An Exploration of African American Trump Voters

Abstract

This thesis explores the motivations of African American Trump voters to identify how ideologies, beliefs, interests and Donald Trump’s political strategies and discourses contributed to their voting choices in 2016 and 2020. This project provides additional information and commentary on the existing literature using the case study of African American Trump voters. This is executed by testing how accurately populist theories focused on ideologies, interests, discourses, and tactics explain the support of right-wing populist movements from non-White communities, using the example of Black Trump voters. The thesis finds that Black Trump voters are motivated by diverse values, perspectives, and experiences, and populism works to encourage many of these factors. Though the explanatory significance of populism upon Black Trump voters is limited, populist paradigms help highlight the diverse range of factors influencing the decisions of Trump’s Black electorate.