Across the Detroit River: The Electoral Divergence of the North American White Working Class

Abstract

Over the last twenty years, white working-class voters across the American Midwest have increasingly shifted their electoral support to Republican presidential candidates, culminating in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. However, while these American voters moved to the right, white working-class voters to the north in the province of Ontario have remained much more supportive of left-wing parties. This dissertation examines the causes of this cross-border electoral divergence, which to this point has gone unexamined across comparative political scholarship. To do so, I adopt a multi-method approach utilizing original survey data, a candidate-choice conjoint experiment, and qualitative fieldwork in Windsor, Ontario and Macomb County, Michigan. In the forthcoming pages I present four main empirical findings. First, white working-class voters who express higher levels of white identity or racial resentment are more likely to vote for right-wing parties in both North American countries, but the magnitude of these effects are considerably higher for Americans. I show how non-white political candidates receive a greater electoral penalty from American white working-class voters. Second, national identity has a strong association with right-wing partisanship and right-wing voting, but only among American voters. In fact, national identity in Canada is one of the strongest predictors of support for the center-left Liberal Party. Third, laissez-faire attitudes, a long-theorized difference between Canada and the United States, are more prevalent and more predictive of right-wing electoral support among white working-class Americans. Experimental evidence shows how white working-class voters in Ontario are much more supportive of policies requiring an active role for government. Finally, I uncover more mixed evidence behind the notion that labor unions differentially affect political behavior on either side of the border. But I illustrate how American labor unions face a much tougher task in motivating their working-class membership to support Democrats, while Canadian labor unions have been more successful at maintaining member loyalties to left-wing parties.