What it means to be a “true American”: Ethnonationalism and voting in the 2016 U.S. presidential election

Abstract

A number of important factors predicted white people vote choice in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including voters' economic assessments, sexist attitudes, racial resentment, and status threat. In this paper, I establish that ethnonationalism—a set of beliefs concerning what it means to be a “true” American—was also a significant factor in the estimations of White Americans when casting their vote for president in 2016. Data from a nationally representative sample of White Americans show that ethnonationalism was a robust predictor of vote choice for Trump even after controlling for predictors known to shape vote choice, including economic assessments, sexist attitudes, racial resentment, status threat, and sociodemographic indicators. These results indicate that ethnonationalism, although correlated with some of these factors, operated primarily as an independent factor that shaped White vote choice. The findings have important implications concerning the electoral activation of White majorities concerned about the perceived threat that demographic change poses to American national identity.

The Partisan Sorting of “America”: How Nationalist Cleavages Shaped the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

“…The novelty of our research, therefore, lies in its synthesis of relational approaches to the study of belief structures from cultural sociology with a long-standing interest among nationalism scholars in the heterogeneity of nationalist beliefs within countries, as well as the application of these two research traditions-using original survey data-to the study of electoral outcomes. 3 Unlike other work that focuses on specific forms of nationalism (Whitehead and Perry, 2020;Thompson, 2021) or on particular out-group antipathies (Reny et al, 2019) as predictors of Trump support, our study examines the full range of competing visions of America that are associated with both voting choices and sentiments toward specific racial, ethnic, and religious groups.…”

Ethnonationalism and White immigration attitudes

“…Second, individuals with these beliefs, but who would otherwise not hold a distinct set of views towards immigrants, need a salient set of issues to emerge to fill that gap. Third, political elites frame issues such as immigration in a manner that appeals to these ethnonationalist beliefs (Zaller, 1992)—in the case of radical political actors such as Trump, this includes the perceived threat that immigrants or other ethnic outsiders pose to the robustness of American ethnos (Thompson, 2021). In this way, ethnonationalist beliefs are activated by a specific frame regarding the “threat” of immigration promoted by elites, with the activation of these frames being dependent on the degree of resonance between the latent beliefs themselves and support for a popular message (Bonikowski, 2017).…”

“…Importantly, these hypothetical effects through ethnonationalism should be independent of the effects of other broad measures of White group attitudes that are likewise known to shape attitudes towards immigrants, especially ethnocentrism (Kinder & Kam, 2010), and White consciousness (Jardina, 2019). Perhaps unsurprisingly given its hypothetical associations with xenophobic attitudes, ethnonationalism was a robust predictor of White vote choice for Trump in the 2016 US Presidential election (Thompson, 2021). This also suggests a potential connection between the tendency of the ethnonationalist belief system to draw rigid boundaries around what it means to be “true” members of the American ethnos and support for policies advocated by Trump that would exclude those (i.e., immigrants) who do not meet the criteria for being “truly” American.…”

“…A hypothesis I seek to explore is whether anti‐immigrant attitudes among Whites in the Trump era are shaped by a set of pervasive beliefs concerning the robustness of America's national identity. The pervasive set of beliefs concerning which traits are important for being “truly” American is defined as ethnonationalism (Thompson, 2021). I theorize that ethnonationalism is a predictor of White opposition to immigration that is related to—although one that is not necessarily reflective of—other predictors of White opposition to immigration, including ethnocentrism, White consciousness, and negative economic evaluations.…”

The new culture wars: Why critical race theory matters more than cancel culture

“…Castle (2019) updates this older religiously-focused literature to encompass contemporary battles over the rights of religious businesses to refuse service to gay people and the issue of transgender bathrooms. Whereas the first generation of value conflicts-extending to the contemporary issues raised by Castle-typically concerned religion and family values, as well as questions of militarism and political nationalism, the energy in the culture wars has arguably shifted away from religion and social conservatism toward more secular issues revolving around ethnic nationalism (Bonikowski 2017;Sides et al 2019;Mutz 2018;Thompson 2021). This is not to say that religion is no longer important, only that more secular, even pagan, ethno-nationalist concerns have become more prominent, with regular religious attenders in Western countries generally less likely, or no more likely, to support populist parties and candidates than non-attenders (Ekins 2018;Roy 2016;Siegers and Jedinger 2021).…”