Racial Prejudice and Split-Ticket Voting: How Racial Priming Undercuts Party ID

• In Event: Race, Party, and Geography

Abstract

In the past, the distinction between explicit and implicit racial priming in campaigns was clear: Explicit racial priming hurt a candidate, but implicit racial priming successfully activated voters' racial attitudes. While today, scholars have begun to observe the erosion of this distinction, Mendelberg’s Model of Implicit-Explicit Racial Priming clearly articulated when racial attitudes would successfully be activated during campaigns. What we want to better understand is what were/are the consequences to white Americans’ voting behavior when racial attitudes become more salient? Specifically, when racial attitudes become increasingly salient, do they have the potential to undermine the traditional role that party identification plays when white voters are deciding for whom to vote? Using the ANES Cumulative Survey from 1986-2016, we explore how white respondents’ racial attitudes evolved over time and whether during times of increased salience, racial attitudes undercut the typical role of partisanship and lead to greater levels of split-ticket voting. Initial results suggest that during and after the Obama administration, white respondents’ anti-Black attitudes did lead to a significant increase of split-ticket voting for white respondents who identified as Democrats and a significant decrease (or hunkering down) of split-ticket voting for white respondents who identified as Republicans.

Authors

• Carrie Levan, Colby College

• Stacey Ann Greene, Rutgers University, New Brunswick