A new nationwide survey finds Donald Trump’s supporters are more likely to use negative terms to describe African Americans than the backers of other candidates.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted between March and June of this year found those who are backing Donald Trump’s candidacy are more likely to describe African Americans as “criminal,” “unintelligent,” “lazy,” and “violent” than those who supported his Republican rivals or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
To be sure, not all Trump supporters expressed negative attitudes about blacks. No more than 50 percent of his supporters rated blacks negatively, relative to whites, on any of the six character traits in the poll.
Yet when their answers to the poll questions were compared with responses from supporters of other candidates, Trump supporters were always more critical of blacks on personality traits, analysis of the results showed.
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.
Additionally, 36% of Trump’s supporters agreed with the statement, “I prefer to live in a community with people who come from diverse cultures.” 46% of Ted Cruz supporters, 55% of John Kasich backers and 70% of Hillary Clinton voters agreed with that statement.
