Is Mason et al. correct that "about 30 percent of Americans surveyed in 2011 reported feelings of animosity towards African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community"?

The recent Mason et al. Monkey Cage post claimed that:

We found about 30 percent of Americans surveyed in 2011 reported feelings of animosity towards African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community. These individuals make up our MAGA faction.

But much less than 30% of Americans reported animus toward all four of these groups. In unweighted analyses using the 2011 VOTER data, the percentage that rated the group under 50 on a 0-to-100 feeling thermometer was 13% for Blacks, 17% for Latinos, 46% for Muslims, and 26% for gays and lesbians. Only about 3% rated all four groups under 50.

So how did Mason et al. get 30%? Based on the Mason et al. figure note (and my check in Stata), 30% is percentage of average ratings across all four groups that is under 50.

But I don't think that the average across variables should be used to describe responses to individual variables. I think that it would be misleading, for instance, to describe the respondent who rated Blacks at 75 and Muslims at 0 as reporting animosity toward Blacks and Muslims, especially given that the respondent rated Whites at 71 and Christians at 0.

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Mason et al. write that:

Our research does suggest that, as long as this MAGA faction exists, politicians may be tempted to appeal to it, hoping to repeat Trump's success. In fact, using inflammatory and divisive appeals would be a rational campaign strategy, since they can animate independent voters who dislike these groups.

It seems reasonable to be concerned about politicians appealing to intolerant people, but I'm not sure that it's reasonable to limit this concern about intolerance to the MAGA faction.

Below are data from ANES 2020 Time Series Survey, of the percentage of the U.S. population that rated a set of target groups under 50 on a 0-to-100 feeling thermometer, disaggregated by partisanship:

So the coalitions that reported cold ratings about Hispanics, Blacks, gay men and lesbians, Muslims, transgender people, and illegal immigrants are disproportionately Republican (compared to Democratic), and the coalitions that reported cold ratings about rural Americans, Whites, Christians, and Christian fundamentalists are disproportionately Democratic (compared to Republican).

Democrats were more common in the data than Republicans were, so the plot above doesn't permit direct comparison of the blue bars to the red bars to assess relative frequency of cold ratings by party. To permit that assessment, the plot below indicates the percentage of Democrats and the percentage of Republicans that reported a cold rating of the indicated target group:

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Mason et al. end their Monkey Cage post with:

But the Mason et al. Monkey Cage post names only one intolerant group -- the MAGA faction -- and avoids naming the group that is intolerant of Whites and Christians, which, by the passage above, presumably protects the power of that other intolerant group.

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NOTES

1. Data citation: American National Election Studies. 2021. ANES 2020 Time Series Study Full Release [dataset and documentation]. July 19, 2021 version. www.electionstudies.org.

2. Link to the Mason et al. 2021 APSR letter.

3. Directions for the 2011 VOTER survey thermometer items directed respondents to "Click on the thermometer to give a rating". If this means that respondents did something like moving a widget instead of inputting a numeric rating, then I think that that might overestimate cold ratings, if some respondents try to rate at 50, instead move to a bit under 50, and then figure that 49 or so is close enough.

But this might not be a large bias: for example, the thermometer about Blacks respectively had 27, 44, 745, 376, and 212 responses for ratings of 48 through 52.

4. Draft plots:

5. Stata code for the analyses, plus: tab pid3_2011 if ft_white_2011==71 & ft_christian_2011==0 & ft_black_2011==75 & ft_muslim_2011==0

6. R data and code for the "three color" barplot.

7. R data and code for the "back-to-back" barplot.

8. R data and code for the "full sample" barplot.

9. R data and code for the "two panel" barplot.