Description
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Replication Data for "Explaining the Trump Electorate: Immigration, Race and the National Economy" Pundits accredit Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 to his ability to speak to the economic dislo-cation and resentment faced by White working-class voters left behind by globalization. Reny,Collingwood, and Valenzuela (2019) put this claim to the test, exploring whether experiences ofeconomic deprivation, anti-immigration attitudes, or racial resentment are more strongly associ-ated with the probability of voting for Trump in 2016 after having voted for the non-Republicanpresidential candidate in 2012 - what the authors (hereafter RCV) term ”vote-switching.” Chal-lenging dominant media narratives, RCV find that amongst White voters, racial attitudes andanti-immigration attitudes are substantially and significantly correlated with the probability ofvote-switching in favor of Trump, while economic dislocation is not. Our analyses and com-mentary extend their findings in the following ways: first, we demonstrate that anti-immigrationattitudes have a unique relationship with switching compared to other conservative policy pref-erences. Second, we improve estimates of model performance by making adjustments to theauthors’ original set of explanatory covariates, including evidence that attitudes toward the na-tional economy are correlated with vote switching. Third, we explore the association betweenthese variables and voter turnout, showing that immigration attitudes and racial resentment arecorrelated with voter (de)mobilization among key constituencies. (2020-12-14)
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