trump's appeal to the cognitively challenged

During the 2016 election, Donald Trump famously proclaimed "I love the poorly educated!" Well, if "poorly educated" is a euphemism for "cognitively challenged," new research finds they loved him right back.
It reports Trump voters, on average, performed more poorly than Hillary Clintonsupporters on a standard test widely regarded as a good indicator of intellectual ability.
"Intellectual factors played an important role in the 2016 election," writes a research team led by Yoav Ganzach of Tel Aviv University. "These results suggest that the 2016 U.S. presidential election had less to do with party affiliation, income, or education, and more to do with basic cognitive ability."
In the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Ganzach and his colleagues analyzed data from the American National Election Studies, which included 5,914 participants in 2012 and 4,271 in 2016.
Besides expressing their attitudes toward that year's presidential candidates, participants took a standard test of verbal ability. Specifically, they were presented with 10 sets of words, and asked "to identify the word or phrase in a set of five that was the closest to the target word."

While hardly comprehensive, the test "is considered a good indicator of general cognitive ability," the researchers note.
After taking into account participants' party affiliation, the researchers found intellectual ability was a strong predictor of attitudes toward the two major candidates in 2016. Specifically, they found "clear negative relationships of verbal ability and education with attitude toward Trump."
In contrast, they found "weak, nonsignificant relationships of verbal ability and education with attitude toward [Mitt] Romney" in his failed 2012 campaign. In both elections, higher levels of education and verbal ability were associated with support for the Democratic candidate [Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton].
"Support for Trump was better predicted by lower verbal ability than education or income," the researchers add. "Our analyses indicate that support for Trump was less about socioeconomic standing, and more about intellect."
Ganzach and his team note that Trump, on the campaign trail, expressed his opposition to both socially liberal beliefs (such as support for abortion rights and opposition to racism) and fiscally conservative beliefs (such as free trade). Both sets of beliefs have been linked in past research with higher cognitive ability, so it makes sense that their appeal would be largely limited to those who score lower on such measures.

This research adds to the rapidly growing list of findings attempting to explain why the American voters (although not a majority) supported a candidate widely viewed as lacking the qualifications or temperament to be president.
While economic anxiety has been largely ruled out as a likely explanation, studies have pointed to whites' fear of declining social status in a rapidly changing society, as well as racist and sexist beliefs, tribalism, possessing an authoritarian mindset, and even being prone to anxiety, and thus susceptible to Trump's fear-based appeals.
Ganzach's findings align with those of another recent study that found Democrats who crossed over to vote for him were the least likely demographic to engage in analytical thinking. This may be because, in many cases, they just aren't good at it.

While economic anxiety has been largely ruled out 

While hardly comprehensive, the test "is considered a good indicator of general cognitive ability," the researchers note.

True intelligence is in the form of gullibility and critical thinking,  but it also has to do with experience.

But when Obama separated children then it was somehow "moral?"

Yes. You are saying that statement as fact It is more propaganda trying to divide us and you are helping them to achieve their goal.

It is like calling people deplorable, which was actually, in itself, deplorable, that didn't help Clinton at all.

You think that all Trump supporters are hicks and inbred farmers that have no social skills.  That is far from the truth as well.

You say, if a person voted for Trump, chances are they are less educated, and therefore dumber, that is hipocracy from the left at its best.

Just because someone was able to eek their way through college, does not make them intelligent.  Being able to think critically, and not being gullible are signs of intelligence, it does not take a college degree to do that.  

I would think people that don't go to college, and actually get a job to support themselves have a pretty big advantage over students getting ready to graduate.  Life experience can help with intelligence more than going to four classes a day and partying every night for four years straight, and listening to liberal teachers that most never had a real job in the first place.

You are dividing the country by spreading these falsehoods.  That is the goal of the MSM, and they are winning to keep us watching

making mountains out of molehills, and not reporting real news

just things that make you hate Trump and support the delusion that Trump voters are dumb.  

It is a statement coming from a poll, a statistical poll that is not based on fact.  Therefore, there is no evidence to support or contradict, that is why it is wrong for you to spread it as fact.  I am not saying that what I say is fact, either.

It self defeated Clinton, it did not help her to call half the country deplorable, it made them dislike her even more.  If people were on the fence, this probably put many in the Trump category. I don't know why I had to explain that.

That was an assumption based on his uneducated base position.

Why would anyone choose to measure that statistic?

The analytics crew, or polling crew made a hypothesis and distorted findings or picked and chose ways to make that hypothesis seem feasible.

The left says they do not judge people by their beliefs, yet you are doing exactly that.  Putting people in the dumb group.  That is hypocritical.

And what I am saying is your researchers are biased, and nothing they say should be taken seriously, including that "quote" above.

This was just a side note,  not proof of anything.

I agree, they will not stop, but sooner or later, people will catch on, and they will be, and have been losing a lot of viewership due to that fact.  They will soon go the way of the National Enquirer, reading things they want to believe to keep themselves entertained. 

CNN and MSNBC have been focused on Barr and Mueller non stop for 24 hours, and not reporting on anything else that is happening in or outside of the country.... unless it has to do with "Trump is bad"

I'm sure there are dumb (gullible and inability to critically think) people on both sides of the isle.

there are political advantages to having a divided nation.