Terror, Tolerance, and Trump

Abstract

A Pew poll found that the majority of Americans see the Democratic Party as more open and tolerant and find the GOP to be generally lacking in both tolerance and empathy (Pew Research Center 2015). Both parties demonstrate politically reactive behavior to the influence of fear but the common belief is that conservatives inherently take a more nationalistic and isolationist stance in their responses. Following the widely unpredicted result of the 2016 presidential campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump, political pundits speculated that his promises of reduced immigration and strong military response in the wake of terror attacks overseas caused a strong conservative voter turnout (Walsh 2016). Through analyzing the different responses of conservative and liberal voters to fear and terror-related questions in the American National Election Studies 2016 Time Series Study, my research explored the question, "Did Trump supporters experience higher levels of fear?"