The majority of Trump supporters think black people are 'less evolved', survey shows

A new survey suggests the majority of white Donald Trump supporters see black people as less human and 'less evolved'.

Once, these scientifically baseless attitudes were actually supported by researchers, who claimed that black people were closer to human's ape ancestors on the evolutionary scale. But obviously no longer.

Researchers Ashley Jardina and Spencer Piston, known for investigating the relationship between racial attitudes and politics, conducted a survey of a "nationally representative sample of 2,000 non-Hispanic white US adult citizens", over the internet.

The survey was contracted through firm Gfk, whose sampling approach is considered "the gold standard in online survey research".

According to the results of the investigation, published by Slate:

• 38 per cent rated African Americans as "less evolved", or less human, than white people
• A third of all surveyed claimed that black people had "the highest rate of murders" and used this to back up the claim that black people were more barbaric
• Many described black people in dehumanising language, using phrases like "savage", "animalistic", and lacking intelligence and morals, like animals

Socioeconomically, it broke down as:

• 34 per cent of high-income whites rated black people as less evolved
• 41 per cent of low-income whites rated black people as less evolved

Politically, it broke down as:

• 33 per cent of white Democrats
• 39 per cent of white Republicans

The survey explored people's attitude to Trump, asking subjects to describe how much they supported him on a scale of 0-100.

The results of Trump opponents (who rated him at a 25 or below) were as follows:

• 28 per cent saw black people as less evolved

• 8 per cent used dehumanising language

And as for Trump supporters (who rated him at a 75 or above) the results were significant:

• A majority - 52 per cent - saw blacks as less evolved
• 27 per cent used dehumanising language

To summarise: out of all those surveyed, a majority of the Trump supporters saw black people as less humanly evolved.

The Republican nominee's whole campaign has been characterised by a toxic mix of hate speech and ignorance, support for and from white supremacists and the employment of outrageous racial stereotyping.

So the idea that Trump supporters are more likely to be racist shouldn't come as a surprise.

However, more surprising is the sheer prevalence of dehumanising language across the board, and the third of white Democrats who saw black people as less humanly evolved.

Unlike previous investigations that proved prejudice and racial stereotyping on the political landscape, these researchers claim that the results of their survey show far more shocking levels of racism.

Our work captures something more fundamental: the denial that blacks fully count as people in the first place.

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