How Negative Sentiment toward Muslim Americans Predicts Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract

Since 9/11, scholarly work has demonstrated that Muslim Americans are viewed unfavorably, but existing measures lack enough contextual specificity to capture the unique experiences and situation of Muslims in the United States. Given the central role that Muslims and the war on terror played in the 2016 presidential campaign and election, we fill this void by introducing a new measure that focuses on Muslim Americans, specifically, and then examine its role in explaining presidential vote choice in 2016. Across five distinct surveys fielded on convenience and nationally representative samples from May 2016 to June 2017, we find that anti–Muslim American sentiment is a strong and significant predictor of supporting Trump, even when controlling for a whole host of factors. Our measure of Muslim American sentiment also more strongly and consistently predicts support for Trump, relative to previous measures of anti-Muslim sentiment.

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