Size or Bias? Immigrant Context, Partisanship, and Voting for Trump

• In Event: 2020 and beyond: Examining Black and Latino Political Preferences

Abstract

Does immigrant size affect individuals' identification with parties and vote choice? In the U.S. context, I hypothesize (1) that it is attitudes toward immigrants rather than the actual immigrant size that affects identification with the Republican Party and voting for Trump, (2) and that the racial context at the county level is more important than the state level (local > global). With data from the U.S. census and Cooperative Election Study (2016 and 2020), I use Bayesian multilevel analysis and find that only attitudes toward immigrants have stable influence on partisanship and voting choice. The anti-immigration prejudice remains positively related to Republican partisanship and voting for Trump from 2016 to 2020. In contrast, both local and global immigrant sizes are positively associated with Republican partisanship in 2016 but not 2020. The proportion of blacks at both levels is positively associated with the probability of identifying with the Republican Party in 2020. Moreover, the proportion of whites at the state level but not at the county level is also positively related to it. In 2016, only local immigrant size is positively related to voting for Trump, but in 2020 both local and global immigrant sizes matter. This paper contributes to immigration politics by differentiating between local and global racial contexts and providing a detailed causal framework connecting immigrant size, immigration attitudes, partisanship, ideology and voting.

Author

• Chuang Chen, University of Pittsburgh