Shifting Allegiances

In the months leading up to the 2024 elections, I spent time with and interviewed several Filipinos, immigrant groups, and Native Hawaiians in Hawaii who identify as conservative and/or Republican. This fieldwork is part of ongoing research on immigrant conservatives, where we are trying to identify the reasons why immigrant and working-class communities today are moving toward the Right. Many people I spoke with identified as former Democrats who changed political party affiliation in the last decade or so.

The Democratic Party has been the dominant political party in Hawaii for more than seventy years. But in the last two major cycles, Republican support has been gaining traction, with its stronghold in West Oahu. Once home to sugar and pineapple plantations and their immigrant laborers, it is now the site of low-income project for Native Hawaiians. It is here that I conducted most of my fieldwork.

I found that the social networks where immigrants acquire knowledge about the American political system shape how they interpret their interests and subsequently how they vote. Most of them arrive in the United States as adults with views based on their lived experiences in their homelands. I discovered that those who are politically socialized through labor unions remain resistant to Trump’s appeal. In contrast, those who learned about US politics through other organizations are more likely to be receptive to right-wing messages and thus supportive of Trump.

In addition, the impact of neoliberal policies at the state and national levels has created a sense of perpetual insecurity and uncertainty among immigrant workers. This has fostered doubts about the ability of the supposedly pro-immigrant, pro-worker Democrats to address their concerns.

The Importance of Social Networks

The case of Filipinos in Hawaii is instructive. Their history of immigration, economic position, and location in the labor market, and their central role in labor unions on the island greatly contributed to their political socialization. From 1906 to 1940, they arrived in Hawaii to work as sakadas (plantation laborers). Many of them became members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and joined the Great Sugar Strike of 1946.

Today Filipinos work in the hotel and nursing industries and are active in UNITE HERE Local 5 and National Nurses United. These unions are important sites for demanding higher wages and improving the working conditions of working-class Filipinos. But they are also central spaces to learn that their grievances are based on their racialized economic position under neoliberal capitalism. Through the unions, they cultivate a collective identity based on race and class.

I saw this take shape after the J. D. Vance–TimWalz debate, during an early morning discussion at a McDonald’s frequented by Filipinos. After heated exchanges that focused on tariffs and tax cuts, one union member said, “We vote Democrat because we are workers. Not only that, but we are also the bottom here in Hawaii. Do you see Japanese or haole (white) janitors? None. They are all our managers and politicians.” “Are you saying that I cannot support a Republican because I am not rich?” countered a Trump supporter. “No, I’m saying, if you want to support us, Filipino workers, you do not elect candidates who want to bring down our wages.” The union member was less susceptible to Vance’s economic policies due to his political socialization in the Carpenters Union Local 745.

But not all Filipino workers on the island belong to a union. For other Filipinos, the church is the primary venue for political learning, especially because it also provides newer working-class immigrants services like day care and after-school programs for parents with more than one job. This was the case for Elena, who relies on her Evangelical Christian church for help taking care of her children as well as financial aid and even assistance in filling out the paperwork for her citizenship. The church provides a social safety net. The more embedded within it Filipinos become, the more they develop a strong Christian identity that influences how they see US politics.

I also encountered a small group of Filipino small business owners who espouse libertarian views and tend to vote based on a candidate’s position on taxes and welfare. The military, especially the US Navy where Filipinos are disproportionately represented, also plays a significant role in shaping the political identities of servicemembers and their spouses and children. Filipinos in the military often develop a type of conservatism rooted in jingoism, and thus they support candidates that tout US supremacy in the international sphere, especially vis-à-vis the rise of China. Among both groups, I found staunch advocates for strict immigration policy with concerns ranging from protecting the nation from criminals, terrorist, spies, and other threats to national security to the belief that undocumented immigrants are draining the state’s coffers.

The Price of Gas and Other Economic Grievances

Across the different types of conservative Filipinos I encountered in Hawaii, all identified the economy as an issue of central importance to them.

This is not surprising. A state where the economy largely relies on tourism heavily employs residents who are still reeling from the devastating effects of the pandemic and the 2023 Lahaina fires. But these factors have not brought down the cost of housing. Many Filipinos lament that housing and the cost of living have reached an unsustainable level. And they have been extremely dissatisfied with a Democratic leadership that, to them, is “not really interested in solving locals’ economic problems.” Democrats’ embrace of neoliberal policy, particularly low property taxes (Hawaii has the lowest in the nation), has made the state attractive to investors who are more interested in building condominiums for wealthy mainlanders, rich migrants from East Asia, and vacation rentals for tourists, which reduces the availability of housing for the state’s working-class residents.

Democrats have ostensibly addressed the problem by building more affordable housing, especially for Native Hawaiians who have been on the waitlist with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. However, these homes are of substandard quality. At a town hall meeting I attended organized by a Republican candidate to hear the complaints of his constituents about sinkholes, cracked walls, and sinking roads, residents learned for the first time that their houses are built on a reclaimed area that is all coral. After telling the audience her situation, a member of the audience ended emotionally with, “Why can’t we live there?!” pointing to the valley where the wealthy reside.

The Media Ecosystem

Why would a Filipino immigrant struggling to make ends meet and a Native Hawaiian longing for affordable, high-quality housing put their faith in Trump and the Republican Party to address their economic concerns? None of it made much sense to me, especially after reading Republican candidates’ proposals to solve the housing crisis and the high cost of living that clearly favored the wealthy — until I saw firsthand the information that they consume to understand why they are facing these problems.

Their sources of information include a typical conservative media diet, including Fox News and NewsMax. Many have also told me that they read or watch Epoch Times, One America News, Townhall, and the Daily Wire. Those who are religious may follow Catholic Connect and CatholicVote.org. While stuck in traffic, they also tune in to AM radio and listen to a local conservative commentator. And they scroll through their Instagram accounts run by right-wing pundits, who post disinformation and conspiracy theories.

The experiences shared with me by Filipinos and other immigrants as well as Native Hawaiians suggest that identity-based and economic concerns are both important issues progressive politicians need to address. When voters’ material concerns are dismissed as trivial, they turn to invidious sources of information and online communities to feel heard and validated.

Economic insecurity, combined with a loss of trust in leaders they have elected in the past, made many people I met vulnerable to conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda, especially when they felt that their own issues are not taken seriously by others. I saw this in Grace, a second-generation Filipino who is in a nonunion job. When Barack Obama ran for president for the first time in 2008, she was ecstatic. “He is one of us — from Hawaii and not haole [white],” she said, recounting how she went door to door campaigning for his run for reelection.

But tragedy struck her family, and she suffered financial losses. During this time, she turned to her Catholic faith and community for strength and support. But to her surprise, Democrats “started going after my religion.” “They said we can’t say ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore because it’s offensive. They also want to remove God in the dollar. Why? I almost lost my house. I’m in debt. But they want to focus on Christmas. I have lost trust in [the Democrats’] ability to deliver.”

A Republican coworker who knew of Grace’s problems started sending her links to YouTube videos. After she watched many of them, she admitted, she gave up on mainstream news media in general and came to rely on YouTube and Instagram accounts for political information. When Trump won the Republican primary in 2016, she told her friends that she was leaning toward voting for him, believing her choice might improve her financial situation. “But they mocked me, calling me a racist. I was hurt. I just want to pay off my debt. And you know, Trump is a businessman, so I believe he knows the solution.”

The Path Forward

My observations may be limited, because Hawaii is of course different from the mainland, especially in its racial composition and the character of its economy. And Harris and local Democrats still won in Hawaii due to the mobilization of the unions that politically socialize a steady stream of immigrant labor — hotel workers, nurses, and teachers — so that they are more resilient to right-wing messages. Hawaii has the highest rate of union membership in the US, with 24.1 percent of its employees unionized in 2023.

Leading up to the election, I also realized that the threat of white nationalism, fascism, and identity-based issues — central to the messaging of the Harris campaign — did not resonate with the conservative Filipino immigrants and Native Hawaiians I met. This is due, perhaps, in part to the unique ethnic and racial demographics of the state. No one group is the racial majority on the island, and the shared belief that “everyone is mixed” is powerful.

Chris, an Uber driver who is part Chinese, part Hawaiian, and of other ethnic backgrounds, told me he wants to quit driving so he can spend more time with his family. Chris has a full-time day job. Yet he drives passengers after work for about three hours every evening to pay for his children’s education. He has a photo of his daughters hanging on the dashboard and said he voted for Trump to secure his daughters’ future. “What about the issues that Democrats are talking about, like women’s reproductive health?” I asked him. He paused and said, “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought of that.” Then he joked, “Can I eat that?”