Vote Switching in the 2016 Election: Racial and Immigration Attitudes, Not Economics, Explains Shifts in White Voting

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory, journalists focused heavily on the white working class (WWC) and the relationship between economic anxiety, racial attitudes, and immigration attitudes and support for Trump. One hypothesized but untested proposition for Donald Trump’s success is that his unorthodox candidacy, particularly his rhetoric surrounding economic marginalization and immigration, shifted WWC voters who did not vote Republican in 2012 into his coalition. Using a large nationally representative survey we examine 1) whether racial and immigration attitudes or economic dislocation and marginality were the main catalysts for vote switching, and; 2) whether this phenomena was isolated among the white working class. We find a non-trivial number of white voters switched their votes in the 2016 election to Trump or Clinton, that this vote switching was associated much more strongly with racial and immigration attitudes than economic factors, and that the phenomena occurred among both working class and non-working class whites, though many more working class whites switched than non-working class whites. Our findings suggest that racial and immigration attitudes may be continuing to sort white voters into new partisan camps and further polarize the parties along racial lines.

Recommended citation: Reny, T., Collingwood, L., & Valenzuela, A. (2019). "Vote Switching in the 2016 Election: Racial and Immigration Attitudes, Not Economics, Explains Shifts in White Voting." Public Opinion Quarterly.
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