The Polarization of Nationalist Cleavages in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

• In Event: 4433 - Voting and Elections

Abstract

Research in political science has acknowledged the importance of ethno-nationalism as a constitutive element of radical-right politics, but it has typically reduced this phenomenon to its downstream correlates, like anti-immigrant or racist attitudes. Sociologists, on the other hand, have extensively studied nationalism as a feature of political culture, but have not weighed in on debates in the study of institutional politics, and of the radical-right in particular. In this paper we bring these literatures together by considering how multiple conceptions of American nationhood shaped respondents' voting preferences in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and how the election outcome built on long-term changes in the distribution of nationalist beliefs in the U.S. population. Our results suggest that competing definitions of nationhood constitute important cultural cleavages that have become politically mobilized in recent years. In particular, we show that exclusionary varieties of nationalism were strongly predictive of Trump support in the Republican primary and general election, while disengagement from the nation was predictive of Sanders support in the Democratic primary. Moreover, nationalism has become increasingly sorted by party: over the past twenty years, respondents identifying with the Republican Party have become increasingly ethno-nationalist, while those identifying with the Democratic Party have become increasingly civic nationalist. Based on this evidence, we conclude that nationalism has become an increasingly important ideological cleavage in the U.S. electorate, which has been reinforced by other forms of sociodemographic and attitudinal partisan sorting. Moreover, the 2016 presidential election can only be understood by taking nationalism seriously as a primary source of collective identification and political behavior.

Authors

• Bart Bonikowski, Harvard University

• Yuval Feinstein, University of Haifa

• Sean Bock, Harvard University