed in the same way that law-and-order rhetoric has been historically: as a means to target and attract those voters who are concerned about the relative status of White versus Black Americans without explicitly referencing race.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new study also indicates that \u201ca subset of Americans may be cloaking their concerns about the racial order behind a superficially nonracial support of the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

To better understand how voters\u2019 feelings about race and law enforcement affect ballot choices, Drakulich and his colleagues analyzed data collected through the 2016 American National Election Studies Time Series Survey<\/a>. The survey asks a nationally representative sample of U.S. citizens about their voting behavior as well as about the police, race, racism and the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n

Researchers tried to detect and measure racial resentment by including questions that asked, for example, whether inequalities would be solved if black people tried harder and whether black people received less than they deserved. They also asked participants whether they believed black people have too little, just about the right amount or too much influence in U.S. politics.<\/p>\n

Drakulich and his colleagues focused on the responses given during interviews conducted in the two months following the 2016 general election. A total of 1,059 adults participated in face-to-face interviews and another 2,590 completed online questionnaires.<\/p>\n

Among their other key findings:<\/p>\n