There’s a certain narrative surrounding the election of Donald Trump in 2016, with many assuming that it was small town folk generally unhappy about the demographic changes they’re experiencing in their local community. It’s a narrative that recent research from the University of Pennsylvania suggests needs revisiting.
The researchers examined demographic changes across communities between 2012 and 2016 to see whether this coincided with greater support for Trump and his anti-immigration policies.
To try and get to the heart of the matter, the researchers assessed voter precincts, which they believe allow a sufficiently valuable level of granularity. Previous work by the team had led them to believe that changes in local demographics, and especially any influx in immigrants, would results in changes in local politics.
“One of the key things I’ve found is that people, in explaining their unease about immigration, talk about very local encounters. They say it’s challenging to see all of the grocery store signs in Spanish, or that on the phone the bank asked them if they wanted to ‘Press 1’ for English or ‘Press 2’ for Spanish,” they say. “We were very interested in whether local demographic changes were part of the explanation for the election of Donald Trump, and more generally for the rise in anti-immigration populist political parties and candidates in recent years.”
Political change
In total, the researchers captured electoral and demographic data for over 26,000 precincts from across the United States. The particular precincts that were large, diverse and openly contested by both candidates. Some of these precincts had just 1,000 voters, but the researchers believe they represent an accurate reflection of the lived experiences of local people.
“A common argument for why candidate Trump won the 2016 election is that he benefited from local demographic changes in the lives of native whites. Our evidence does not support that argument,” the authors say. “While it is possible Trump benefited from anti-immigrant sentiment, in the states we examined his vote gains relative to 2012 do not seem to follow from Americans’ local lived experience with immigration or demographic change.”
Similarly, Hillary Clinton saw an increase in votes in areas where immigration increased, with this trend present even when the precinct had previously voted for Republican candidates in previous elections.
While the finding is presented as something of a surprise by the researchers, it does mirror trends seen in the United Kingdom, where it appears the idea of immigrants is what most prompts people to support anti-immigrant policies. This vision often erodes when put into contact with the reality diversity brings, so communities where people have real experience of immigration tend to promote diversity as they realize that the bogeyman myth presented by Trump’s rhetoric is not true.
