Republicans are increasingly antagonistic toward experts. Here’s why that matters.

Respondents who were more anti-intellectual were more likely to support candidates who spoke skeptically about experts. In the 1972 GSS, approximately 22 percent of those who “hardly trusted” the scientific community were likely to vote for George Wallace in 1968, compared to only 12 percent of those who placed “a great deal” of trust in experts. That’s about a 9 percent difference between groups.

I found a similar pattern among those who supported or opposed Donald Trump. In the CSPP study, respondents rated Trump and Hillary Clinton on scales ranging from 0 (very negative feelings toward each candidate) to 100 (very positive feelings). The difference between these two scales is known as a “comparative candidate evaluation,” or CCE, which I scaled to range from 0 (favoring Clinton over Trump) to 1 (favoring Trump over Clinton).