Conditioned by Race: How Race and Religion Intersect to Affect Candidate Evaluations

Abstract

While it is becoming increasingly clear that religious cues influence voter evaluations in the United States, work examining religious cues has largely overlooked the conditioning role of race. We employed a 2 × 2 (White candidate vs. Black candidate) × (racial cues vs. no racial cues) online experiment with a national sample (N= 397; 56% white, 46% black) where participants were exposed to a fictitious congressional candidate's webpage. Results show that White participants expected the religious candidate to be more conservative, regardless of race, while Black participants did not perceive a difference in ideology between the religious and non-religious Black candidates. Additionally, when it comes to candidate favorability, religious cues matter more to White participants, while racial cues are most important to Black participants. These findings provide evidence that religious and racial cues activate different assumptions among White and Black citizens.

How Do Religion and Sexual Orientation Affect Support for U.S. Presidential Candidates? Evidence from a Survey Experiment

“…Additionally, our study emphasizes the need to think of religion as more than a discrete factor. As Wilde (2018) has argued recently, religion's relationship to other social structures and personal attributes is “complex.” This insight has led a small, but burgeoning, number of scholars to explore the intersection of religion with other social factors, particularly race and gender (Benstead, Jamal, and Lust 2015; Brian R. Calfano and Djupe 2011; McLaughlin and Thompson 2016; Wilde, Tevington, and Shen 2017). Our research underscores the value of this work and highlights the need for future scholarship to devote additional attention to the intersection of religion and sexual orientation.…”

“…A few recent studies have also considered how candidates’ religious traits intersect with race and gender. McLaughlin and Thompson (2016), for instance, found that white respondents saw a black, religious candidate as more conservative than a nonreligious, black candidate, while black participants did not perceive a difference in ideology between the two (see also Calfano and Paolino 2010). Calfano and Djupe (2011) showed that support for female political candidates decreased when they made religious appeals relative to those who did not.…”

The Development of Gratitude in the United States

“…In fact, recent research has shown that religious affiliation has an influence on an individual’s political leaning in the United States (Weber & Thornton, 2012). In addition, it appears that the complex intersection of religion and race plays a significant role in political affiliation (McLaughlin & Thompson, 2016).…”

Church or state? Reassessing how religion shapes impressions of candidate positions

“…The effectiveness of religious cues may also be heterogeneous among specific groups and behavioral tendencies. Future work should further probe the partisan asymmetries uncovered here and delve into the potential for difference due to such factors as religious orthodoxy (Layman, 1997), political activity (Malka et al, 2012), race (McDaniel and Ellison, 2008; McLaughlin and Thompson, 2016), and fundamentalist cultural preferences (Jelen, 1993). Further, while our theory and subsequent results address the influence of religious cues in partisan elections, these results do not account for the many non-partisan elections that take place annually at various levels of government.…”