Authoritarianism and support for Trump and Clinton in the 2016 primaries

Abstract: Research in the wake of the contentious 2016 presidential primaries contends both Democrats and Republicans were internally divided along psychological lines. Specifically, MacWilliams (2016) finds authoritarian personality was strongly related to Trump support among Republican primary voters, and Wronski et al. (2018) finds authoritarianism was strongly related to Clinton support among Democratic primary voters. In this paper, I reassess the relationships between authoritarianism and 2016 primary candidate preferences for both Republicans and Democrats. I analyze two new large, probability-based surveys and generate random effects estimates using these surveys and two national surveys from Wronski et al. (2018). Overall, I find authoritarianism was moderately associated with support for Clinton over Sanders among Democratic primary voters, but weakly associated with support for Trump among Republican primary voters. My findings indicate authoritarianism may have played a more limited role in shaping Americans’ candidate preferences in the 2016 presidential primary elections than past studies have suggested.

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