When the Minority Becomes the Majority

In this thesis, I argue that primary identities outside of race similarly divide whites and Hispanics along party lines, namely not holding a four year college degree, being an Evangelical Christian, and living in a rural area. I refer to this identity structure that comprises white and Hispanic Republican support as the 'populist alignment.' By examining Latino politics through the lens of populist alignment, I argue that scholars must move to interrogate Hispanics' position in the U.S. structure of bipolar racial order through their proximity to whites instead of Blacks. I begin this thesis with a review of the literature on Hispanic Republicans, followed by an explanation of my theoretical approach in studying Hispanic voting patterns in the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections. I argue that the analysis of Hispanic voters must be disaggregated from the current approaches to African American politics, as Hispanics behaved more like whites than Blacks in the last decade. I then explain my methodology in testing my two hypotheses, which are: (1) Hispanics were significantly more likely to vote for a Republican candidate in the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections than Blacks, and (2) Hispanics were moved to vote for a Republican candidate by a populist alignment. I discuss the results of my logit regressions and analyze the significance of the empirical findings for my proposed theory. Finally, I end with suggestions for future research and defend my critiques of the current academic approaches to studying racial minority politics.