Racial Transition and White-Voter Support for Black Candidates in Urban Elections

Liu, Baodong; Vanderleeuw, James M.

doi:10.1111/0735-2166.00091

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Liu and Vanderleeuw (2001) find that Anglos residing in predominantly African American districts, recognizing the low probability of an Anglo candidate winning, strategically vote for the African American candidate that is most sympathetic to Anglo interests. As the number of African American candidates increases, African American voters are able to pursue both descriptive and substantive representation.…”

Section: The Electoral Implications Of Race and Ethnicitymentioning

confidence: 89%

The Importance of Race and Ethnicity in Congressional Primary Elections

Branton

2008

Political Research Quarterly

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Research regarding the electoral importance of race and ethnicity in congressional elections is limited by the overwhelming focus on general-election outcomes. This article seeks to extend this research by examining minority candidate emergence and electoral competition in U.S. House primary elections, using a new data set on all U.S. House contests between 1994 and 2004 that includes demographic information on all the candidates in the primary elections.The results indicate that district-level race and ethnicity are associated with minority candidate emergence; furthermore, the presence of minority candidates influences electoral competitiveness in primary elections.

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Section: The Electoral Implications Of Race and Ethnicitymentioning

confidence: 89%

The Importance of Race and Ethnicity in Congressional Primary Elections

Branton

2008

Political Research Quarterly

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“…Black-threat theory, in this traditional manifestation, predicts a negative relationship between the degree of biracial support for a candidate and the size of the black population-as the black population grows and blacks compete for office, the vote will increasingly polarize along racial lines. An alternate conceptualization of black threat theory, however, posits a curvilinear relationship between white voter support for black candidates and the electorate's racial makeup (Liu and Vanderleeuw 2001). The argument here is that in the setting of a white majority, some white voters will support what they perceive as qualified black candidates because blacks generally will not be perceived as much of a threat.…”

Section: Biracial Electoral Coalitions: Theories and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Racial Polarization or Biracial Coalition? An Empirical Analysis of the Electoral Coalition of Winning Candidates in Urban Elections

Vanderleeuw¹,

Liu²

2007

ARP

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Inspired by deracialization and black threat theories, this research uses the racial context of American cities to explain winning electoral coalitions in urban elections. A total of 137 municipal elections in New Orleans and Memphis between 1969 and 2003 are examined. The multiple regression results confirm the previous findings that black candidates are more likely than white candidates to win urban elections based on racial bloc voting, urban elections are more likely to be racially polarized in mayoral races than in city-council contests, and the competitiveness of elections reflected by the size of candidate pool shapes the needs for winning candidates to build biracial elections. The most important finding, however, is a nonlinear, half U-shaped relationship between racial polarization and the electorate’s racial makeup. This suggests that the deracialization strategy designed to reduce the negative effect of race in urban electoral campaigns is especially important when the electorate is heavily black. In this electoral setting, a substantial level of electoral support from voters of both racial groups is necessary for victory.

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“…After all, 30% of whites expressed political support for one of the black mayoral candidates in the general election (SurveyUSA, ). And, according to findings from strong BPE cities like New Orleans, white crossover voting in Atlanta should have been high in the general and runoff elections because of the city's “black dominant context” (Liu & Vanderleeuw, ). In other words, Norwood should not have done as well as she did.…”

Section: Votes: An Omen Of “Ethnoracial Transition” In City Hall?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Under normal circumstances, the majority of white voters should have supported either Reed or Borders in the general election and Reed in the runoff election, if they were behaving electorally in conventionally strategic ways. “From a strategic political perspective, it makes sense that many whites would cast a ballot for the black candidate perceived to be least threatening to white interests, even over a white opponent” (Liu & Vanderleeuw, , p. 311).…”

Section: Votes: An Omen Of “Ethnoracial Transition” In City Hall?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Weakening Strong Black Political Empowerment: Implications from Atlanta’s 2009 Mayoral Election

Owens

Brown

2014

Journal of Urban Affairs

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Atlanta is perhaps the city with the greatest degree of black political empowerment (BPE) in the United States. Yet in 2009 a relatively weak white mayoral candidate nearly won the general and runoff elections over a field of stronger black candidates. Why? Treating Atlanta as a prototypical case, the article examines factors that undermine the capacity of blacks to retain control of mayoralties in strong BPE cities, with an emphasis on disruptions to black electorates, discontent among black citizens, and reinvestment in electoral politics by whites at the local level.The city that became a post-civil rights movement emblem of the political power held by AfricanAmericans could have a white mayor for the first time in a generation-a possibility that has some in the black community scrambling to hold on to City Hall. (Haines, 2009) The struggle for and substance of black political empowerment (BPE) is a key concern of the urban politics literature. Studies examine the necessary and sufficient conditions for black political incor-). 1 What of the electoral challenges and lessons of retaining blacks in city hall as mayors over time?Other than the cases where black control of city hall was hard-fought but fleeting in non-majority black cities (e.g., Charlotte, Chicago, New York City, Denver, Dallas, and Seattle), scholars know little about the factors for losing mayoral control by blacks. Cases where blacks in BPE cities have lost mayoral control to whites (or other groups such as Latinos), or faced strong competition from non-blacks in biracial elections, are uncommon. In a few cities where BPE has been strong (e.g., Detroit, Memphis, Newark, and Washington D.C.), black mayoral regimes are uninterrupted for two decades or more. New Orleans is the exception because of its dramatic demographic transformations from hurricane recovery and public housing demolition. Nearly uninterrupted black mayoral regimes of a decade or so, with white mayors being electoral stand-ins between black mayoral administrations, have occurred in other strong BPE cities (e.g., Baltimore and Philadelphia).Demographic projections, however, forecast that Detroit, Portsmouth (VA), Newark, Washington, D.C., Richmond (VA), Inglewood (CA), Philadelphia, and other strong BPE cities with black

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Racial Transition and White-Voter Support for Black Candidates in Urban Elections

Cited by 17 publications

References 15 publications

The Importance of Race and Ethnicity in Congressional Primary Elections

The Importance of Race and Ethnicity in Congressional Primary Elections

Racial Polarization or Biracial Coalition? An Empirical Analysis of the Electoral Coalition of Winning Candidates in Urban Elections

Weakening Strong Black Political Empowerment: Implications from Atlanta’s 2009 Mayoral Election

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