The Anthropology of the Trump Victory

Many of my friends and I are still struggling to understand how Trump was able to win the 2024 election. The anthropologist, Alex Hinton, has written a short article in The Conversation that seeks to explain the Trumpiverse, as he calls it.

I have long admired Alex Hinton’s work on genocide (see also here and here) and a book titled It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US  (2021, which I have not yet read), so this critique is not of his work so much as an insight into a common problem with anthropological analyses.

Hinton argues that to understand Trump voters, we need to listen and understand. This, of course, is basic to the anthropological approach. Anthropologists who confront “weird and exotic” beliefs and behaviors in foreign cultures suspend judgment and try to understand the logic of what to them, initially, seems illogical.

Hinton lists “five key lines of reasoning that, in varying combinations, informed the choices of Trump voters.” They are 1) Media distortion, 2) better economy, 3) the border invasion, 4) a proven record, and 5) the MAGA bull in a china shop (he’s a fighter). The problem is, however, that each of these lines of reasoning are either mistaken or misleading. Let’s take each in turn.

1) The claim of media distortion rests on the view that journalists are unfairly critical of Trump, and criticize everything he does. Hinton mentions Trump voters’ belief in the “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” an illogical dislike of Trump. But anyone who follows the news already knows his followers believe this. The question is, why do people believe this. Hinton also says:

“About 78% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independent voters say that Trump broke the law when he allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 election results. But less than half of Republicans think he did anything wrong.”

What high school social studies class did these Republicans take? How can they not be offended by Trump’s behavior in attempting to steal the 2020 election? (I’m also wondering about that 22% of Democrats. Usually, you can assume 8% of respondents misunderstood a question, or are the fringe that believes the moon landing was faked in a Hollywood studio, but how do 22% of Democrats dismiss the Jan. 6^th insurrection and the call to the Georgia Secretary of State to “find 11,780 votes”?!) Is it really “distortion” to worry about Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election? The real question is how Trump supporters can look beyond this, and how they can excuse Trump's withholding funds for Ukraine until President Zelensky started an investigation on Biden.

2) On the economy, it is true that inflation hit during Biden’s term, but the seeds of that were also laid with money spent during the Trump administration, money well spent to assist during the pandemic. In fact, inflation was a global phenomenon, and the US handled it better than nearly every country, with The Economist noting the US economy was the envy of the world.

Joe Biden’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, AKA the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, called for approximately $1.2 trillion in spending, about $550 billion newly authorized spending on top of regular expenditures, which, as Biden noted, it was “the largest investment in our nation’s infrastructure in a generation.” As Heather Cox Richardson notes, “In the past three years, the Biden administration launched more than 66,000 projects across the country, repairing 196,000 miles of roads and 11,400 bridges, as well as replacing 367,000 lead pipes and modernizing ports and airports. … In his first term, Trump had promised a bill to address the country’s long-neglected infrastructure, but his inability to get that done made “infrastructure week” a joke. Biden got a major bill passed, but while the administration nicknamed the law the “Big Deal,” Biden got very little credit for it politically. Republicans who had voted against the measure took credit for the projects it funded, and voters seemed not to factor in the jobs and improvements it brought when they went to the polls last week.” That is what needs to be explained, not just what people are saying.

3) A border invasion. Here again, while there was a surge at the beginning of the Biden administration, border crossings now are below the level they were under Trump. The question should be, why are so many people upset over immigration (82% or Republicans said it was a “very important” issue in 2022, according to Hinton), especially given that immigrants (both documented and undocumented) do most of the work native born Americans are unwilling to do, from farm work, slaughter house work, and in nursing homes. This is especially surprising given that much research shows that immigrants do not really compete with native-born Americans for jobs. The real questions are why have Republicans been able to demonize immigrants? Hinton notes that “In 2022, a poll found 7 out of 10 Republicans worried that “open borders” were part of a Democratic plot to expand liberals’ power by replacing conservative white people with nonwhite foreigners.” Why does this ludicrous belief make sense to people? And why, as Hinton notes, was Trump able to “play[…] into some people’s mostly false concerns that immigrants living illegally in the U.S. are freeloaders and won’t assimilate, as illustrated by his untrue September 2024 allegations that immigrants were eating pets in Ohio.” Why did Christians, who read a Bible that advocates helping the poor and needy, become so angry about immigrants?

4) A better record. Trump supporters claimed there were no wars under Trump, but that ignores the fact that the US was still fighting in Afghanistan during Trump 45. It was Trump’s poorly thought out agreement with the Taliban that forced Biden to pull the US out of Afghanistan, and though the administration could have perhaps handled the exit better, it was Trump’s decision to pull out in one year that doomed the anti-Taliban forces. Hinton notes that “Trump supporters’ perception is that American taxpayers foot a large portion of the bill, even though other countries are also giving money to Ukraine, and Israel is actually buying weapons from the U.S.” The question should be, why do they have these incorrect views?

5) Bull in a China Shop: Hinton concludes by saying that some people like him because he is a fighter. “Some in the Trumpiverse even view him as savior who will rescue the U.S. from a “radical left” apocalypse. For Trump stalwarts, MAGA is not simply a slogan. It is a movement to save an America that is on the brink of failure.” Again, we know this from news reports. The real cultural question is why, when the US economy is strong and we are the most prosperous country in human history, why would people believe the country is at risk to “leftists” and on the brink of failure?

Today’s America has changed from the recent past in three ways. First, the proportion of non-whites in the country has increased. Second, other parts of the world have developed, so US dominance of the world is less complete. And third, there has been a huge growth in inequality within the US. Much of the rage of Trump voters may be aimed at this growing inequality, but it took a political entrepreneur to pin the blame on immigrants. And that does not explain why voters would support a tin-pot “billionaire,” and why they think “He gets me.” That is the cultural question that needs to be addressed.

Furthermore, how can we understand why Trump’s outrageous behavior has been excused and even glorified. How is it that Hillary Clinton’s statement that half of Trump’s supporters were “a basket of deplorables” supposedly hurt her election efforts, while Trump’s numerous “gaffes” had no effect, especially his Access Hollywood video clip where he bragged that he could grab women by the genitals?

Part of the reason is that many (most?) voters are ignorant, to use a politically incorrect term that Trump might approve. A study from Datafor Progress showed that people who paid “a great deal” of attention to political news voted for Vice President Kamala Harris +6, while those who paid “none at all” went +19 for Trump. In conversations with relatives and strangers on a trip I've been on, I realize that even professionals may not follow or understand politics as deeply as I have often assumed.

Sometimes I wonder if the Roman elites asked similar questions, like "How can they believe that?!", when they faced an increasing number of followers of an irrational cult led by a preacher supposedly born of a virgin who came back to life after being crucified. I think there is still a lot of work for anthropologists to understand the deep cultural forces that make MAGA and Trumpiverse meaningful for its followers.

Election 2024

I again served as an “election judge” (AKA poll worker) on Tuesday. We serve in pairs, one Republican and one Democrat, each needing to initial the request for a ballot on a poll pad and then to initial the ballot. The system is designed to make it difficult if not impossible to cheat. My Republican partner seemed to refute a lot of MAGA rhetoric when he told one voter that people who think there is cheating in voting have not seen how the system works.

Still, there is some oddity in the system. In Taiwan, there is a ritual of showing everyone that the ballot box is empty before they shut the box and seal it with paper seals to prove there is no tampering. In our case, we just set the scanners and ballot boxes up, and no one made a point of showing everyone that the ballot boxes were empty before they were set up. We locked the ballot box but there was no seal on the box (but the boxes were never left alone). Seals were placed on the ballot bags after the voting was done. And even though we put our initials on every poll pad request and every ballot, sometimes my initials were unrecognizable, the result of doing it over 400 times, sometimes reaching over at an odd angle.

Missouri started requiring a photo ID to vote in the 2022 mid-term elections. This election, I would estimate we turned away about 2-3% of voters because they did not have a photo ID. We still bent the rules; when people said that they had moved out of the county and into St Louis City but were still registered in St Louis County, we pretended we did not know they had moved and let them vote with the ballot from their old address. Several of them came to us frustrated because they had tried to vote in the City but, of course, they were not registered there, so were sent to the county to vote. So they came to us, sometimes with a photo ID that had their new St Louis City address, and we found them still in the county’s registration system. I was pleased to see that the two Republicans near me allowed these people to vote. They seemed to feel it was more important that people should be allowed to vote than to stick to the rule that you must vote where you currently live. And because most of these voters were Black, and so most probably Democrats, I found it significant that the Republican election judges, who were white, were not being strict and preventing people from voting, because though Republican legislators justified the photo ID requirement as a way to assure the integrity of voting, Democrats argued it was a way to suppress the vote of poor people. 

And indeed, not everyone has a driver’s license. At my polling place in Normandy, MO, we saw many people, perhaps 15%, who used a learner’s permit or nondriver identification cards as an ID. We also had to turn away people who said they were registered to vote in St Louis County but who had an out of state ID. Sometimes we were able to allow them to fill a “Provisional Ballot”, but we know most of those will not be counted. (On top of everything, the form is long and at least one person forgot to sign at the very bottom, assuring that their vote will not be counted.) Altogether, I would estimate about 4% of people we saw were not able to vote.

The strange thing is that though the requirement is for a photo ID, we are NOT required to, or instructed to, check the picture to make sure the person is indeed who they say they are. It is enough for the voter to click “accept” that the name and address is correct, and then sign on the poll pad. The system is still based on trust that the voter is who they say they are, and the picture is not used.

Among the weird cases I saw was a Vietnamese-American immigrant who came to vote, but the database showed he’d already voted by absentee ballot. We told him this, and he looked puzzled, and said, smiling, “Oh, yes, so I can’t vote now?” He was elderly (but not obviously demented), so perhaps just a bit confused, and maybe forgot he'd voted. Another case was a young man who turned 18 on October 14 and had registered, to vote, but the database said he was ineligible. He and his mother were not clear exactly when he registered to vote; apparently he registered on or after his birthday, but voters needed to be registered by October 9^th.

The only good thing about the results, from my point of view, is that the results were clear, and we did not have a close result or a Harris victory that would have resulted in attacks on the democratic process itself. Nevertheless, based on what Trump has said, I fully expect many challenges to the democratic process over the next four years, and am not sure our democratic republic will survive.

The voters have crossed the Rubicon. This phrase refers to Caesar’s crossing the river in Italy that marked the boundary between southern Gaul and Italy proper. The Roman senate had told him to disband his army and return to Rome, but he crossed the boundary with his army, which meant he was leading an insurrection. Entering Italy proper with his army was a capital offence, and Caesar’s officers also committed a capital offence by following his orders even though he did not have legal authority in Italy. Caesar won the resulting civil war with Pompey, thereby becoming dictator for life and making the charges of treason moot. Voters in 2024 may have wanted change, despite a felony conviction and many other serious charges, despite his leading an insurrection on January 6, 2021, and despite warnings from many who served in the previous Trump administration that he is unfit for the office. The voters have elected him the 47^th president and thereby wiped away all charges against him.

Let me be clear: I do not want Trump assassinated like Caesar. I want him to live so he and the public see the chaos and problems that his policies will cause.

In 2021, Trump’s insurrection failed. He has famously said he will be dictator for a day; we shall see if it lasts just one day. Especially worrying are the arguments for an “Imperial Presidency”  made by some Republicans and Project 2025. In any case, it is astonishing that a people who proudly claim to be free voted for someone promising to be dictator, even for a day. Octavian was known as “Augustus” and not dictator or emperor; he was smart enough to keep the names and appearances of a republic, even as he ruled as an emperor. Will the USA turn into a dictatorship, in fact if not in name?

There is much that is puzzling in this election. It is puzzling that while the economy is in good shape according to economists ("The Envy of the World" according to The Economist) and official figures, voters in polls said they think the economy is poor and was better under Trump. It is puzzling that voters blame Biden for the 2021 inflation, even though inflation was worldwide, is now gone, and it is the Federal Reserve not the Biden administration that was probably slow in responding to inflationary pressures. In addition, wages have risen more than inflation.

It is puzzling that despite Missouri voting overwhelmingly for Republicans (58% to 40% for Trump, and 56% to 42% for Hawley), voters approved several progressive referenda, one a proposition to raise the minimum wage and to require sick leave (58% in favor) and another a constitutional amendment (Number 3) to protect abortion rights (52% in favor).

Misleading lawn signs on Proposition 3

It is tempting to blame money for election outcomes one doesn't like, but it is not that simple. Republicans who are upset at the Missouri abortion vote blame their loss on the out-of-state money spent to support that vote, even though public opinion polls show abortion rights to enjoy majority support (one pre-election polls had shown 52% in favor and 14% undecided). In fact, Josh Hawley and the Republicans tried to muddy the issue by claiming in their ads and lawn signs (see photo) that the amendment would pay for child sex change surgery, which is a red herring. It will be interesting to see what the supermajority in the state legislature decides to do to go against the will of the voters.

The fact that Trump’s contradictory promises, violent speech, and bombastic persona managed to attract a majority of votes is very depressing. We live in such a siloed media environments that most voters believed the economy was bad (when it was not) and that the Biden administration did not do anything for them (despite his major infrastructure bills). True, part of the problem was poor messaging from the Biden administration, but our media environment, without the fairness doctrine, makes it hard for voters to understand issues with any depth or nuance.

"Politically incorrect" door in Grafton IL inspired by Trump

This election has revealed a hateful, narrowminded aspect of American society that I thought we had left behind. This is the America that massacred Native Americans, that enslaved Africans, that invaded and colonized Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, that put Japanese-Americans in internment camps, and that turned away the German ocean liner St. Louis that had sailed from Hanover in 1939 (254 of the 937 passengers ultimately died in the Holocaust). We have returned to the America hostile towards immigration, foreign trade and foreign entanglements, and as The Economist notes, “In the 1920s and 1930s that led to dark times. It could do so again.” In the context of the fracturing of the neoliberal order  (see 2022 book by Gary Gertle), this election has led voters to “throw the rascals out.” This is perhaps understandable, since neoliberal policies screwed them, but the rascals they have voted in are just venting, and not offering real solutions. As The Economist notes, Trump is not even a conservative in the old sense: “He has completely reshaped American conservatism, forcibly converting it to nativism, mercantilism, welfare-statism and isolationism.” But Trump is not new; he has simply awakened an ugly side of America.

Working with the other election judges, half Democrats and half Republicans, was actually very smooth and pleasant. There was no hateful speech, no partisan posturing or argument, no conflict. My Republican partner made every voter smile a bit when he showed each voter their name and information on the database and asked them, “Is this who you’ve always wanted to be?” or “Is this who you think you are today?” Most people smiled at this. He also commented that at least after the polls closed, we would not have to watch all the political ads, which everyone could agree with, even if it meant something different for people of different political persuasions. Face to face, there was none of the demonization that we saw on TV and at Trump rallies. All the Republican election judges at my center where white (though their Republican supervising election judge was Black), and all of them were very respectful and kind to the majority Black voters, so there was no overt racism.

I think back to my fieldwork in Taiwan in the 1980s, when some of my interlocutors told me that the Taiwanese only had conflict during elections. This was under martial law, so I was a bit skeptical of this statement that seemed to simply justify one party rule and authoritarianism. But there is some truth to it. Face to face, the Republicans and Democrats were able to get along and work together. Granted, we did not have to draft a law on abortion or set the minimum wage. But the Republicans seemed to be decent people. I just cannot understand how they, and so many others, could vote for a person like Trump.