The Increasing Racialization of American Electoral Politics, 1988-2016

Abstract

In this article, we examine the relationship between racial resentment and a host of political attitudes, predispositions, and behaviors across 28 years and 7 presidential elections. We find, contrary to the suggestions of recent work of the role of race in the Obama era, that the racialization of seemingly nonracial political issues began many years before the debut of Barack Obama and extends beyond his presidency. More specifically, we find, controlling for other factors, that the relationships between racial resentment and partisan and ideological self-identifications, evaluations of the major party presidential candidates, and attitudes about health insurance and governmental services have strengthened each subsequent year beginning in 1988 through 2016. This trend reflects the growing extent to which racial considerations are brought to bear on individual evaluations of and orientations toward the political world.

The Dynamics of Racial Resentment across the 50 US States

“…Our exploratory analysis reveals that racial progress has not been monotonically improving, perhaps adding to an emerging consensus (Enders and Scott 2018;Yadon and Piston 2018), but this article also adds an important nuance: states' levels of racial resentment have improved and declined at different rates and in different times. National-level analysis leaves us blind to this variation.…”

“…There have been massive changes in the United States since the racial resentment scale was incorporated into the American National Election Studies (ANES) in 1988, but as we show, national aggregate levels of racial resentment seem impervious to the past three decades of change. To be sure, the few scholars who have examined national trends over time provide evidence that racial resentment has become more virulent in effect (Enders and Scott 2018) and has "spilled over" to affect nonracialized policy preferences such as health care (Tesler 2012; Yadon and Piston 2018), but overall, levels of racial resentment among (White) Americans has largely remained stable in level since the mid-1980s.…”

The Persistence of Racialized Health Care Attitudes: Racial Attitudes among White Adults and Identity Importance among Black Adults

“…Moreover, if rhetoric surrounding future legislation provides implicit or explicit racial cues, then a racial gap in opinion might still emerge on non-ACA health policies. Enders and Scott (2019) argue that opinion on non-racial issues has become more racialized among White adults since 1988 and cannot be reduced to an effect of the Obama era. President Obama's race might have provided a source cue that activated racial animus, but the authors point out that Obama's tenure was a “component” of a long-term trend in the relationship between racial attitudes and political opinions and behavior.…”

“…Moreover, the relationship between racial attitudes and views on non-racial policies generally seems to be growing. Enders and Scott (2019) suggest that racial resentment has become an increasingly strong predictor of a wide range of non-racial attitudes since the late 1980s.…”

Post-compromise Democrats, Medicare for all, and the possible futures of American health policy

“…At the same time, the ACA reflects the steadily growing political and ideological polarization, lobbying, economic inequality and the complexity of public policy in the US since at least 1994 if not 1980. [1][2][3] On the Democratic side, leaders attributed Clinton's failure to pass the health care reform of the early 1990s to a lack of Democratic unity and the opposition of powerful interest groups such as the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In response, by the time of the 2008 presidential elections, the differences between Democrats had reduced considerably and their plans became similar.…”