Race and the Race, 10/20 Update
I just went over the numbers in the Time Magazine poll from September 26-29 (Thanks to the Roper Center for making the data available here). Among all voters (excluding leaners), Obama led McCain 53-47. To get how racial attitudes might be shaping this result, I looked at white voters who disapprove of George Bush’s performance as president. I did this because I think it’s safe to assume that whites who approve of Bush at this point will probably be voting for McCain whether his opponent were white, black, brown, or purple.
In this group of Bush disapproving whites, Obama has 64 percent of the vote. I then looked how the Obama vote varied with the response to this question:
“Which of these statements comes closer to your own views?1. Racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days, OR
2. Blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition”
Obama did 30 points worse among those who said blacks were responsible for their own condition compared to those who cited racial discrimination (80 percent to 50 percent). The effect is most pronounced among Democrats. Republicans and Independents who cited blacks’ own responsibility were only slightly less likely to vote for Obama (4 and 3 points, respectively). For Democrats, however, the difference was 10 points. Table with results after the jump.
**Update: The first commenter makes a good point and I should have pointed out that these are pure independents (those left after independents who lean to one party or another are assigned). That said, there aren’t many of them—something like 30, so take the numbers for independents with a grain of salt.
Obama Performance By Party and Racial Attitudes
| Discrimination | Blacks Responsible | |
|---|---|---|
| All | 80 | 50 |
| Republicans | 15 | 11 |
| Independents | 31 | 28 |
| Democrats | 99 | 89 |
Comments
Of course, the relatively tiny differences within party almost obscure the fact that the answer to the question is decently correlated with partisanship.
I’m a little confused by the indies, though. These are white indies who don’t like Bush? And Obama only gets 30% of their votes? I would expect that he would do even worse amongst the Bush-likers, and his numbers amongst white indies can’t be that bad, can they?
Posted by: Matt Jarvis | October 20, 2008 06:21 PM
When asked about racial discrimination most people immediately picture the tumultuous 1960’s or slavery and the civil war, while few would think of the racism that still permeates our political system today. In a perfect world, this Presidential race would be run on the issues and the personal qualities of each candidate. Race throws an unneeded distraction into the contest, separating people from the real issues that are at stake.
Candidates often still use implicit racial discrimination against their opponent, especially against African-Americans. Implicit discrimination is when a candidate of a certain race uses images that are often associated with that race. An example is using picture of poor blacks when talking about welfare or poverty. When you talk to people about the poorer individuals in America the most common image is a black person. People do not respond well to racism that is explicitly shown to them, as most people do not want to think of themselves as racists. Research has shown that implicit racism however, works to bring up racial feelings in people. Although this article does not discuss politicians use of implicit racism, the bias in people it describes points to the implicitly racist population in America. Although they may not think of themselves as racists, they find it harder to vote for Barack Obama if they are not already sympathetic with the black community. Instead of deciding their vote on issues or personality traits, some people are making up their mind biased off racial discrimination.
Racism can work both ways. This article also points to the fact that those who do think racial discrimination has lead to the condition of the average African American in this country are more likely to vote for Obama. Some people may be voting for him simply for that reason, which is again a distraction from the issues that Obama stands for. In my free time I intern in my local Obama office. It is terrifying how many people, both African Americans and whites, come in talking about how glad they are a black man is going to be President without knowing anything about the issues. They are simply voting for him because he has darker skin than the white man running against him.
Posted by: spadg | October 21, 2008 10:52 PM