Welcome!
I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, specializing in public opinion and political behavior, and the coauthor of The Emerging Republican Minorities: Racial and Ethnic Realignment in the Trump Era, published by Bloomsbury Academic.
Research
My first strand of work revolves around “minorities within minorities,” i.e., members of minority groups—based on race, ethnicity, and migration, gender and sexual orientation, or ideology—who diverge from the majority of their groups. Because liberal democracies become increasingly more diverse, the political and social diversification occurring among minority groups become more important as well. This is particularly evident in the case of democratic backsliding, now supported and led by members of minority groups around the world in unprecedented numbers.
In my second strand of work, I study public opinion in the international context. I am interested in why, how, and when individuals change their opinions and attitudes towards countries, leaders, and peoples, in response to major international events.
Geographically, my works concentrate on the United States, Latin America, and the Middle East. I mainly use quantitative research methods, with an emphasis on causal inference techniques, but have also utilized qualitative methods, including elite and non-elite interviews. A recent methodological focus of mine is the integration of LLM classification in large-N content analysis.
My works have been published in the European Political Science Review, Groups, Politics, and Identities, and Revista de Ciencia Política, and has been covered by major public outlets, such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Axios.
Publications
Trump’s African Americans? Racial resentment and Black support for Trump in the 2020 elections
Udi Sommer and Idan Franco (2024).
Politics, Groups, and Identities, 12(4), 921–47.
Among Politics, Groups, and Identities’ most-cited articles published in the last 3 years (as of August 2026).
Udi Sommer and Idan Franco (2024).
European Political Science Review, 16(3), 351–77.
One of the most influential Political Science and IR articles of Cambridge University Press in 2024.
¿Nuestra América? Antiinmigración y apoyo latino a Trump
Idan Franco, Udi Sommer, and Nathalie Méndez Méndez (2025).
Revista de ciencia política (Santiago), 45(3).
Book
The Emerging Republican Minorities: Racial and Ethnic Realignment in the Trump Era
Bloomsbury Academic, 2025 (with Udi Sommer).
Recommended by CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, the premier review journal of new academic titles, published by the Association of College and Research Libraries (August 2025):
“A timely and important book … the authors compel us to reconsider the oft-repeated claim of emerging Democratic majorities with more diverse electorates. Demographics are not destiny.”
Read Thomas Edsall’s column in The New York Times, discussing our book.
How is it possible that Donald Trump, a champion of racist and anti-immigrant policies, has only attracted more minority voters since 2016? Drawing on extensive statistical analyses, our book challenges the conventional wisdom on Black, Latino, and Asian American voters.
Positing a host of theoretical innovations based on diverse data sources, The Emerging Republican Minorities establishes that some of the most heated debates of the Trump era-race, immigration, and relations with China-had effects on minority voters that challenged a paradigm ascribing their automatic loyalty to the Democrats. For Black, Latino/a, and Asian American constituents, much like for their white counterparts, minority-hostile positions are critical in explaining how members of those same minority groups vote, even for candidates who prima facie should not win any of their support.
We analyze detailed regression models and conduct robust empirical tests to demonstrate how minority constituencies are more ideologically diverse than commonly thought, even on such issues where we would expect near unanimity, such as opinions towards their own communities. Moreover, this diversity complicates the way we think and theorize not only about minority political behavior but also about democracy and its vitality in the Trump and post-Trump eras.
Selected Working Papers
Whitewashing “White Men Politics”: How Racial and Ethnic Identity Mainstreams the Radical-Right
With Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler (Reichman University), Lihi Ben-Shitrit (New York University), and Julia Elad-Strenger (University of the Bundeswehr).
Presented at the Institute for Humane Studies program, “Democratic Backsliding: A Graduate Papers Workshop,” Arlington, VA, June 27, 2026.
View abstract
Studies show that the increasing visibility of women representatives is a strong legitimizer for the radical-right. Do radical-right politicians from racial and ethnic minorities exert a similar effect? Given the growing number of non-White politicians who tout radical-right agendas, this question is now of key importance. Since the radical-right is associated with both masculinity and Whiteness, we argue that, like in the case of women, increasing the visibility of non-White representatives renders radical-right politicians, policies, and parties more acceptable in the eyes of the public. Using original data from two surveys conducted in the United States (N=300 and N=2,500), we find that regardless of their gender, radical-right politicians from racial and ethnic minorities garner more acceptance for the policies and parties they represent than radical-right politicians without a minority background. Furthermore, we show that the attribution of feminine stereotypes to the non-White radical-right politician mediates this effect, by counteracting the radical-right’s White and masculine image.
We (are also) the People: Immigrant Nationalism and Support for Nationalist Movements
With Raanan Rein (University of Florida).
Presented at the 83rd Annual Midwest Political Science Association Conference (MPSA), April 2026.
View abstract
While scholars study the success of populist-nationalist movements as a phenomenon of natives, these movements have recently won substantial support from immigrants. To explain this puzzle, conventional wisdom invokes reasons other than nationalism itself, like the economy, ideology, and social class. We lay the theoretical foundations for, and provide robust empirical evidence of, “immigrant nationalism” as a driver of support for populist-nationalist movements. Using exclusionary and inclusionary versions of populist-nationalism, these of Donald Trump and Juan Perón, we show that immigrants are not immune to nationalist appeals coming from populist leaders. Immigrant responsiveness to such appeals is neither confined to the present nor unique to inclusionary versions of populist-nationalism. What appears to be a contradiction between inclusive Latin American populism and exclusionary radical-right populism aligns with a single underlying pattern in which immigrants engage with populist-nationalism itself, rather than with the specific ideological content the leader happens to voice.