Racial Resentment and the Changing Partisanship of Southern Whites

Abstract

One of the most important developments in southern politics in recent years has been the increase in the number of whites holding Republican Party identifications. This article examines the effects of racial attitudes on changing levels of partisanship. Specifically, the article focuses on the concept of racial resentment or symbolic racism. This is an appropriate concept to examine the effects of the contemporary racial attitudes on partisanship, as racial issues have become much more diffuse in nature. It is argued that in the 1990s the southern Republican congressional leadership was especially successful in making salient issues likely to activate the racial resentment of southern whites. A multivariate analysis demonstrates that racial resentment was not a strong or significant predictor of partisanship prior to 1994; however, in 1994 and 2000 racial resentment had a large and significant effect on partisanship. These findings suggest that race and racial attitudes continue to shape southern party politics in the early twenty-first century.

Racial Resentment and Vote Choice in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

“…Furthermore, racial resentment has been demonstrated to be a powerful explanatory variable for a variety of political attitudes and behavior, even after controlling for other variables in multivariate analyses. It has shaped white attitudes toward both racial and nonracial issues (Kinder and Sanders 1996;Sears et al 1997), attitudes toward black candidates and political figures (McConahay and Hough 1976;Sears, Citrin, and Kosterman 1987;Sears and Kinder 1971), symbols like the confederate flag (Orey 2004), party identification among Southern whites (Knuckey 2005;Valentino and Sears 2005), and vote choice (Howell 1994;Kinder and Sanders 1996;Knuckey and Orey 2000;Reeves 1997).…”

Campaign allocations under probabilistic voting

“…50 The traditional view of the predominance of race in Southern voting was initiated by the classic book by Key (1949). Knuckey (2005) argues that racial factors reasserted themselves in southern politics in the 1990's after becoming not a significant predictor of voting in the period prior to that. The main recent challenge to this traditional view is Johnston and Shafer (2006), who argue that class and economic factors other than race explain southern voting patterns after the civil rights era of the 1960s.…”

The Newest Southerners: Generational Differences in Electoral Behavior in the Contemporary South

“…One of the variables in the table is an index of attitudes toward blacks, which is formed from three questions about blacks; this index measures how favorable or unfavorable the respondent views blacks. Similar measures have been used by other researchers, who often term this racial 5 resentment (Aistrup, Kisangani, and Piri 2010;Knuckey 2005;. The other racial issue variable is a question about whether the federal government should take action to ensure that blacks receive fair treatment when it comes to jobs; this variable is a measure of government policy toward blacks.…”