Foreign Policy in an Ignorant Democracy
[1]
Paul R. Pillar [2]
Amid the voluminous post-election analysis based on exit polls, and the many observations about such things as how Hillary Clinton fared compared to Barack Obama among blacks or women, one demographic pattern sticks out at least as much as any other in characterizing the 2016 presidential race. Support for Donald Trump was strongly correlated with low education. Clinton did substantially better than Obama did in 2012 among college graduates, including white college graduates. Conversely, a majority of those with no college degree went for Trump even though they mostly supported Obama in both of his races and even though all voters with incomes under $50,000 continued to give majority support this year to the Democratic candidate. It was with good reason that Trump openly proclaimed during the campaign that he loves the poorly educated.
Educational attainment is not the same as being well informed, but it is highly correlated with it and thus a good, and more easily compiled, substitute variable for it. And so it is fair to say, as Jason Brennan does [3], that “Trump owes his victory to the uninformed.” Although Brennan correctly emphasizes how in any election, most voters have little incentive to make themselves better informed, mass ignorance played an especially large role in this year’s outcome. That role was enhanced by the winning candidate having plumbed new depths in serial lying [4]. Many people initially attracted to him out of simple ignorance came to have, by listening to him, more firmly held misbeliefs.
Source URL (retrieved on November 20, 2016):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/foreign-policy-ignorant-democracy-18392
