White Voters and African American Candidates for Congress

Highton, Benjamin

doi:10.1023/b:pobe.0000022341.98720.9e

Cited by 163 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Notable among these studies is Highton (2004), who examined real world black candidates using exit polls. He finds that black incumbents are evaluated on par with their white counterparts and are just as likely to be re-elected.…”

Section: Minority Candidates and Vote Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most scholarly works on minority candidates focus primarily on black candidates and their relation to white voters (Hajnal, 2007(Hajnal, , 2001Highton, 2004;Bullock, 2000;Terkildsen, 1993). However, the literature on minority candidacies has yet to account for the increasing racial diversity in the array of candidates running for office at all levels of government.…”

Section: Which Races Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most observational studies of race have examined the white electorate as a whole without examining how different racial attitudes among whites may effect minority candidacies (Highton, 2004;Bullock, 1984). While recent studies have explored the influence of differing racial attitudes among whites on the evaluation of President Obama (Tesler and Sears, 2010;Jacobson, 2011;Kinder and Dale-Riddle, 2012), there has not yet been an observational study that examines the effect of racial attitudes on black, Latino, and Asian candidates at the congressional level.…”

Section: For Whom Does Race Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The CCES is a nationally representative survey that has several important advantages over existing studies (Highton, 2004;Bullock, 2000). First, between the 2010 and 2012 CCES, there were roughly 100,000 respondents.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some have found that persistent prejudices have a negative effect on minority candidates (Terkildsen, 1993;Sigelman et al, 1995;Kinder and Sanders, 1996). On the other hand, many observational studies of minority candidates have found that the negative effect of race is largely dependent on electoral and candidate context (Highton, 2004;Hajnal, 2001Hajnal, , 2007Citrin, Green and Sears, 1990), and that under certain contexts, like incumbency and campaign messaging, race might cease to be a significant consideration in vote choice. I argue that what is missing from these studies is a theory that considers how racial perceptions and electoral context might mediate candidate evaluations, as well as comprehensive data that can test a theory that considers many of the contextual variables that might go into a voter's decision to vote for or against a minority candidate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

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

Visalvanich

2015

SSRN Journal

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How significant of a factor is race in minority candidate evaluation? I present theory of race and minority candidate evaluation which argues that candidate race acts as an informational heuristic that affects perceptions of a candidate's ideological leaning and competence but that this effect is dependent on contextual factors, including the racial group and candidate partisanship. Using the 2010 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Elections Study, I provide an observational look at Latino and Asian candidates in addition to black candidates for the first time, as well as minority candidates of both partisan stripes. I examine voter perceptions about candidates that might drive their vote choice, namely ideological assessments and competence assessments. I find that white voters are less likely to support Latino and black Democrats because they are viewed as less competent and more ideologically extreme. I find that Asian candidates and minority Republicans are largely unaffected by these biases.

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Section: Minority Candidates and Vote Choicementioning

confidence: 99%