(iPoster) Are Black Conservatives More Likely to Vote Republican in Republican Majority Districts?

• In Event: Poster Session: Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) Scholars

Abstract

Black people have voted for the Democratic Party for decades, and this is a relationship that crosses even ideological lines, as a majority of Black conservatives vote for the Democratic Party. This relationship is known as the ideological-partisanship paradox, and one of the leading explanations is racialized social constraint theory. This theory posits that social pressures are one of the primary driving forces behind the overwhelming support for the Democratic Party within the Black community. Furthermore, this theory explains the ideological-partisanship paradox as resulting from Black conservatives weighing the pros and cons of deviating from the social norm of Democratic support, and that there is much more to lose than to gain if one were to support the Republican Party. Within my research, I examined whether removing the social constraint of a Democratic majority district, thereby focusing on Black conservatives in Republican majority districts, would lead to more Republican voting in Presidential elections. I expected to see that Black conservatives in Republican Majority districts would be more likely to vote for Republican Presidential candidates. I theorized that since Black conservatives are ideologically misaligned with the Democratic Party and there would be less social constraint to support Democratic candidates in Republican controlled districts, they would be more likely to deviate from the social norm of Democratic support.

Counter to my expectations, however, I found that being in a Republican controlled district is not a significant predictor of Republican voting in Black conservatives. Black conservatives in Republican controlled districts were only slightly more likely to vote for Republican candidates, and this relationship was not significant at a 95% level. Black conservatives in general were more likely to support Republican candidates, in comparison to non-conservative Black people, regardless of the district they lived in. Even though I was not able to reject my null, I believe that there is still much more to find in the realm of the ideological-partisanship paradox of the Black conservative Democratic voter.

Author

• Kevin Jerone Hunter, University of Tennessee Knoxville