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Abstract: Research in the wake of the contentious 2016 presidential primaries contends both Democrats and Republicans were internally divided as functions of authoritarian dispositions. Specifically, MacWilliams (2016) finds authoritarianism was strongly related to support for Trump among Republican primary voters, and Wronski et al. (2018) finds authoritarianism was strongly related to support for Clinton among Democratic primary voters. In this paper, I reassess the relationships between authoritarianism and 2016 primary candidate preferences. I analyze two new large, probability-based surveys and generate pooled estimates using these surveys and the two national surveys made available by Wronski et al. (2018). Overall, I find authoritarianism was moderately associated with support for Clinton over Sanders among Democrats, but weakly associated with support for Trump among Republicans. My findings indicate authoritarianism played a more limited role in shaping voters’ candidate preferences in the 2016 presidential primaries than past studies have suggested.
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