Polls and Elections: Do Blacks and Whites See Obama through Race‐Tinted Glasses? A Comparison of Obama's and Clinton's Approval Ratings

Abstract

Recent presidential approval trends have led many pollsters to conclude that a “racial gap” exists in President Barack Obama's job approval ratings. Pollsters have focused disproportionately on the substantial gap between Blacks and Whites. Some political commentators and media outlets attribute this divergence to the fact that Obama is the first ethnic/racial minority to occupy the White House. The existence of a White‐Black gap, however, could merely reflect the differences in the political preferences of White and Black Americans. In this article, we assess these two competing arguments by analyzing CNN polling data spanning President Obama's inauguration in January 2009 to June 2011. For comparative purposes, we examine Time/CNN polling data that begins with President Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993 to June 1995. Our findings suggest that the gap in Black support for President Obama is significantly larger than it is for President Clinton, providing evidence that racial group pride and solidarity appear to play an important role in Blacks' evaluations of Obama.

Traiting Places: Race and the Evaluation of Black and White Presidential Candidates

“…Conversely, a substantial number of whites viewed Clinton as untrustworthy and as less relatable than other politicians (Holian and Prysby , ; Cohen ). Given this, it is not surprising that Abrajano and Burnett () find that both Obama and Clinton have higher approval ratings among blacks as compared to whites. Even when Clinton's approval ratings dropped due to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, blacks continued to approve of his performance in office (Kim ).…”

“…While there are a substantial number of differences between Obama and any previous president, there are the numerous similarities between Obama and the most recent Democratic President, Bill Clinton. From a political perspective, the two candidates represent the only Democrats elected (and reelected) to the White House in the previous three decades and both presidencies began after unpopular Republican control of the White House (Burke ; Abrajano and Burnett ). Moreover, both presidents began with unified party control of Congress, but quickly entered a period of divided government.…”

“…Bill Clinton has been described as a “white soul brother” by Ishmael Reed and declared the “first black [p]resident” by Toni Morrison, both well‐respected black authors (Cepeda ; Morrison ). Finally, from an empirical perspective, numerous previous studies comparing Obama to previous presidents have used Clinton because he serves as an apt comparison (see Abrajano and Burnett ; Devos and Ma ; Tesler ).…”

“…However, there is also good reason to believe that, all else being equal, white respondents will perceive black candidates as being worse on a number of traits than white politicians. Abrajano and Burnett () find that whites were more likely to approve of Clinton than Obama. Along the same lines, Lewis‐Beck, Tien, and Nadeau (2009) show that controlling for a number of factors that traditionally predict presidential success, Obama did significantly worse than his white Democratic predecessors.…”

“…Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I'm a black [p]resident.” While Obama's claim is based on his own experiences, there is a significant amount of social science research which shows that blacks and whites do judge Obama's presidency very differently (Tesler and Sears ; Lewis‐Beck, Tien, and Nadeau 2009). For example, Abrajano and Burnett () find that blacks were significantly more likely to approve of Obama than previous Democratic presidents. Conversely, these authors show that whites were less approving of Obama than his Democratic predecessors.…”