With the presidential election less than one month away, many people are still trying to make sense of why some Latinos support Donald Trump and the Republican Party, who display clear nativist stances. Here are our data-driven answers to this puzzle.
For more than 40 years now, Latinos have been steadfast Democrats, with two out of three of them self-identifying with this party and voting for its candidates. What is different today, however, is that many political observers have awakened to the flip side of that reality: that nearly one out of three Latinos genuinely identify as Republicans. In a context of increasing polarization, these political nuances now stand out more sharply than ever.
Although it may be surprising to some people, Latinos not only identify as an ethnic group, but also as Americans. The degree to which a Latino adult prioritizes one of these identities over the other reliably explains why they identify as a Democrat or a Republican.
The more that Latino prioritize American identity over their own ethnic identity, the more likely they are to think of themselves as Republican — a byproduct of polarization where this party is tightly and mentally associated with “real” Americans. In contrast, the more Latino adults identify with their ethnic group, the more they will identify as Democratic — also a byproduct of polarization, where this party is mentally linked with people of color in general.
Using high-quality surveys of Latino adults since 2006, we find that about 27 percent of Latino adults prioritize their American identity over their ethnic identity — a remarkably close figure to the one third of Latinos who identify as Republicans.
This association between identity and political party becomes starkly clear in highly controlled laboratory experiments my colleagues and I have run. Simple exposure to the American flag and other national symbols makes Latinos automatically think of the Republican Party. Similarly, Latinos automatically think of Democrats when they encounter imagery related to their respective ethnic group. These snap judgments emerge from the continued polarization between Democrats and Republicans — two parties that, in essence, are distilled coalitions between multiple social, economic and racial groups.
Why does something so psychological matter for each party’s electoral fortunes?
Without more careful messaging and outreach efforts, our data suggest that Democrats and Republicans risk reaching out to Latinos based on an identity that is of lower importance to them — a political mismatch. For example, if 27 percent of Latinos report prioritizing their American identity and a party reaches out to them as ethnics, this could trigger a defense mechanism whereby Latinos will self-identify with the party that better reflects their prioritized identity.
To show this, we undertook a large-scale experiment with Latino adults. Here, Latino participants were assigned on a random basis to read one of three news articles. In the control group, participants read a news brief about how the number of giant tortoises around the globe is declining.
In another condition, participants read about how, despite their similarity to Americans in terms of some characteristics (e.g., optimism, hard-working), many Latinos prioritize their ethnic identity. In the last condition, participants read an article explaining that, despite being characterized largely as an ethnic group, many Latinos place greater weight on their American identity. After reading their assigned article, all participants reported their degree of self-identification as a Democrat or Republican.
Two insights emerge from this study. First, when Latinos are characterized as a largely ethnic population, those who prioritize their Latino identity express significantly greater allegiance to Democrats — which is the status quo. Yet this same message propels Latinos who prioritize their American identity to express significantly lower allegiance to Democrats. This trend suggests that while characterizations of Latinos as ethnics reinforces the allegiance of some Latinos to the Democratic Party, it comes at the expense of losing support among other Latinos because of how mismatched their prioritized identity is to descriptions of their group.
Second, when Latinos are characterized as Americans, those who prioritize their ethnic identity distance themselves from Democrats, while those who prioritize their American identity embrace the Republican Party more tightly.
The take-away lessons from our accumulation of findings are clear.
First, Latinos are multifaceted, with some of those facets contradicting our expectations of them. An effective solution here is simply for party operatives to know — with more precision than now — what kind of Latinos they are reaching out to and using that information to fine-tune their messaging to this electoral segment.
Second, more than culturally sensitive outreach (e.g., Spanish-language ads versus English-language ads), political candidates must reach out to Latinos in ways that acknowledge and affirm the identities that they themselves value most. This entails each party suspending its stereotypes about what kind of voters Latinos are and instead meeting these voters where they stand and accept how they see themselves.
Implementing both lessons will invigorate future campaigns as they vie for Latino support in a racially and ethnically complex electoral landscape.
Efrén Pérez is Full Professor of Political Science and Psychology at UCLA, where he directs the Race, Ethnicity, Politics & Society Lab. He is the author of “Diversity’s Child: People of Color and the Politics of Identity.”
