How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election

Abstract

Some commentators claim that white Americans put prejudice behind them when evaluating presidential candidates in 2008. Previous research examining whether white racism hurts black candidates has yielded mixed results. Fortunately, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama provides an opportunity to examine more rigorously whether prejudice disadvantages black candidates. I also make use of an innovation in the measurement of racial stereotypes in the 2008 American National Election Studies survey, which yields higher levels of reporting of racial stereotypes among white respondents. I find that negative stereotypes about blacks significantly eroded white support for Barack Obama. Further, racial stereotypes do not predict support for previous Democratic presidential candidates or current prominent Democrats, indicating that white voters punished Obama for his race rather than his party affiliation. Finally, prejudice had a particularly large impact on the voting decisions of Independents and a substantial impact on Democrats but very little influence on Republicans.

When Does Race Matter? Exploring White Responses to Minority Congressional Candidates

“…While studies on the electoral campaigns of President Obama point to a strong racial effect in vote choice and candidate evaluation (Schaffner, 2011;Kinder and Dale-Riddle, 2012;Stephens-Davidowitz, 2013;Beck, Tien and Nadeau, 2010;Highton, 2011;Piston, 2010) , studies about minority candidates at other levels of government have either not addressed the candidacies of Latinos or Asians or have yielded mixed results. Electoral data suggests that minorities, especially Asians and Latinos, remain underrepresented in elected office (Hajnal, 2010), and that there is disparity in the racial composition of electorates that elect minority candidates, with most black and Latino representatives coming from majority minority districts.…”

Racism, Resentment, and Regionalism: The South and the Nation in the 2008 Presidential Election

“…McCain did not explicitly or implicitly use the race card, even though he could have easily made an issue of the Reverend Wright controversy during the general election campaign. Except for media outlets reminding voters that Obama would be the "first black elected president," 2 the general election campaigns of both candidates steered clear of race (Piston 2010). This created an electoral environment where if race mattered in the choice between Obama and McCain, Obama's African American heritage would be the primary triggering mechanism.…”

“…This created an electoral environment where if race mattered in the choice between Obama and McCain, Obama's African American heritage would be the primary triggering mechanism. Obama and McCain did their parts to make this a "postracial" campaign (Piston 2010).…”

“…Spencer Piston (2010) showed that racial prejudice, in the form of negative stereotypes about blacks in comparison to whites, significantly lowered the probability of white voters supporting Obama. Given Obama's race, this research suggests that racial attitudes may have translated into political behavior during the 2008 presidential election, even though McCain did nothing in his campaign to make Obama's race a factor.…”

“…This paper builds off the work of Piston (2010) by assessing the influences racial attitudes on Southern and non-Southern white, Asian and Hispanic voters in the 2008 presidential election. I use logistic regression to test the hypotheses that higher levels of racial resentment and negative stereotypes about blacks increased the likelihood of supporting McCain and that this likelihood is greater in the South than in the non-South.…”