Which Way Do Your Beans Lean? What Brand Preferences Now Say About Partisanship

On July 9^th Robert Unanue, the chief executive of Goya Foods, attended an event at the White House to roll out the Hispanic Prosperity Initiative. The Initiative was announced in an executive order and introduced at the event. While there Mr. Unanue praised President Trump, saying “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder, and that’s what my grandfather did.” Unanue’s grandfather was the founder of Goya. With this statement the company, previously equated with the Latino-American dream, became a symbol of partisan support across the country. 

Goya is the largest Hispanic food company in the United States, and this statement by the chief executive has divided its consumer base. Social media platforms have been inundated with videos and pictures of cleared pantry shelves and recipes for Goya product substitutions, while Trump supporters responded by going out to buy Goya products. July 14^th saw Ivanka Trump, the First Daughter, tweeting a Goya endorsement photo with the words “If it’s Goya, it has to be good. Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno.”

The next day President Trump also posted in support of Goya Foods, tweeting “@GoyaFoods is doing GREAT. The Radical Left smear machine backfired, people are buying like crazy!” and posting the following picture on Instagram from behind the Resolute Desk.

How has one brand, with only one statement, initiated a strong response from both the White House and American voters? Part of the answer can be found by looking at these events through the frame established by Huddy and Bankert, political scientists who wrote about the powerful impact of political identity in their article Political Partisanship as a Social Identity. They define social identity as “a subjective sense of belonging to a group, which is internalized to varying degrees, resulting in individual differences in identity strength, a desire to positively distinguish from others, and the development of in-group bias”. These three aspects of social identity- identity strength, distinguishing positively from others, and developing in-group bias-  as they related to partisan identity are all manifested in the varied responses to Mr. Unanue’s support of President Trump. The Hispanic community in the United States has a shared experience that sets it apart from those not a part of their social group. This shared experience translates with notable consistency into shared political priorities. There is Hispanic presence across the breadth of the political spectrum, but Hispanic voters are concentrated in the Democratic party and are turning out to vote in unprecedented numbers. During the 2018 midterm election, 27% of Hispanics reported it was their first time voting during a midterm. The Pew Research Center found that 69% of Hispanics voted for Democratic candidates. 

Hispanics on both sides of the political divide are now facing what Mason and Wronski, in their article entitled One Tribe to Bind Them All: How Our Social Group Attachments Strengthen Partisanship, called cross-cutting pressure. Republican Hispanics stand at odds with their social group, which Mason and Wronski demonstrated could lead to weakened political participation (p. 263). Democratic Hispanics are finding themselves in disagreement with Mr. Unanue, who represents a company, a culture, and the concept of the Latino dream in the United States. For most people, including marginalized groups, political affiliation is connected to social identity (p. 259). The resulting emotional connection to party and policy grounds individuals in an emotional model of partisanship outlined by Huddy and Bankert as the expressive mode, leaving partisans strongly motivated to defend their party’s positions and more likely to be biased in how they react to and interpret information. 

In short, the powerful response to Mr. Unanue’s comments come because party affiliation is not merely a ticked box or a letter in parentheses on a ballot come November. Party loyalty is implicitly and powerfully connected to societal perception of someone’s priorities, values, and personality. In an increasingly polarized election year, the smallest of political moves can prove to be a defining moment, and these moments have increased importance for communities with strong ties to one political party.