Explaining the Trump Vote: The Effect of Racist Resentment and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments

• Published in: PS, political science & politics Vol. 51; no. 3; pp. 528 - 534
• Main Authors: Hooghe, Marc, Dassonneville, Ruth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.07.2018
• Subjects: Attitudes; Congressional elections; Cooperation; Democracy; Demonstrations & protests; Elections; Ideology; Immigrants; Mexican Americans; Minority & ethnic groups; Minority Groups; Negative Attitudes; Negative campaigning; Noncitizens; Partisanship; Political campaigns; Political Candidates; Political science; Politics; Populism; Presidential elections; Presidents; Public opinion; Racism; Resentment; Rhetoric; Satisfaction; Short term; Social Science Research; Social sciences; Sociodemographics; Trump, Donald J; Voter behavior; Voters; Voting; United States > US
• ISSN: 1049-0965; 1537-5935
• DOI: 10.1017/S1049096518000367

The campaign leading to the 2016 US presidential election included a number of unconventional forms of campaign rhetoric. In earlier analyses, it was claimed that the Trump victory could be seen as a form of protest voting. This article analyzes the determinants of voters’ choices to investigate the validity of this claim. Based on a sample of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, our analyses suggest that a Trump vote cannot be explained by a lack of trust in politics or low levels of satisfaction with democracy, as would be assumed given the extant literature on protest voting. However, indicators of racist resentment and anti-immigrant sentiments proved to be important determinants of a Trump vote—even when controlling for more traditional vote-choice determinants. Despite ongoing discussion about the empirical validity of racist resentment and anti-immigrant sentiments, both concepts proved to be roughly equally powerful in explaining a Trump vote.