HECK, HIS OWN VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY OPPOSED HIS IMMIGRATION VIEWS:

While on the whole Trump supporters tended to be slightly more racist than Clinton supporters, they were only marginally so.

Some people were clearly racist, saying things like, "Muslims . . . hate us and come here to take our welfare dollars. As their numbers grow and we don't speak out against it, there will no longer be a tolerant, loving USA." But there were other people whose follow-up answers did not appear to be racist at all. They said things like, "Immigrants may emphasize their own culture over American culture, but this is not necessarily a bad thing." In this case, the person answering appeared to simply be acknowledging the fact that immigrants would change American culture, not making a value judgment about it. When Clearer Thinking went through the follow-up responses and coded them by how racist they actually were, they found that while on the whole Trump supporters tended to be slightly more racist than Clinton supporters, they were only marginally so.

Greenberg believes that these overall results should be heartening. The websites that claim Trump supporters voted for him because they are racist don't have the data to back this up. It would be fair to assume, then, that the average Trump supporter you meet is not racist. And many Trump supporters feel angry and defensive about being accused of being racist, when they aren't. Leffler is among them. "Racism is more systematic across society than within individuals," he says. "The solution isn't to train individuals, but to train society as a whole to be more tolerant."

Among Clearer Thinking's 138 variables, the biggest predictor of whether someone would vote for Trump was their official party affiliation. But the second biggest predictor of support for Trump was whether they believe there is too much political correctness in this country. This is something that came up repeatedly during the election. One Washington Post writer pointed out, "If there is one uniting principle the defines Donald Trump's campaign for president--besides, perhaps, winning and being classy--it is that political correctness is bad."

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