Nearly 40 percent of Trump supporters think minorities have too much influence in American society

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-supporters-think-minorities-have-too-much-influence-polling-says-deplorable-151d0038b50a?source=rss—-e5293acf313e—4

For context, Congress is roughly 80 percent white dudes.A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds up his shirt, with the slogan “Build a Wall,” following a Trump rally, Aug. 30, 2016, in Everett, Wash. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ted S. WarrenWeeks after Hillary Clinton notoriously said that half of opponent Donald Trump’s supporters could be placed into a “basket of deplorables,” a new poll reinforces the point she was making.According to a Langer Research Associates survey, 38 percent of Trump supporters think minorities have too much influence in American society. Despite the fact that white men constitute 80 percent of Congress while only comprising 31 percent of the country’s population, the survey found that 21 percent of Trump supporters actually think white people don’t have enough influence.On the other hand, 67 percent of Clinton supporters think minorities have too little influence, and just seven percent think whites don’t have enough.Trump and Clinton supporters also diverge in their views on how much power women currently have in America. Twenty-one percent of Trump supporters think women have too little power, compared to 58 percent of Clinton supporters.We Finally Have A Candidate That Speaks To ‘White Males,’ GOP Congressman Says“Controlling for demographics, partisanship, ideology and presidential approval, seeing too little influence for whites and men and too much influence for minorities and women independently predicts support for Trump,” a summary of the poll says. “Other than disapproval of Barack Obama, which is by far the best predictor of support for Trump, views of group influence have a similar effect as partisanship, ideology and race.”Polls conducted earlier this year found that 65 percent of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim; 59 percent believe Obama wasn’t born in the United States; 40 percent believe blacks are more “lazy” than whites; 31 percent support banning homosexuals from the country; 16 percent believe whites are a superior race; and 20 percent disagree with Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed Southern slaves.For context, Clinton’s comment about “the basket of deplorables” — those with “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, [and] Islamophobic ” views — was directed toward 50 percent of Trump supporters. That’s a greater percentage than those who believe minorities currently have too much power according to the new poll, but a lesser percentage than those who believe Obama is a Muslim — a quickly discredited conspiracy theory that nonetheless brought Trump to national political prominence.Nearly 40 percent of Trump supporters think minorities have too much influence in American society was originally published in ThinkProgress on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. Read the responses to this story on Medium.