White Americans’ feelings of being “last place” are associated with anti-DEI attitudes, Trump support, and Trump vote during the 2024 U.S. presidential election - https://advances.in/psychology/10.56296/aip00046/ | https://doi.org/10.56296/aip00046

Abstract: Due to racial wealth inequality in the U.S.—inequality that benefits White Americans on average—many Americans associate White people with wealth. Yet, many White Americans report feeling like they, personally, are “falling behind.” We conducted a five-wave longitudinal study with a representative quota sample of non-Hispanic, White Americans (N = 506) during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that White Americans who feel they are falling behind White and Asian Americans, while also being close to being passed by Black and Hispanic Americans, within a perceived tight status hierarchy, reported the most support for DEI bans and Trump, controlling for objective status. Further, White Americans with these status perceptions were most likely to vote for Trump in the 2024 election. We conclude that White Americans’ subjective perceptions of their position in the racial economic hierarchy meaningfully relate to political attitudes and behavior.

The Findings: Using a statistical technique called Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), we identified distinct groups based on where people subjectively ranked themselves and other racial groups on the American status ladder.

* We found a specific group of White Americans (~15% of our sample) who perceived themselves as "tied for last place" with Black Americans.

* Crucially: This group was the most likely to vote for Donald Trump and support bans on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

* Importantly, this effect held true even when we controlled for their actual income, education, age, and gender. In other words, feeling like you are losing status predicted voting behavior more strongly than actually having low status.

Reddit AmA with the authors: https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1qz9158/we_are_pr...