The Tribal Games: Tribalist Foundations of Trump Supporters

Abstract

This paper builds on Smith and Hanley’s finding that Trump’s supporters were not solely driven by demographics and economic distress, but predominantly by prejudices and preference for an overt authoritarian leadership. Our longitudinal study of the 2020 US Presidential election extended their study to test additional propositions about tribalism by considering two intergroup factors: an orientation to protestors and minorities and conservative vs liberal ingroups. While there was a strong negative correlation between attitude to protestors and to minorities, the strength of correlation between liberal and conservative ingroup ‘membership’ and support/vote for Trump/Biden was more telling. Essentially, because tribalism factors overpowered almost every variable including political orientation, we conclude that identity-based tribalism is now the primary basis of political allegiance.