HISPANICS PARA TRUMP?: Denial of Racism and Hispanic Support for Trump

Little has been written about the Hispanic Americans who voted for Donald Trump. Despite his comments about Mexicans and immigrants, data suggest that Trump performed as well or better than Mitt Romney among Hispanic voters. Using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, this paper examines Hispanic support for Trump by looking at traditional predictors of vote choice such as party identification and ideology, as well as a novel measure of racism: denial of racism. This paper finds that, like non-Hispanic Whites, Hispanics higher in denial of racism were more likely to vote Trump in 2016, as well as for Romney in the 2012 election. In addition, denial of racism is the strongest predictor of support for Trump among Hispanics, above even party identification and ideology. This suggests that while Trump's rhetoric may not appeal to most Hispanic voters, it strongly appeals to those that hold disproportionately high levels of denial of racism. I offer some theoretical reasons for these findings and discuss the role that denial of racism plays in predicting voting behavior.