The State, Racial Threat, and Partisan Vote Choice in the Postwar Era

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Racial and Ethnic Poltics/Policy

Abstract

Voting studies have found a consistent ‘racial threat’ pattern in which the likelihood of whites in general but working-class whites in particular voting for Democratic presidential candidates has been negatively related to the proportion black in their county or state. Traditionally, scholars evoked labor-market competition as the mechanism explaining this class difference. However, such competition no longer exists to the same degree in the post-industrial era. What then explains the persistence of this class difference since the 1960s? I argue that this persistence partly reflects the negative impact of New Deal-era housing policies on American race relations. These policies helped to induce a racial political divide between whites and blacks over residential integration. I explored this hypothesis by examining the association between minority density, social class, and homeownership with the white vote in the years we would expect such divides to appear: the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972. I found that only for homeowners did a racial threat pattern obtain in the white vote for segregationist candidate George Wallace in 1968, whereas class differences in how minority density affected white vote choice appeared only among homeowners. These findings are consistent with a policy-centered explanation implicating federal housing policies in the precipitation of Democratic Party decomposition. Implications for race relations scholarship and political sociological work on social policies are discussed.

Author

• Richard Aviles, University of Wisconsin-Madison