Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T03:12:37.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Racial Attitudes Through a Partisan Lens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2020

Andrew M. Engelhardt Open the ORCID record for Andrew M. Engelhardt [Opens in a new window]
Andrew M. Engelhardt*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The conventional wisdom is that racial attitudes, by forming through early socialization processes, are causally prior to most things political, including whites' party identifications. Yet a broad literature demonstrates that partisanship can shape mass attitudes. The author argues that this influence extends even to presumptively fundamental predispositions like racial attitudes. The study applies cross-lagged models to panel data from the 1990s and 2000s to demonstrate that whites align their racial attitudes with their party loyalties. The results demonstrate that partisanship has a more pronounced influence in the latter time period, which is consistent with a view that changes in the political context can make partisanship a more likely causal force on other attitudes. Racial concerns not only provide a foundation for political conflict: my results reveal that political processes can increase or decrease racial animus.

Keywords

partisanshipprejudiceracial attitudespolarization
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 1062 - 1079
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, CH (1982) Interpreting and Using Regression. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Apfelbaum, EP et al. (2010) In blind pursuit of racial equality? Psychological Science 21(11), 1587–1592.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Azari, J and Hetherington, MJ (2016) Back to the future? What the politics of the late nineteenth century can tell us about the 2016 election. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 667(1), 92–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, LM (2002) Beyond the running tally. Political Behavior 24(2), 1–34.Google Scholar
Bolsen, T, Druckman, JN and Cook, FL (2014) The influence of partisan motivated reasoning on public opinion. Political Behavior 36(2), 235–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, HE (1985) The perils of survey research: inter-personally incomparable responses. Political Methodology 11(3/4), 269–291.Google Scholar
Bullock, JG et al. (2015) Partisan bias in factual beliefs about politics. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10(4), 519–578.Google Scholar
Campbell, A et al. (1960) The American Voter. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Carmines, EG and Stimson, JA (1989) Issue Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carsey, TM and Layman, GC (2006) Changing sides or changing minds? Party identification and policy preferences in the American electorate. American Journal of Political Science 50(2), 464–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Converse, PE (1964) The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In Apter, D (ed.), Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press, pp. 206–261.Google Scholar
Cox, D, Navarro-Rivera, J and Jones, RP (2016) Race, Religion, and Political Affiliation of Americans’ Core Social Networks. Public Religion Research Institute.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crandall, CS, Miller, JM and White, MH II (2018) Changing norms following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Social Psychological and Personality Science 9(2), 186–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Democracy Fund Voter Study Group (2017) Views of the electorate research survey, December 2016. [Computer File] Release 1: August 28, 2017. Washington, DC: Democracy Fund.Google Scholar
Engelhardt, AM (forthcoming) The content of their coverage: contrasting racially conservative and liberal elite rhetoric. Politics, Groups, and Identities. doi:10.1080/21565503.2019.1674672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelhardt, A (2019) “Replication Data for: Racial Attitudes through A Partisan Lens”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/V7TQOZ, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:IPkZFI/NNmz6YwuSRGhIMQ== [fileUNF]Google Scholar
Engelhardt, AM and Utych, SM (2018) Grand old (Tailgate) party? Partisan discrimination in apolitical settings. Political Behavior, 1–21. doi:10.1007/s11109-018-09519-4.Google Scholar
Entman, R and Rojecki, A (2000) The Black Image in the White Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Finkel, SE (1995) Causal Analysis with Panel Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Gaines, BJ et al. (2007) Same facts, different interpretations: partisan motivation and opinion on Iraq. Journal of Politics 69(4), 957–974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilens, M (1999) Why Americans Hate Welfare. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, SK and Hopkins, DJ (Forthcoming) Past place, present prejudice: the impact of adolescent racial context on white racial attitudes. The Journal of Politics. doi:10.1086/706461.Google Scholar
Goren, P (2005) Party identification and core political values. American Journal of Political Science 49(4), 881–896.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, DP, Palmquist, B and Schickler, E (2002) Partisan Hearts and Minds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, A, Madison, J and Jay, J (2006[1788]) The Federalist. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.Google Scholar
Haney López, I (2014) Dog Whistle Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Henderson, JA and Theodoridis, AG (2018) Seeing spots: partisanship, negativity and the conditional receipt of campaign advertisements. Political Behavior 40(4), 965–987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henry, PJ and Sears, DO (2009) The crystallization of contemporary racial prejudice across the lifespan. Political Psychology 30(4), 569–590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Highton, B and Kam, CD (2011) The long-term dynamics of partisanship and issue orientations. Journal of Politics 73(01), 202–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillygus, DS and Shields, TG (2008) The Persuadable Voter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschfeld, LA (1996) Race in the Making. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Huddy, L and Feldman, S (2009) On assessing the political effects of racial prejudice. Annual Review of Political Science 12(1), 423–447.Google Scholar
Hutchings, VL and Valentino, NA (2004) The centrality of race in American politics. Annual Review of Political Science 7(1), 383–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S and Westwood, SJ (2015) Fear and loathing across party lines: new evidence on group polarization. American Journal of Political Science 59(3), 690–707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kam, CD and Burge, CD (2018) Uncovering reactions to the racial resentment scale across the racial divide. The Journal of Politics 80(1), 314–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katznelson, I (2006) When Affirmative Action Was White. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Kinder, DR (2013) Prejudice and politics. In Huddy, L, Sears, DO and Levy, JS (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 812–851.Google Scholar
Kinder, DR and Sanders, LM (1996) Divided by Color. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
King, DS and Smith, RM (2014) ‘Without regard to race’: critical ideational development in modern American politics. The Journal of Politics 76(4), 958–971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krosnick, JA (1988) The role of attitude importance in social evaluation: a study of policy preferences, presidential candidate evaluations, and voting behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55(2), 196–210.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lenz, GS (2012) Follow the Leader? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Logan, JR and Stults, BJ (2011) The Persistence of Segregation in the Metropolis: New Findings from the 2010 Census. Census Brief prepared for Project US2010.Google Scholar
Margolis, MF (2018) From Politics to the Pews. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2018) Uncivil Agreement. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendelberg, T (2001) The Race Card. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norton, MI and Sommers, SR (2011) Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6(3), 215–218.Google ScholarPubMed
Paluck, EL and Green, DP (2009) Prejudice reduction: what works? A review and assessment of research and practice. Annual Review of Psychology 60(1), 339–367.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richeson, JA and Nussbaum, RJ (2004) The impact of multiculturalism versus color-blindness on racial bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40(3), 417–423.Google Scholar
Schickler, E (2016) Racial Realignment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sears, DO (1993) Symbolic politics: a socio-psychological theory. In Iyengar, S and McGuire, WJ (eds), Explorations in Political Psychology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 113–149.Google Scholar
Sears, DO and Brown, C (2013) Childhood and adult political development. In Huddy, L, Sears, DO and Levy, JS (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 59–95.Google Scholar
Sears, DO, Citrin, J and Kosterman, R (1987) Jesse Jackson and the southern white electorate in 1984. In Moreland, LW, Steed, RP and Baker, TA (eds), Blacks in Southern Politics. New York: Praeger, pp. 209–225.Google Scholar
Sears, DO and Funk, CL (1999) Evidence of the long-term persistence of adults’ political predispositions. The Journal of Politics 61(1), 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sides, J, Tesler, M and Vavreck, L (2018) Identity Crisis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sniderman, PM and Carmines, EG (1997) Reaching Beyond Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tarman, C and Sears, DO (2005) The conceptualization and measurement of symbolic racism. The Journal of Politics 67(3), 731–761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tesler, M (2016) Post-Racial or Most-Racial? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Theodoridis, AG (2017) Me, myself, and (I), (D), or (R)? Partisanship and political cognition through the lens of implicit identity. The Journal of Politics 79(4), 1253–1267.Google Scholar
Valentino, NA, Neuner, FG and Vandenbroek, LM (2018) The changing norms of racial political rhetoric and the end of racial priming. The Journal of Politics 80(3), 757–771.Google Scholar
Valentino, NA and Sears, DO (1998) Event-driven political communication and the preadult socialization of partisanship. Political Behavior 20(2), 127–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valentino, NA and Sears, DO (2005) Old times there are not forgotten: race and partisan realignment in the contemporary south. American Journal of Political Science 49(3), 672–688.Google Scholar
Wilkins, CL and Kaiser, CR (2014) Racial progress as threat to the status hierarchy. Psychological Science 25(2), 439–446.Google Scholar
Zaller, J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Engelhardt supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Engelhardt supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 234.8 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Engelhardt Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/V7TQOZ
Link