Hispanic Identity Attrition and Understandings of Group Political Behavior

• In Event: Intragroup Differences and Identity among Latinos and Black Americans

Abstract

Racial group differences in social outcomes attract substantial attention. However, our understanding of these differences is complicated by racial fluidity and the endogeneity of group identities to outcomes that they seek to explain. This is especially true of groups with greater identity flexibility, such as Americans with Hispanic backgrounds. Other fields have documented how "attrition" of Hispanic-related identities (e.g., Hispanic heritage individuals not identifying as Hispanic) can change what we know about Hispanics' health and education outcomes relative to those of white Americans. This project applies a similar spirit to the study of political behavior, (1) establishing a demographic portrait of Hispanic identity attritors, (2) analyzing their politics, and (3) exploring how this attrition might affect understandings of group political differences. I identify Hispanic attritors through a unique dataset of Americans with Hispanic ancestry who do not themselves identify as Hispanic, as well as through panel survey data (respondents who identified as Hispanic in an initial wave but did not in a follow-up wave) -- capturing identity attrition in both the long-term and short-term, respectively.

Across both approaches and spanning political outcomes like partisanship, vote choice, turnout, policy views, and more, I find that Hispanic attritors are systematically different from Hispanic identifiers. They differ in both liberal and conservative directions across outcomes, but always in the direction of resembling the politics of white racial identifiers more closely. Moreover, when estimating Hispanic-white political differences, approaches that account for identity attrition attenuate the degree to which Hispanics and whites appear different. For example, the Hispanic-white turnout gap is partially a function of the most politically engaged Hispanics de-identifying as Hispanic over time. These patterns hold when considering alternative definitions of Hispanic identity attrition and also extend to a different but parallel realm: political differences along religious group lines.

Author

• Alexander Agadjanian, University of California, Berkeley