Candidate Race, Partisanship, and Political Participation

Abstract

A sizable literature in American politics documents increased levels of voter turnout among black citizens when coracial candidates are on the ballot or hold office. However, due to a paucity of black Republican candidates, existing research has been unable to identify whether increased participation occurs irrespective of the candidate’s partisanship. Using data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that, while the presence of a black Democratic House candidate was associated with increased black voter turnout, there was no association between black Republican candidates and black turnout. These results are robust to model specification, issues of statistical power, and contextual differences across districts. We report further evidence that black citizens’ perceptions of black candidates’ ideologies and character traits differed substantially based on the candidate’s party. Our results have implications for understanding how citizens engage in politics when salient political identities come into conflict. The results further suggest that Republican efforts to recruit black candidates are unlikely to mobilize black voters.

The Conditional Effects of Latino Candidates and Partisanship on Latino Turnout

“…Our hypothesis, that the mobilization effects of Latino candidates may be conditional on partisanship, mimics the conclusion reached by Fairdosi and Rogowski (2015) who find evidence that African American turnout in congressional elections is uniquely influenced by the partisanship of African American candidates. Employing survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, they find that African American turnout is significantly higher in elections featuring African American Democratic candidates relative to elections in which an African American Republican candidates is on the ballot.…”

“…In so doing, we argue that a missing link in the extant scholarship is a lack of deeper exploration of the role that a Latino candidate's partisanship may have on Latino turnout. In this paper, we propose a theory of conditional effects that predicts that when a Latino candidate runs for office it will produce either reinforcing or conflicting identities for Latinos in the electorate, depending on the party of the Latino candidate and the partisanship of the Latino voter in question (Fairdosi & Rogowski, 2015). This notion of reinforcing versus conflicting identities is based on three persistent findings in the literature.…”

Immigration Policy and Hispanic Representation in National Elections

“…Using data on U.S. House representatives in post‐redistricting elections in five states, Hayes and McKee (2012) find that Black voters are more likely to participate in congressional districts with Black representatives. Evidence of increased political engagement when co‐racial candidates are on the ballot is also documented for Hispanics (Barreto, 2007) and Black voters (Fairdosi & Rogowski, 2015; Washington, 2006).…”

“…Third, the study informs a broad literature on the determinants of minorities’ political engagement, which has primarily focused on registration and voting as the main indicators of their political engagement (e.g., Amuedo‐Dorantes & Bucheli, 2020; Fairdosi & Rogowski, 2015; Fraga, 2016; Hayes & McKee, 2012). Not much is known about the factors driving minorities’ participation as candidates in national elections.…”

A New Decision Calculus: Race in International Political Economy Studies

“…Race affects our trust in each other and in government (Hetherington and Globetti 2002;Marschall and Stolle 2004), our assessment of the performance of public officials in key events like disasters (Reinhardt 2015a;Koliba, Mills, and Zia 2011), and our own sense of place and space (Light and Harris 2012;Falk, Hunt, and Hunt 2006). And because we know that these factors are determinants of our worldviews and decisions moving forward, we also know that race drives decisions about migration (Reinhardt 2015b;Burrell et al 2019;Erel, Murji, and Nahaboo 2016;Berg 2017;Kaur 2004;Silverstein 2005;Fussell, Sastry, and VanLandingham 2010), investment (Rajaram 2018;Findlay and Lundahl 1987;Shin and Hanna 2015;Gutter and Fontes 2006), and political participation (Bobo and Gilliam Jr 1990;Bueno and Fialho 2009;Leighley and Vedlitz 1999;Verba et al 1993;Fairdosi and Rogowski 2015;Anoll 2018).…”