The Emotional Politics of Making America Great Again: Trump’s Working Class Appeals

Authors

  • Douglas Schrock
  • Benjamin Dowd-Arrow
  • Kristen Erichsen
  • Haley Gentile
  • Pierce Dignam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v2i1.6039

Keywords:

Trump, election campaign language, working class voters

Abstract

Real estate developer and reality TV star Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the U.S. was a departure from politics as usual in many ways. Most notably, Trump received more white working-class support than any Republican presidential candidate since 1980. Using data from 44 Trump campaign rallies, we analyze Trump’s emotional messages encoded in his working class appeals. We find that Trump’s language (1) temporarily oriented audiences towards feeling shame or fear as a nation, (2) reoriented them towards feeling anger at the elites he blamed, and (3) ultimately promised they would feel safe and proud if he was elected. Trump’s emotional scripting seemed crafted to resonate with working class audiences feeling left behind from decades of bipartisan neoliberalism. We conclude by discussing limitations and potential avenues for future research.

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Published

2017-06-01

Issue

Section

Articles