President Obama and the Emergence of Islamophobia in Mass Partisan Preferences

Abstract

This article argues that the unusually large and persistent association between Islamophobia and opposition to President Obama helped make attitudes about Muslims a significant, independent predictor of Americans’ broader partisan preferences. After detailing the theoretical basis for this argument, the article marshals repeated cross-sectional data, two panel surveys, and a nationally representative survey experiment, to test its hypotheses. The results from those analyses show the following: (1) attitudes about Muslims were a significantly stronger independent predictor of voter preferences for congress in 2010–2014 elections than they were in 2004–2008; (2) attitudes about Muslims were a significantly stronger independent predictor of mass partisanship during Obama’s presidency than they were beforehand; and (3) experimentally connecting Obama to Democratic congressional candidates significantly increased the relationship between anti-Muslim sentiments and Americans’ preferences for Republican congressional candidates. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for American politics in the Trump era.

The Duality of American Christian Nationalism: Religious Traditionalism versus Christian Statism

“…In addition, it was in this period when scholars started to notice that mass media and political elites routinely vilified Muslims and Middle Easterners in the public sphere (Bail 2014; Jamal and Sinno 2009; Love 2017). The fear that American Muslims were natural enemies of the Christian democracy further solidified the political bonds between the Republican Party and the Religious Right, particularly white evangelicals (Calfano and Lajevardi 2019; Grossman and Hopkins 2016; Tesler 2021).…”

In the shadow of September 11: The roots and ramifications of anti‐Muslim attitudes in the United States

“…Propagated by a political and media climate that often portrays Muslims as threatening, violent, and primitive, public opinion has grown increasingly negative. Numerous polls since 2001 consistently show American public perception of Muslims as worse than most other racial, ethnic, or religious groups (Edgell et al., 2006; Khan & Ecklund, 2013; Lajevardi, 2017; Panagopoulos, 2006; Selod, 2015; Tesler, 2022). The 2020 American National Election Study (ANES) survey reinforces that these negative attitudes persist today, with Americans rating Muslims least favorably compared to other groups.…”

“…Similar approaches have been taken by other scholars, such as Tesler and Sears (2010), who proposed that attitudes towards Muslims and undocumented immigrants can be indicative of ethnocentric sentiments towards other outgroups, such as Blacks, who may not elicit as explicit expressions of prejudice in the present political climate. More recently, Tesler (2022) postulated that there is a large and persistent link between anti‐Muslim sentiments and opposition to President Obama, which saw the emergence of anti‐Muslim attitudes becoming an independent predictor of American political partisan preferences. In this study, Tesler utilized a number of datasets to gauge anti‐Muslim hostility with the use of favorability ratings and questions probing respondents to indicate which religion aside from their own they least and most respected.…”

Anti-Muslim policy preferences and boundaries of American identity across partisanship

“…Scholars increasingly recognize the independent and important role that attitudes toward Muslims play in American politics. This emerging body of research finds that negative affect toward Muslims is held by a substantial portion of the electorate (Gerteis et al, 2020;Lajevardi, 2020;Mogahed et al, 2018;Panagopoulos, 2006), influences candidate evaluations (Calfano et al, 2020;Kalkan et al, 2018) and the prospect of substantive representation (Lajevardi, 2018), predicts vote outcomes and policy evaluations (Jardina and Stephens-Dougan, 2021;Lajevardi and Abrajano, 2019;Tesler, 2021), and shapes partisan preferences (Tesler, 2021).…”