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Mehdi Hasan says in this UpFront video at 1.30:

Other studies found a strong relationship between anti-Black attitudes and support for Trump. With Trump supporters more likely to describe African Americans as "criminal, unintelligent, lazy and violent" ... with a majority of them rating blacks as less evolved than whites

Do majority of Trump supporters think that black people are less evolved than white people?

Sakib Arifin
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    What is a "Trump supporter"? Someone who voted for Trump? Someone who goes to pro-Trump rallies? Someone who post pro-Trump material on social media? – rougon Jan 30 '17 at 14:37
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    @rougon: According to the articles linked in the answer "To measure evaluations of Trump, we asked our subjects to describe how warm they feel toward Trump on a 0-100 scale." – Oddthinking Jan 30 '17 at 14:48
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    I suspect many people in the US (Trump supporters or not) saying in a survey "black people are less evolved than white people" might also say in a survey that they did not believe in evolution. – Henry Jan 30 '17 at 18:01

1 Answers1

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criminal, unintelligent, lazy and violent

The claim that Trump supporters are more likely to think that black people are criminal, unintelligent, lazy and violent comes from a poll by reuters:

Supporters of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump are more likely to describe African Americans as "criminal," "unintelligent," "lazy" and "violent" than voters who backed some Republican rivals in the primaries or who support Democratic contender Hillary Clinton, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.
[...]
The trend was consistent in the data, even when the results were filtered to include only white respondents to remove any impact that a different racial mix between Clinton and Trump supporters might play in the poll.

Here are the relevant results:

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less evolved

The claim that half of Trump supporters think that black people are less evolved comes from a poll done by Ashley Jardina, Sean McElwee, and Spencer Piston, published in Slate:

Twenty-eight percent of white Trump opponents rate blacks as less evolved than they rate whites. In contrast, a majority of Trump supporters—52 percent—rate blacks as less evolved than whites.

DJClayworth
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tim
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    What's the methodology on these polls? Is the full text of all the questions available? Were they subject to any peer review? – Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard Jan 30 '17 at 15:28
  • I'm actually most surprised by the slate pole. While I believe that trump supporters can demonstrate, on average, more racists attitudes, and the other poll demonstrates such, The percentage that claim a blacks are less evolved seems rather high, for both trump and non trump supporters. Do you know what degree of rigor went into that poll, controlling, getting a proper sampling etc? – dsollen Jan 30 '17 at 20:20
  • @iamnotmaynard 1) See the linked articles 2) sadly no (afaik), but the relevant questions are described pretty clearly in the articles 3) no, but at leastreuters polls are generally considered a credible source – tim Jan 30 '17 at 20:47
  • @dsollen I don't know anything that is not mentioned in the article (a first poll was administered by GfK (result: 38% of white people view black people as less evolved) and the authors performed a second poll themselves which added the Trump question). The percentage seems high to me as well, but the general trend among Trump supporters is supported by other polls (which I didn't cite as they do not answer the exact question), and honestly not that surprising seeing as Trump ran on a platform of rather outspoken racism. – tim Jan 30 '17 at 21:01
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    @dsollen Note also that people were not directly asked if they consider black people less evolved, but to rate black and white people independently, which may result in a higher percentage than the reuters poll which directly asked people if they consider black people to be less intelligent etc. – tim Jan 30 '17 at 21:03
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    @tim ah, that last bit, about their ranking the two races independently, seem a good explanation for why the values seemed a bit too high to me, more room for biases to slip in and effect someone answer. Still, it also implies that people were ranking someones 'evolution level'. Forget the racism, I think the scientist in me is too busy being shocked that so many people actually believe something like 'evolution levels' exist in the first place to get around to being horrified by the rest of the polls implications lol. – dsollen Jan 30 '17 at 21:32
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    This still boils down to a **no** though, right? There's no way that 52% of Trump's white supporters are actually the majority of his supporters overall. (Also, if tim got the methodology of the slate poll right, it seems misleading to say that trump supporters think that black people are less evolved. After all, if you asked them about a comparison directly, it is impossible to predict what their response would be, and the way this is stated implies to me that they would respond with "yes". – sgf Jan 31 '17 at 01:43
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    52% thinking blacks are less evolved seems to conflict with polls like this one http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/03/republican-views-on-evolution-tracking-how-its-changed/ showing that (as of 2013) only 43% of Republicans even believed in evolution. Of course Republicans and Trump supporters aren't identical, but I can't find a poll of just Trump supporters. – jamesqf Jan 31 '17 at 04:56