Beyond the Veil: Influences on African American Electoral Choices

• In Event: Unmasking Race in Elections

Abstract

For more than five decades, the African American electorate has been predictable in its near-uniform partisan support in presidential elections. Previous scholarship has focused on the cause of this monolithic voting behavior and modeled descriptive frameworks based on racial solidarity, social bonds and inclusivity, and progressive policy positions on racial equality. Though there have been some attempts to discern the extent to which policy issues and voter attributes affect African American voting behavior, this electorate’s political heterogeneity evinced in subgroup deviations from group norms deserves more attention. In this paper, I examine the influences on African American voting behavior that are often masked by party and racial group heuristics. I argue that the diversity of political views held by African American subgroups and individuals exists beyond a partisan veil of the bloc’s electoral homogeneity. Using the factorial survey method, I find that social issues, attributes of candidates for elected office, and racial subgroup demographics have modest to large effects on the political preferences and electoral choices of African American voters. Further, I find that there is incongruence between this electorate’s explicit and implicit voting considerations.

Author

• Ted Johnson, Brennan Center for Justice