Much furor arose over the past weekend regarding comments Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made, saying that roughly half of Republican candidate Donald Trump’s supporters could be put in a “basket of deplorables”, citing their bigoted attitudes and highly questionable (to put it mildly) views about women and non-whites. Mr. Trump, along with other Republicans, screamed and hollered over the remarks, accusing Mrs. Clinton of generalizing supporters of the unorthodox candidate and painting them in a negative light.
The question here, however, is this: Was Mrs. Clinton being unfair to certain Trump supporters in her characterization? As shown in this piece by Vox, the polls seem to indicate otherwise.
Let’s look, for example, at a poll from Reuters and Ipsos conducted from June and July looking at broad views regarding Islam. Here, 58 percent of Trump supporters held “somewhat unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” views on the religion (compared to 24 percent of Clinton supporters).
Another Poll, from the Texas Politics Project, goes further, showing that 76 percent of Republicans support the idea of banning Muslims from entering the US. This is in comparison to just 26 percent of Democrats.
When it comes to immigration, a poll from Fox News in July of 2015 asked voters about their opinions on Mr. Trump’s remarks during the launch of his campaign, referring to Hispanics as “criminals” and “rapists”. About 70 percent of Republicans found the underlying meaning of the comments “acceptable”, aside from the wording that was used.
The polling presented in the Vox piece goes down the line, showing that quite significant numbers of Trump supporters hold other disturbing views when it comes to other groups such as blacks. In total, a disturbing picture is illustrated before us, portraying an entire, significant chunk of supporters with disturbing views, all coalescing around the Republican candidate. What does that tell us about the Trump campaign, and ultimately the state of our democratic system, that we have gotten to such a place.