Plus ça Change: Race, Gender, and Issue Retrospections in the 2008 US Presidential Election

Abstract

A BSTRACT What role did race and gender play in vote choice for US president in 2008?With an African-American Democratic presidential nominee and a female Republican vice presidential nominee, were the black-white racial gap and the gender gap different in 2008 than in previous years? We find that the racial gap between black and white voters was larger in 2008 than it was in three of the four previous presidential elections, but not significantly larger than the gap in 1996 when white Democrat Bill Clinton won reelection. This gap is still present after we include control variables. On the other hand, the apparent gender gap whereby women are more likely than men to support Democratic candidates goes away once we include controls. Other factors -namely Iraq retrospections, ideological voting, and partisan identification -played a role as large or larger in citizen vote choice as did race or gender in the 2008 general election. Even though a voter's race was a key predictor in 2008 and even though there may be a widening racial gap, it is important not to overstate the role of race relative to other well-known predictors of the vote.Did US voters in the 2008 general election for president divide along racial and gender lines, and were those divides larger in 2008 than in recent US presidential elections? 1 Even after controlling for predictors of the vote such as partisanship, did a voter's race or gender have an effect on vote choice? Were race and gender more important than other predictors, such as retrospective voting and partisanship, in influencing citizen vote choice? Because the 2008 election was the first to have an African-American major-party nominee and a female Republican vice presidential nominee, the desire to vote for a candidate who shares one's race or gender may have led more African Americans (and fewer whites or other minorities) to vote Democratic and more women (and fewer men) to vote Republican in 2008 than in years past. Thus, in 2008 there was the potential for a greater racial gap and a smaller gender gap relative to previous elections in which white males were nominated by both major parties.

The Paradox of Race, Religion, and Representation: The Persistent Influence of White Evangelicals and the Decline of White Religious Voters

“…2.Scholars often study race and representation without engaging religion (e.g., Grose 2011; Grose, Husser, and Yoshinaka 2010); or scholars of religion often do not engage race (Wald and Wilcox 2006). …”