Expanding on the Trump Effect: How Trump Campaign Rallies Are Associated with Hate

Abstract

In August 2019 a young man walked into an El Paso Wal Mart and began shooting at shoppers, leaving 22 dead and 24 wounded. According to one survivor, the shooter allowed the white shoppers to escape as he intentionally targeted Hispanic and African Americans. Just before beginning his killing spree, the shooter published a manifesto on the online message board 8chan where he described a “Hispanic invasion” and sought to rally others to his cause. “Don’t blame Trump,” he added, foreshadowing the national conversation that would subsequently occur. Many speculated that Trump’s rhetoric might incite violence as evidenced by an observed spike in hate crimes around the same time as his emergence as a viable national candidate.

A study by Ayal Feinberg and his colleagues Regina Branton and Valerie Martinez-Ebers of the University of North Texas sought to quantify this relationship, claiming that Trump rallies are associated with a 226% increase in hate crimes in the counties which host them. However, a conflicting study by two Harvard PhD candidates Matthew Lilley and Brian Wheaton argue that there is no statistical correlation between Trump rallies and increases in hate crimes. This study expands on their work by using the same data sources as Feinberg et. al and Lilley and Wheaton to perform panel regressions and difference-in-difference models. This study also examines Clinton rallies, hypothesizing that Trump rallies do lead to an increase in hate crimes while Clinton rallies do not. The results of this study reveal that there is preliminary evidence to suggest that hate crimes do increase following Trump rallies, supporting the hypothesis and inviting further research to confirm.