To assess its impact, The Economist included several questions on the use of the N-word in its recent survey of 1,500 Americans conducted by YouGov, a polling firm. The results confirm that most Trump voters would be unfazed: 77% of white Trump voters agreed that “it is possible that a person who uses the ‘N-word’ while in office can still be a good President of the United States”. Just 11% of whites who voted for Hillary Clinton said the same. By YouGov’s estimates, 47% of white Trump voters say that they could “definitely” or “probably” “support a presidential candidate whom you knew for a fact uses the ‘N-word’ to refer to a black/African American person”. Only 4% of white Clinton voters said the same, compared to 22% of American adults as a whole.
Rumors swirl about possible tapes from “The Apprentice” showing Donald Trump using the n-word. A big question is how the release of such a tape might affect the president’s popularity.
Two recent polls suggest that any impact would be small. As the Economist wrote based on its poll, “Most Trump Voters Would Not Care if He Had Used the N-Word.” But what is even more striking is the growing partisan polarization in views of the n-word. Democrats and Republicans didn’t use to disagree about this. Now they do.
Few Trump voters think that using the n-word makes whites racist, just 42 percent find the slur offensive, and only a quarter wouldn’t vote for a candidate who said it. By contrast, more than three-quarters of people who voted for Hillary Clinton think the n-word is offensive, racist and should disqualify political candidates who have said it.
The new partisan polarization on the n-word
Even a few years ago, Democrats and Republicans didn’t disagree much about the n-word. But the graphs below show the growing partisan polarization:
In a 2006 CNN/ORC poll, 55 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans said that the n-word was offensive. By 2018, that narrow gap had widened. More Democrats (75 percent) find the n-word offensive. Meanwhile, fewer Republicans (43 percent) do.
Likewise, the percentage of Democrats who now say it’s never acceptable for whites to use the n-word increased from 71 percent in 2015 to 84 percent in 2018. But the percentage of Republicans decreased from 65 percent to 57 percent.