Donald Trump secured early support from voters with a particular set of personality traits, according to a new study published in American Politics Research.
The researchers were interested in better understanding the psychological mechanisms underlying Trump’s success in the Republican presidential primaries. They examined the Big Five model of personality in particular.
“We were interested in how candidate Trump was able to carve out such a large and stable portion of the Republican primary electorate so early in the race. If one thinks back to the early portion of the primary, there were dramatic fluctuations in the popularity of the other candidates,” said David Fortunato, Matthew V. Hibbing, and Jeffery J. Mondak — the authors of the study.
“From July of 2015 Bush, Walker, Carson, Rubio, and Cruz all polled in second place at one point or another, and Rubio, Carson, Cruz, and Kasich all polled at 20% support or greater at one point in the contest. All the while, Trump’s support never fell below 20% and climbed fairly steadily as his competitors withdrew from the contest.”
“In retrospect, the stability of his early support, in contrast to the instability of his competitors’ support, may have contributed substantially to his credibility with the primary electorate.”
“A second reason we were interested in this topic was because accounts in the popular press consistently discussed Trump’s appeal in terms of his personality and the way those characteristics resonated with voters,” the researchers told PsyPost.
“Narratives like this often are accepted with minimal scrutiny and we wanted to see whether there was an empirical basis for the speculation. In this case, the conventional wisdom appears to have been generally accurate.”
The researchers examined data from 1,132 Republicans who completed a survey around the time of the Iowa caucuses in 2016. They found that Trump had the greatest appeal among those who were high in conscientiousness and extraversion, and low in openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
This was true even after the researchers controlled for the potential effects of gender, education, race, age, income, and ideology.
“One contributing factor for the stability and vigor of Trump’s early supporting coalition in the Republican primary was how well his messaging resonated with voters with particular personality traits,” the researchers explained. “Low agreeableness, low openness, low neuroticism, high extraversion, and high conscientiousness among voters not only predict favorability toward Trump, but also preferring Trump to his competitors in the primary.”
“It is also interesting to note that personality traits were not terribly important in predicting support for any of the other candidates in the race. This is one of many ways that Trump’s candidacy was unique. Trump’s primary campaign focused largely on his personal attributes, including his personality. That focus, in turn, brought the personal traits of voters into play.”
The findings provide new insights into early Trump supporters, but do not necessarily apply to all the Americans who voted for Trump in the presidential election.
“It is important to note, however, that this pattern holds for early support only. Once Trump wins the primary, voters identifying as Republican fell in line and the differences across personality types began to dissipate,” the authors of the study said. “That means that by the election in November, Trump support included people who were drawn to him early on the basis of personality as well as a large segment of voters who supported him for other reasons (e.g. partisan loyalty, lack of enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate).”
The study was titled: “The Trump Draw: Voter Personality and Support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican Nomination Campaign“.
