Matt A. Barreto

About

Matt A. Barreto is a Professor of Political Science and a Professor of Chicana/o & Central American Studies at UCLA, with a courtesy appointment in Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. He joined UCLA in 2015, holding a joint appointment in Political Science and the César A. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies. Prior to UCLA, he was a Professor in Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, and served as the director of the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. His research focuses on the political participation of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Barreto has taught courses on racial and ethnic politics, Latino politics, the Voting Rights Act, elections, statistics, and American politics. He is a co-author of notable works including 'Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America' and 'Latino America: How America's Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation.' In 2007, he co-founded Latino Decisions, a political polling firm specializing in surveying and analyzing the Latino vote, and in 2021, he launched BSP Research, a firm that surveys Latinos and communities of color nationally. Barreto is also a senior advisor to the Biden White House aligned group Building Back Together and participates regularly in White House briefings. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine, in 2005.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Law
• Medicine
• Social Science
• Criminology
• Political economy
• History

Selected publications

• Xenophobia in the time of pandemic: othering, anti-Asian attitudes, and COVID-19

  Politics Groups and Identities · 2020 · 411 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  As the number of COVID-19 cases rose in the US and around the world in early 2020, conservative elites in the US racialized the pandemic, referring to the coronavirus as the "Chinese flu" or the "Wuhan virus." Existing research suggests that this linking of the viral pandemic to a social group will "activate" anti-Asian attitudes in the mass public, helping bring those attitudes to bear on behaviors and attitudes related to COVID-19. Despite anecdotal evidence of a spike in discriminatory behavi…

  PublisherDOI

• Spanish-Language News Consumption and Latino Reactions to COVID-19

  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2021 · 26 citations

  = 1200) on the impact and reactions to COVID-19, this study examines the implications of Spanish-language news media consumption on source credibility and attitude formation during the COVID-19 pandemic among Latinos and immigrants from Latin America. Through a series of statistical analyses, this study finds that ethnic news consumption is strongly associated with trust in Spanish-language journalists, whereas mainstream media consumption is not associated with trust in English-language journal…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Ripple Effect: The Political Consequences of Proximal Contact with Immigration Enforcement

  The Journal of Race Ethnicity and Politics · 2020 · 21 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract A growing body of research suggests that proximal exposure to immigration enforcement can have important social and health-related consequences. However, there is little research identifying the impact of proximal contact with immigration policy on political attitudes and behaviors, and still less investigating the underlying mechanisms that might connect contact and political dispositions. Drawing on insights from criminal justice, we argue that proximal immigration contact influences…

  PublisherDOI

• The Great White Hope

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 20 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Donald Trump has polarized the country more than any other time in the last 75 years. What are the forces that pushed him into the Oval Office? Further, what are the implications, if any, of his election? Drawing on prior work on the Tea Party movement, when we put Trump’s victory in historical context of reactionary movements of the past, his election is simply an extension of a process that began with the Know Nothing Party of the 19th Century. We demonstrate that Trump’s rise, like the format…

  PublisherDOI

• Black Lives Matter and the Racialized Support for the January 6th Insurrection

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2023-07-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Does support for the January 6th insurrection come mostly from concerned citizens worried over illegal voting, or from racists spurred to action by the highly visible Black Lives Matter protests and Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat? We field a survey experiment aimed at disentangling links between old and new racial grievances, anti-immigrant beliefs, Black activism, and support for the January 6th insurrection. We find that the people most likely to be supportive of the insurrection are whites who ho…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gary M. Segura

  University of California, Los Angeles

  42 shared

• Loren Collingwood

  University of New Mexico

  26 shared

• Bryan Garcia-Rios Wilcox-Archuleta

  The University of Texas at Austin

  20 shared

• Elizabeth Bergman

  Texas Woman's University

  20 shared

• Kassra A. R. Oskooii

  University of Delaware

  20 shared

• Gabriel R. Sánchez

  Firalis (France)

  17 shared

• Christopher S. Parker

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  15 shared

• Karam Dana

  University of Washington Bothell

  9 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  2009

• M.A., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  2005

• B.A., Political Science

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2003

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

• Anthony Pagdenh-36
• Jeffrey B. Lewish-32
• Susanne Lohmannh-27