Nativist Messages and Party Reputations: Evidence from the U.S. Presidential Campaign

This paper presents the result of a survey experiment conducted one week before the American Presidential Election in November 2016. The purpose of the study was to examine the reputational premium or penalty of the Republican Party’s presidential candidate on controversial nativist political issues recognizable from the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe, such as strict border controls, special restrictions regarding Muslims, and other tough measures directed towards minorities. We find that support for these controversial policies is contingent both on the reputation of the political actor that promotes them (the supply side) and on the political ideologies and motivations of the voters (the demand side). The similarities between the European and U.S. contexts are striking.