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

Abstract

The victory of Barack Obama over John McCain in the 2008 presidential election marked a historic and pivotal moment in American politics. Many observers interpreted the election as heralding a new “post racial” politics. However, others noted that even though short‐term forces were overwhelmingly pro‐Democratic in 2008, Obama's overall vote among white voters barely increased on the share received by John Kerry in 2004. This study uses data from the American National Election Study to examine the effect of the racial attitudes—specifically racial resentment—of whites on vote choice in the 2008 presidential election. Findings show that racial resentment exerted a large influence on vote choice, one that was only exceeded by party identification. Furthermore, the effect of racial resentment was greater than in any prior election for which data on racial resentment is available. La victoria de Barack Obama sobre John McCain en las elecciones presidenciales del2008 marcó un momento histórico y sustancial en la política americana. Muchos observadores interpretaron el resultado de la elección como el inicio de una nueva etapa “post‐racial” en la política. Sin embargo, hay quienes señalan que aunque hubo fuerzas a favor de los demócratas durante el 2008, la popularidad de Obama entre los votantes blancos aumentó ligeramente con respecto a la proporción recibida por John Kerry en el 2004. Este artículo usa datos tomados del American National Election Study para examinar los efectos de la actitud racial‐específicamente el resentimiento racial‐ de votantes blancos en la elección presidencial del 2008. Los resultados muestran que el resentimiento racial ejerció un efecto significativo en la elección electoral, siendo superado sólo por la afiliación partidaria. Además, el impacto del resentimiento racial fue mayor que cualquier otra elección para la cual se tiene información al respecto.

Obama and 2012: Still a Racial Cost to Pay?

“…For the 2008 estimation, we estimated racial cost to Democratic candidate Obama was 5.04 percentage points of the total popular vote. Since our initial estimate, several other scholars have confirmed our finding of significant racial bias in the 2008 presidential vote (Block 2011;Donovan 2010;Highton 2011;Knuckey 2011;Piston 2010).…”

The Myth of the “Two Souths?” Racial Resentment and White Party Identification in the Deep South and Rim South*

“…According to Tesler and Sears () racial resentment had a large effect on presidential vote choice in 2008 throughout the nation—one that exceeded that found in any prior presidential election—and was not just confined to the South. Similar findings are made by Kinder and Dale‐Riddle () and Knuckey ().…”

What motivates a conspiracy theory? Birther beliefs, partisanship, liberal-conservative ideology, and anti-Black attitudes

“…Both indexes were scaled to range from 0 (most pro-Black) to 1 (most anti-Black). These items were chosen because the two sets of measures have been well validated, were closely associated with political outcomes in recent studies (Knuckey, 2011;Pasek et al, 2014;Piston, 2010), and we wanted to ensure that any results were robust to concerns over the conflation of racial attitude measures with related constructs (cf. Sears, 1994;Sniderman and Tetlock, 1986;Tesler and Sears, 2010).…”