Thought Trump Supporters Were Intolerant? It Just Got Worse

United States Activism
by Amanda Machado Feb 29, 2016

A new article by Lynn Vavreck in the New York Times reported exit poll data after the South Carolina Republican primary. The results showed that Trump supporters are even more ideologically extreme than we may have previously believed. Respondents expressed significant support for several racist, homophobic, and xenophobic ideas.

Here are a few:

1. “Nearly 20 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters disagreed with the freeing of slaves in Southern states after the Civil War. Only 5 percent of Mr. Rubio’s voters share this view.”

2. “A third of Mr. Trump’s (and Mr. Cruz’s) backers believe that Japanese internment during World War II was a good idea, while roughly 10 percent of Mr. Rubio’s and Mr. Kasich’s supporters do.”

3. “A third of Mr. Trump’s backers in South Carolina support barring gays and lesbians from entering the country.”

4. “Mr. Trump’s coalition is also more likely to disagree with the desegregation of the military (which was ordered in 1948 by Harry Truman) than other candidates’ supporters are.”

5. “70 percent of Mr. Trump’s voters in South Carolina wish the Confederate battle flag were still flying on their statehouse grounds. (It was removed last summer less than a month after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston)…38 percent of them wish the South had won the Civil War.”

Check out the full article here.

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