Research

Published

Beyond the Trump Presidency: The Racial Underpinnings of White Americans’ Anti-Democratic Beliefs

How closely related are modern anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans, and to what extent are these beliefs shaped by exclusionary racial attitudes? Using data from the Political Unrest Study, the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape, and the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), we find that support for voting restrictions, opposition to voting expansions, belief in widespread voter fraud, and support for overturning democratic election results load onto a single underlying dimension. While the prevalence of anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans has remained stable over the past decade, these beliefs have become increasingly interconnected. Furthermore, racial attitudes towards out-groups—including racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white racial grievance—strongly correlate with anti-democratic beliefs, whereas in-group racial attitudes do not. Analysis of multiple waves of the American National Election Studies (ANES) reveals that racial resentment and white grievance now explain twice as much variation in anti-democratic beliefs as they did in 2012. Experimental evidence also demonstrates that white Americans react negatively to voting expansions when the racial implications of these reforms are made explicit. These findings underscore the growing alignment between anti-democratic beliefs and racial attitudes in contemporary U.S. politics.

Black Lives Matter and the Racialized Support for the January 6th Insurrection

Does support for the January 6th insurrection come mostly from concerned citizens worried over illegal vot- ing, or from racists spurred to action by the highly vis- ible Black Lives Matter protests and Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat? We field a survey experiment aimed at disentangling links between old and new racial griev- ances, anti-immigrant beliefs, Black activism, and sup- port for the January 6th insurrection. We find that the people most likely to be supportive of the insurrection are whites who hold negative attitudes toward immi- grants and subscribe to white replacement theory. Beliefs about the George Floyd protests also explain January 6th support, above and beyond demographics and other racial and political views. These results are validated by the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post- Election Survey. We also conduct a survey vignette experiment and find that anti-BLM rhetoric spread by Trump and right-wing news sources likely soured opin- ions on the movement and set the stage for widespread insurrection support.

Working Papers

Moving to Vote: How Neighborhood Political Culture Shapes Voter Turnout 

Does place shape political participation? While neighborhood effects on health and economic outcomes are well-documented, less is known about how the local political environment shapes turnout in elections. Using data on over 19 million registered voters who moved within-state between 2014 and 2018, I examine how relocating to neighborhoods with different levels of political participation affects a person’s decision to vote. I first validate my approach with North Carolina administrative data, then scale nationwide using commercial voter files covering all 50 states. Among comparable individuals, moving to a high-turnout precinct increases their probability of voting by 2.1 percentage points, while moving to a low-turnout precinct decreases it by 2.7 percentage points, relative to moving to a medium-turnout precinct. These effects persist when comparing moves within similar socioeconomic contexts and are confirmed by placebo tests comparing past to future movers. These findings challenge conventional models of political participation that privilege features of individuals.