![]() So this was a latent faction of Americans that had just - that had already been sitting there and had already existed. And instead, what this data shows is that what he did was serve as a place where people who already held a lot of animus towards marginalized groups, they all sort of gathered around him. MASON: So the colloquial stories we hear about Trump suggest that he somehow created a whole bunch of hatred in American politics. You write that that shows that rather than generating animus, that Trump was a, quote, "lightning rod for animus." Tell us more about that and why that's important. And you and your authors write as a conclusion of that, that you knew about that animosity in 2011 before Trump was really a big part of the political scene. And so that way, we can look at the characteristics of people in 2011 before Trump came around and use that to predict how they feel about Trump in 2018 after had been president for two years already. So we have access to this data set that starts in 2011 and interviews the same people in 2011 and then again multiple years after that. MASON: We were interested in identifying the people who ultimately would like Donald Trump but finding them before Trump really existed on the political scene. As briefly as you can, what question was guiding your research, and what was your main finding here? KURTZLEBEN: So let's start really broadly. LILLIANA MASON: Thank you so much for having me. ![]() She's a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, and she's here to talk more about these findings. The study is called "Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support," and Lilliana Mason is one of its co-authors. A recent study published in the American Political Science Review found that animus towards Democratic-linked minority groups in 2011, like African Americans and Muslims, is a strong predictor of Trump support in later years. But as time goes on, we're getting more and more data that sheds light on what some of those motivations are. Discussions about Donald Trump's voter base and what motivated them is a beloved topic among pundits.
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