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Race politics research and the American presidency: thinking about white attitudes, identities and vote choice in the Trump era and beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2020

Beyza Buyuker Open the ORCID record for Beyza Buyuker [Opens in a new window] ,
Amanda Jadidi D'Urso ,
Alexandra Filindra  and
Noah J. Kaplan
Beyza Buyuker*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
Amanda Jadidi D'Urso
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
Alexandra Filindra
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
Noah J. Kaplan
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
*
Corresponding author: Beyza Buyuker, email: bbuyuk2@uic.edu
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Abstract

Heeding the call of the special issue, we look at the past decade's advances in public opinion studies of our understanding of the relationship between white racial identities, attitudes, and presidential voting preferences. Following a short review of developments in the literature during the Obama years, we critically evaluated four theories explaining whites' support for Trump: racial resentment, xenophobia, sexism, and white identity. Using data from three ANES studies, we test the relative explanatory power of all four approaches in predicting a vote for Trump during the 2016 Republican primary, the 2016 election, and intent to vote for him in 2020. The results suggest that xenophobia had the most consistent effect across all models, followed by racial resentment and sexism. White identity appears to have influenced voting for Trump in the primary and it could also have an impact in the 2020 election, but its effect in the 2016 general election does not appear to have been consistent with theoretical expectations. Finally, we use these results to think critically about the state of the field and propose new questions and challenges for research.

Keywords

Trump electionxenophobiawhite identitysexismracial resentment
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , November 2021 , pp. 600 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

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