Doublespeak. These policies are equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, so those voters are siding with their egalitarian beliefs, not against. Waaaaay down in "Materials and Methods", here's the first study:
> In the equality-enhancing policy condition, participants read about policies that proposed to increase the disadvantaged group’s resource access and not change the advantaged group’s resource access, which would therefore reduce the disparity:
> “Several banks propose increasing the total amount of mortgage loans to Latino homebuyers by $7.3 billion and not changing the total amount of mortgage loan funding to White homebuyers. Ultimately, these banks predict that this proposal will narrow the gap in mortgage loans between Latino and White homebuyers over the next year.”
> In the status quo condition, participants read that no policy was proposed to address the disparity:
> “However, several banks propose not changing mortgage loan funding over the next year.”
> In the inequality-enhancing condition, participants read about policies that proposed to decrease the disadvantaged group’s resource access and not change the advantaged group’s resource access, which would therefore worsen the disparity:
> “Several banks propose decreasing the total amount of mortgage loans to Latino homebuyers by $7.3 billion and not changing the total amount of mortgage loan funding to White homebuyers. Ultimately, these banks predict that this proposal will widen the gap in mortgage loans between Latino and White homebuyers over the next year.”
> Participants indicated how each policy proposal would affect the advantaged ingroup’s resource access [“How do you think the proposed changes will affect [advantaged groups’] chances of [receiving resources]?”; 7-point Likert-scale with meaningful anchors: −3 (greatly harm), 0 (no effect), and +3 (greatly improve)].
On top of the opportunity/outcome distinction, there's a something the voters might be thinking of that they didn't account for (this is huge and I went looking for these questions, so it could easily be in there somewhere, but the word "confound" doesn't appear on the page): Where does the extra money for the loans come from? Banks can't create it out of thin air, it has to come from somewhere, so the "and not changing the total amount of mortgage loan funding to White homebuyers" can easily be read as a lie, making the premise of this section ("and not change the advantaged group’s resource access") incorrect.