Electoral Studies 71 (2021) 102309 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Electoral Studies journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud A swing vote from the ethnic backstage: The role of German American isolationist tradition for Trump’s 2016 victory Klara Dentler a,b,*, Thomas Gschwend c, David Hünlich d,e a Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, 68131, Mannheim, Germany b GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, P.O. Box 122155, 68159, Mannheim, Germany c Department of Political Science, University of Mannheim, 68131, Mannheim, Germany d IDS - Leibniz-Institute for the German Language, R 6-13, Mannheim, 68161, Germany e IMIS - Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, 49069, Germany ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: We question the growing consensus in the literature that European Americans behave as a homogenous pan- Ancestry ethnic coalition of voters. Seemingly below the radar of scholarship on voting groups in American politics, we Presidential election identify a group of white voters that behaves differently from others: German Americans, the largest ethnic Trump group, regionally concentrated in the ‘Swinging Midwest’. Using county level voting returns, ancestry group American politics information from the American Community Survey (ACS), current survey data and historical census data going Isolationism Assimilation back as early as 1910, we provide evidence for a partisan and a non-partisan pathway that motivated German Americans to vote for Trump in 2016: a historically grown association with the Republican Party and an acquired taste for isolationist attitudes that mobilizes non-partisan German Americans to support isolationist candidates. Our findings indicate that European American experiences of migration and integration still echo into the po­ litical arena of today. 1. Introduction 2016). To date, there has only been a snap-shot inquiry into the phe­ nomenon (Urlaub and Huenlich 2016). At the same time, Trump’s vic­ ‘Will German Americans make Trump President?’ During the run-up tory continues to raise the question whether “whites across the country to the U.S. presidential election of 2016, several German news outlets developed a pan-ethnic racial identity” (Arbour 2018: 34) – especially in shifted their attention to a large group of voters rarely recognized in the light of the pronounced racism exhibited by part of his constituency. In political behavior literature. Under the headline above, the newspaper contrast to previous research, we provide evidence that leads us to Die Welt painted a scenario in which voters with German ancestry in question the existence of such a homogenous voter coalition. Our several Midwestern states could be turning the tide in favor of the post-election analysis of the role an estimated 46 million self-identified Republican candidate (Gersemann 2016). Focus Online (2016), a German Americans played for Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 points to prominent German online news resource posted a video explaining why a link between the candidate and the history of isolationism in German German Americans living along the ‘German Belt’ between Pennsylvania American communities. Two distinct pathways, a partisan and a and Oregon might be deciding the 2016 general election.1 Both analyses non-partisan pathway, appear to have driven German Americans to­ referenced an opinion poll by Morning Consult with more than 5000 wards Trump: a historically grown association with the Republican Americans who had specified their ancestral affiliations. The poll Party on the one hand and an acquired taste for isolationist attitudes that showed that Americans of different European ancestries supported can be activated by respective candidates’ campaign agendas on the Trump to different degrees. German Americans favored him by a margin other. We argue that in addition to Republican partisanship, Trump’s of 18% over Clinton, others also went against Clinton but lagged sub­ isolationist political agenda mobilized non-partisans among the German stantially behind in their support for Trump (Aldhous and Singer-Vine American community to vote for Trump in 2016. Because German This is the DOI referring to the data https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/S6H88Q. * Corresponding author. GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, P.O. Box 122155, Mannheim, 68159, Germany E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K. Dentler), [email protected] (T. Gschwend), [email protected] (D. Hünlich). 1 https://www.focus.de/politik/videos/wahlen-in-den-usa-warum-die-deutsch-amerikaner-die-us-praesidentenwahl-entscheiden-koennten_id_6177921.html. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102309 Received 18 July 2020; Received in revised form 25 January 2021; Accepted 1 February 2021 Available online 26 February 2021 0261-3794/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. K. Dentler et al. Electoral Studies 71 (2021) 102309 Americans make up the largest self-identifiedancestry group in the U.S. anti-German violence, German Americans increased petitions for natu- and are regionally concentrated in the ‘Swinging Midwest’, they played ralization and adopted English names for their children and themselves a decisive role in the 2016 election. Thus, the rallying cry “America (Fouka 2019). Where legislation outlawed the German language in First’’ was a cornerstone of Trump’s campaign which mobilized these schools, German Americans sent their children to German-speaking communities’ isolationist preferences beyond partisanship. Sunday schools and increasingly married within their ethnic group We embed our study in the context of research on the remaining (Fouka 2016). Overall it seems that while making concessions, they influence of white ethnicity in American politics (Sonnenshein and mostly stuck to their ways behind the closed doors of their ethnic soci- Valentino 2000; Gimpel and Cho 2004; Arbour and Teigen 2011; Arbour eties (Kamphoefner 2015: 49f). Deliberate assimilation and ethnic 2018). Using aggregated characteristics of the American Community introversion were strategies that complemented each other and allowed Survey (ACS) together with officialvoting returns at the county level, we German Americans to navigate the period after World War I and beyond firstprovide evidence that supporting Trump in the voting booth can be (Wilkerson & Salmons 2008, 2012). attributed to the specificcandidate. It is not simply a result of ‘working We argue in this paper that the isolationist tradition in German class status’ as defined by education and socioeconomic status and American communities begins immediately after WWI.2 The United cannot be attributed solely to the traditional affiliationof many German States entered the War in spite of President Woodrow Wilson’s campaign Americans with the Republican Party. As we will show, the swing from that centered around American neutrality. This marked a break between Obama (2012) to Donald Trump in 2016 took place in many counties of German Americans and Democrats. When Republican candidate Warren the Midwest that are predominantly of German ancestry. Using survey Harding called for a “return to normalcy” in 1920, and promised a data from 2016 we also provide evidence at the microlevel that the two withdrawal from international affairs, German Americans swung back to pathways seem to exist even today: a partisan as well as a non-partisan the Republicans. The swing reinvigorated the identificationof a majority pathway fueled by Trump’s isolationist agenda. At the same time this of German Americans with the Republican Party and lies at the root of also corroborates our evidence based on ecological correlations. Finally, the German American identification with the Republican Party. As we use election data from before and after World War I to show how German Americans submerged their ethnic identity, the historic reasons isolationism in German American communities opened the partisan and for this relationship were obscured. Eventually, a residual identification the non-partisan pathway and how the early isolationist swing vote still with the Republican party remained. We can only speculate about the affects US politics today. specificmechanisms of transmission across generations. It is established in the literature that there is a – albeit far from perfect – correlation 2. German ethnicity in U.S. politics between parent and child partisan behavior (e.g Niemi and Jennings 1991). The interpretation whether this intergenerational transmission of Defining experiences in the life of American communities can have party identification stems from political socialization in a effects on politics that last for extended periods of time. For instance, social-psychological tradition (Campbell et al., 1980), or whether off- Acharya et al. (2016) describe a causal relationship of over 150 years springs employ their parents’ party identificationssimply as ‘priors’ in a between chattel slavery in the 19th century and recent political attitudes Bayesian learning process (Achen 2002) remains unsettled. We do not in American counties of the South. By comparison, the War-time expe- take sides in this discussion but merely point out that the intergenera- riences of German Americans that led to isolationist preferences lie in tional transmission of party identificationexists and, thus, that German recent history and go back between 70 to slightly over 100 years. At the Americans’ historical proximity