Manufacturing and the 2016 Election: An Analysis of US Presidential Election Data

Caroline Freund () and Dario Sidhu ()
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Dario Sidhu: Peterson Institute for International Economics

No WP17-7, Working Paper Series from Peterson Institute for International Economics

Abstract: Much of the public discourse and media analysis of the surprise outcome of the 2016 US presidential election has emphasized the role of manufacturing workers. This paper examines the importance of manufacturing jobs and job loss as determinants of voting patterns using county-level voting data from recent presidential elections. The share of employment in the manufacturing sector and long-run manufacturing job loss at the county level are not statistically significant in explaining the change in Republican vote shares from 2012 to 2016, when controlling for standard voting determinants. However, the change in the Republican vote share is positively correlated with manufacturing in predominantly white counties and negatively correlated with manufacturing in ethnically diverse counties, with these effects roughly offsetting each other. The paper further shows that this polarization between white and nonwhite manufacturing counties is more closely associated with polarizing candidates than a polarized electorate.

Keywords: identity politics; job loss; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-lab and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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