Can Republican African Americans Win African American Votes? A Field Experiment

Abstract

In the face of its 2012 defeat and looming demographic trends that did not bode well for the party's future presidential candidates, the Republican National Committee officially declared its intention to recruit more African American candidates for office. But will fielding more African American candidates likely attract more African American votes for Republicans? Here, I employ a field experiment using real candidates and real votes cast in two down-ballot races featuring African American Republican candidates. Among voters who received mailings highlighting both race and party, African American voters responded primarily to party, in the process largely rejecting these two candidates. By contrast, African American voters responded more favorably when they learned the race, but not the party, of these candidates. The results here suggest something of a self-affirming political preference order in which African Americans felt affirmed by voting for a fellow African American, but only when they did not see that candidate as conflicting with a more central aspect of their political identity.

The Significance of Symbolic Representation for Gender Issues in Politics

“…Recent studies adopt more intersectional approaches to symbolic representation (Brown & Allen, 2017;Murray, 2016;Evans, 2016) showing, for example, that the identification and political engagement of women voters with new female candidates works to attract younger female voters (Wolbrecht & Campbell, 2017). The definition of symbolic representation as a derivative of descriptive representation, though less present, can also be found in empirical studies about racial and ethnic minoritized groups (Niven, 2017;Hayes &Hibbing, 2017).…”

Black Millennials, Slipping Alliances, and the Democratic Party

“…When presented with a White Democratic candidate and a Black Republican candidate, Black voters were likely to support the White Democratic candidate (Kidd et al 2007; Lerman and Sadin 2016). Further, African American voters are more likely to vote for the Black Republican candidate when party is not known and less likely to vote for the Black Republican candidate when party is known (Niven 2017). Since the Democratic Party has shown a willingness to support Black interests, this further explained the loyalty we see among the Black electorate.…”

Identification and political advertising: Exploring the role of ethnic identification in political advertising campaigns

“…When it comes to minorities running for office there is a debate in the literature on whether or not they face a backlash or not from White voters. Extant research has found contradictory results (Meyer & Woodard, 2017; Niven, 2017). Race, religiosity, and political ideology are all examples of social identities.…”