"Fetch!"

The Willie Horton ad used by George H. W. Bush in his 1988 presidential campaign is considered to be one of the most effective political ads in U.S. history. It's also the prototype for the use of symbolic racism in political campaigns. Brad Ashford is a Democrat running for Congress in Nebraska's 2nd District. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending $170,000 to run the following TV spot in support of his opponent, incumbent Lee Terry.

The ad is technically correct. Nikko Jenkins was released from prison under a Nebraska law that allows early release for good behavior, and went on to murder four people. Ashford supported this law while a member of the state legislature--as, presumably, a majority of Nebraska politicians did.

To call this an example of "dog whistle politics" may be to credit it with more subtlety than it actually shows.

By the way, the U.S. held 2.23 million people in prisons and jails in 2012, seven times the number in 1972, and by far the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. It will be difficult to reduce these numbers if politicians who vote for prison term reductions are held responsible for any recidivism that results.

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Dog Whistle Politics

Another Dog Whistle

Voter ID and Race, Part 2

In Part 1, I presented evidence that racially prejudiced individuals are more likely to support voter ID laws. Please read it before continuing.

Of course, public opinion does not automatically translate in social policy. In 2012, Bentele and O'Brien published a study in which they used multiple regression to examine what state-level variables were most strongly associated with both the proposal and passage of voter ID laws. The following variables predicted proposal and passage of restrictive legislation:

• Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature and the governorship. 83% of voting restrictions were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures.
• The state had become increasingly competitive in the last presidential election. Note that passage of voter ID laws required both increased competitiveness and Republican control. Those states that had become more competitive but had Democrats in control were less likely to pass voter ID laws.
• The state had a higher proprtion of African-American and Latino residents, and minority and low income turnout had increased in the last presidential election.
• There were more allegations of voter fraud. This variable had less impact than the other three. Note also that very few allegations of voter fraud have been substantiated.

Their study is entitled “Jim Crow 2.0.”

What about the individual legislators who vote for voter ID laws? Earlier this year, Mendez and Grose reported an experiment in which 1871 state legislators from 14 states with relatively high Latino populations received an e-mail from an apparent constituent asking whether a driver's license was required in order to vote. The legislators were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups. The e-mail either came from an Anglo (Jacob Smith) or a Latino (Santiago Rodriguez) man, and was written either in English or Spanish. The dependent measure was whether or not the legislator replied. Here are the results:

	Supports Voter ID	Does Not Support Voter ID
Anglo Name/English	45.0%	50.3%
Latino Name/English	27.5%	43.4%
Anglo Name/Spanish	10.1%	12.5%
Latino Name/Spanish	1.1%	11.7%

The results are clearest with the English-language e-mail. Those who supported voter ID were 17.5% more likely to respond to the Anglo constituent, while those who did not support voter ID were 6.9% more likely to respond to the Anglo constituent. Response rates were depressed considerably when the e-mail was in Spanish, but the same pattern was obtained. Supporters of voter ID were more likely to discriminate against Latino constituents.

Did the legislators themselves decide whether or not to answer the e-mail, or was it a staff member? It probably doesn't matter, since legislators hire like-minded staff members.

The authors claim that the experiment shows discriminatory intent on the part of legislators who supported voter ID. It could be argued that Republican legislators cast their vote for partisan reasons, and the fact that they also happened to be prejudiced was coincidental. However, not all Republicans supported voter ID, and further analysis showed that those Republicans who voted in favor of voter ID were more likely to discriminate against the Latino constituent than those Republicans who voted against it. (No Democrats in the entire sample supported voter ID laws.)

I'm not suggesting that prejudice and political partisanship are separate alternative explanations for support for voter suppression, either among legislators or the general public. It is likely that Republicans support these laws both because they harbor racial resentment and because the laws are advantageous to their party. In fact, in the last six years, attitudes toward a variety of political issues, such as health care, have become more strongly correlated with racial attitudes. The Republican Party has gradually evolved into an unabashedly racist party, much like the neo-Nazi parties of Europe.

I woke up yesterday morning to the following headline: “GOP calls for travel ban for West Africa over Ebola.” Will Republican Congresspeople be willing to support adequate financial aid for Ebola-stricken countries, or will they use fiscal austerity as an excuse to throw West African Black people under the bus?

You may also be interested in reading:

Voter ID and Race, Part 1

Don't Forget Not to Vote

Old-Fashioned Racism

The God Squad, Part 1: Religion as Selfish Individualism

YouGov.com, a polling organization used by many social scientists, recently released the results of a survey on religion and political attitudes. The data were collected on July 1 and 2 from a representative sample of 1000 Americans who are registered as volunteers with the organization. People who identified themselves as either Protestants, Catholics, of some other religion, or as athiests or agnostics were asked whether they supported or opposed seven social policies.

Do you support . . .?	Protestant	Catholic	Other religion	Agnostic or atheist
Gay marriage	31%	44%	59%	89%
Legal abortion	31%	41%	62%	90%
Death penalty for murderers	59%	66%	54%	48%
Stricter gun laws	44%	55%	54%	65%
High taxes on the wealthy	49%	57%	61%	74%
Universal healthcare	46%	55%	57%	81%
Reducing carbon emissions	55%	63%	70%	85%

Similar results are obtained when religiosity is defined by self-reported frequency of prayer, or by claiming to have been “born again.” This supports other research showing that religious people are more conservative than non-religious people, and that Protestants are more conservative than other religious groups. As you would expect, the differences are greatest on support for gay marriage and abortion, but differences of opinion on health care and taxes are also quite substantial.

Although YouGov did not cross-tabulate the relationship between religion and political affiliation, the differences in attitudes between Republicans, Independents and Democrats closely parallel the differences between religious groups. Exit poll data from the 2012 election also support the connection between religion and political preference.

Do you support . . .?	Republican	Independent	Democrat
Gay marriage	17%	49%	65%
Legal abortion	24%	48%	65%
Death penalty for murderers	68%	60%	50%
Stricter gun laws	19%	44%	82%
High taxes on the wealthy	28%	52%	81%
Universal healthcare	14%	51%	85%
Reducing carbon emissions	40%	64%	78%

These results might give pause to people who claim to be religious liberals. For example, if you believe that religious people have a duty to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or behave nonaggressively, how have you arrived at an interpretation of Christianity that is so sharply at odds with most of your fellow Christians? If you are contributing to religious organizations, is your money used to support policies with which you personally disagree, and to persuade vulnerable people to adopt the world view represented by these poll results?

You may also be interested in reading:

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 1

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 2

The God Squad, Part 2:  The "Greening" of Christianity

The God Squad, Part 3:  Projection

Another Dog Whistle

After signing his landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson is said to have become depressed. When asked what was troubling him, he said, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.” He was wrong. It was not just the South. Although Johnson won that fall, since 1964 a majority of whites have voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election. The last column of the table shows the Republican margin of victory among white voters.

Year	Republican Candidate	Democratic Candidate	Margin
1964	Goldwater	Johnson	-29%
1968	Nixon	Humphrey	16%
1972	Nixon	McGovern	40%
1976	Ford	Carter	4%
1980	Reagan	Carter	20%
1984	Reagan	Mondale	32%
1988	Bush I	Dukakis	20%
1992	Bush I	Clinton	2%
1996	Dole	Clinton	2%
2000	Bush II	Gore	13%
2004	Bush II	Kerry	17%
2008	McCain	Obama	12%
2012	Romney	Obama	20%

In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney Lopez makes a strong case for the argument that race has been the driving force in American politics since the '60s. Beginning with Nixon in 1968, the Republican Party developed a winning strategy of appealing to white voters with messages based on symbolic racism. One of the results is that the Republicans have increasingly become the “white man's party.” A new set of studies by Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson of Northwestern University suggests that what is now a bad situation is likely to become worse.

The Census Bureau projects that by 2042, the US will become a majority-minority nation. That is, more than 50% of Americans will be non-whites. The authors hypothesized that this information is threatening to white voters, and making it salient will cause them to shift toward a more conservative ideology and become more likely to vote Republican. The information is, in effect, a dog whistle, that Republicans will be able to use to their advantage in future elections.

This is not the first time that threats have been shown to lead to conservative shifts. For example, American political opinion moved sharply in the conservative direction following the 9/11 attacks. In controlled experiments, proponents of terror management theory have shown that asking participants to think about their own death leads to conservative shifts in social and political attitudes and increased support for then-President George W. Bush.

The Craig and Richeson article presents three increasingly impressive experiments. The first is an internet study of a random sample of white Independent voters—that is, voters not affiliated with either the Republican or Democratic Party—living in the Western US. California is already a majority-minority state, and in one condition, respondents were informed of this fact. In the control condition, they were told that Hispanics had become roughly equal in number to blacks in the US. Participants were then asked to indicate the extent to which they leaned toward one of the two major parties, and to rate their political attitudes on a 5-point scale from “very liberal” to “very conservative.” The results of the political leaning question are shown below.

People informed of the majority-minority status of California also rated their political attitudes as significantly more conservative than the control group.

A second experiment used a random sample of white American adults from all regions and political parties. Some of the participants—the racial shift condition—were told that America would become a majority-minority nation in 2042, while those in the control group were given information about geographic mobility. Attitudes were measures toward five social policies, such as immigration and health care reform. The authors proposed that the conservative shift was mediated by group status threat. This was measured by two questions about whether the American way of life is threatened, and whether conditions in the US are getting better or worse. Three other potential mediators of the conservative shift were measured, but, as expected, none of them panned out.

As in study 1, the participants in the racial shift condition shifted in the conservative direction on the five attitudes and those in the control group did not. Those in the racial shift condition also showed greater evidence of group status threat, and, as predicted, group status threat mediated the relationship between the racial shift information and political conservatism. (See my earlier post explaining how mediation is inferred.)

Finally, if the conservative shift is mediated by group status threat, then providing participants with information that mitigates that threat should reduce the size of the shift. Their third experiment had three conditions. Some participants were given the racial shift information. The control group was again told about geographic mobility. And finally, there was an assuaged-threat condition. Two sentences were added to the racial shift information reassuring the respondents that, despite the majority-minority shift, white privilege would be maintained. Specifically, “white Americans are expected to continue to have higher average incomes and wealth compared to other racial groups.” Some new social policy questions were also added.

As expected, only the racial shift group showed a conservative shift on the social policy questions. The participants in the assuaged-threat condition did not differ from the control group.

It should be noted the authors divided their social policy questions into those they thought were race-related, i.e., immigration, and those they thought were not, i.e., health care reform. The size of the conservative shift was the same on both sets of questions. This result would not surprise Lopez, since he maintains that virtually all domestic political issues have been racialized. For example, the term “Obamacare” is a dog whistle meant to persuade white voters—incorrectly, of course—that their heard-earned money is being taken by the government and given to “Obama's people”—undeserving minority citizens.

The Craig and Richeson article may help Republicans to identify another reliable dog whistle, although Pat Buchanan called it to their attention years ago. The majority-minority shift is sometimes said to foretell the demise of the Republican Party. However, in the short run, it is likely to increase the racial polarization of the two parties, and it may help Republicans temporarily by increasing their appeal to white voters. Lopez suggests that whether the Republican Party can remain viable in the long run may depend on their ability to persuade some non-whites, i.e., Asian-Americans and light-skinned Hispanics, to redefine themselves as “white.”

You may also be interested in reading:

Dog Whistle Politics

The Singer, Not the Song

Old-Fashioned Racism

A Conservative Windfall

British economists Nattavudh Powdthavee and Andrew Oswald suggest two explanations for people's political attitudes: (1) they are the result of “deeply ethical views,” or (2) they are motivated by self-interest. Their study is relevant to the second possibility. They looked at the effect of winning the lottery on political attitudes.

Many previous studies have found that rich people are more conservative, but this is subject to different interpretations. Higher income could cause conservatism, conservatism could cause higher income, or they could both be jointly caused by some other variable, i.e., having wealthy parents. Studying lottery winners is an interesting idea because a lottery is a truly random assignment of people to the condition of being “rich.” Since the authors had data from before and after the win, they could look at its effect on political attitudes while holding individual differences constant.

The data came from the British Household Panel Survey, an ongoing study in which the same people are contacted every year. Between 1996 and 2009, 4277 different people reported winning the British National Lottery 9003 times. 94.65% of these were small wins of less than £500 (as of this writing, $820). The remaining 5.35% were over £500 and were considered big wins. (The biggest win was £185,000. Unfortunately, they do not report an average.) Winners were compared to people who had no lottery winnings, either because they did not play or played and lost.

All respondents were asked which political party they favored. Only supporters of the Conservative and Labour parties were included in the analysis, since these parties are clearly right and left leaning. (The authors classify the Liberal Democrats as a centrist party.)  Participants were also asked to locate themselves on a 7-point scale, from a strong supporter of the Labour Party to a strong supporter of the Conservative Party. The scale measured changes in attitude strength regardless of whether the participant changed parties. These data were statistically corrected for prior household income and 12 other control variables.

By comparing the participants' answers to those of the year before, it was possible to identify people who had switched from favoring some other party (or none at all) to favoring either the Labour or Conservative parties in the year of the win. 

Approximately 13% of the non-winners switched to the Conservative Party that year, along with 14% of the small winners and 18% of the big winners. The data from the 7-point scale were consistent with these findings, showing that the greater the winnings, the greater the conservative shift. For unknown reasons, the conservative shift among winners was greater for men than for women. 

Since each lottery winner's political leanings were measured before and after their windfall, this design goes a long way toward controlling alternative explanations. However, there is a problem. It's possible that people who play the lottery are not representative of the population. For example, in the US, the lottery functions as a regressive tax, since low income people spend more per capita. In addition, men, middle-aged (45-64) people, and people with less education play more. In defense of the representativeness of their sample, the authors note that 57% of UK citizens play the lottery at least once in a given year. However, they had no measure of how often each person played. Since the more often you play, the greater your chance of winning, the big winners were probably people who played regularly.

My guess is that winning the lottery sensitizes people to the tax consequences of winning. The British income tax is more progressive than ours, and Conservative Party propaganda emphasizes keeping taxes low. People who play the lottery often may differ from non-players in a way that makes them more susceptible to a conservative change. Maybe they are particularly sensitive to variations in their income.

This is not the first study to look at the relationship between wealth and self-interest. Several American studies have found that higher income people are less helpful and more likely to cheat or engage in unethical behavior.

You may also be interested in reading:

Me First

Class Acts

Bending the Curve

Old-Fashioned Racism

A new study published by Michael Tesler in the Journal of Politics suggests that, for the first time in many years, old-fashioned racism is having an effect on party preference and voting behavior in the United States. Specifically, old-fashioned racists are more likely to be Republicans and vote for Republican candidates.

Old-fashioned racism (OFR) refers to the endorsement of statements that are obviously and blatantly racist, such as the belief that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, that blacks and whites should be segregated and maintain social distance from one another. OFR has declined steadily in this country since World War II. The most likely reason is that OFR has always been positively related to age. Old-fashioned racists have not changed their attitudes; they have died. Another contributing factor in the decline of OFR is that it has become less socially acceptable to state obviously prejudiced attitudes in a survey.

Sometimes the mass media present the decline of OFR as evidence that prejudice is no longer a problem in this country. However, OFR has been gradually replaced by modern (or symbolic) racism (also known as racial resentment). Modern racism is prejudice revealed in subtle, indirect ways, such as the claim that blacks do not respect traditional American values, or in opposition to social policies perceived to help black people. It allows people to express beliefs and endorse policies that are harmful to African-Americans, but still deny being prejudiced. Modern racism has been related to voting behavior and party preference ever since the civil rights era. Richard Nixon's “Southern strategy” was designed to help the Republican party to take advantage of racial resentment, and the strategy remains successful today.

Tesler begins his article by noting that OFR has never been related to white Americans' partisan preferences in the post-civil rights era. Although modern racists have tended to vote Republican, old-fashioned racists have been evenly distibuted among the two parties. However, that appears to have changed since Barack Obama became president in 2008. To make this point, Tesler presents three studies.

The first study looked at the effect of OFR on candidate preference in the 2008 election. Tesler reanalyzed data collected by the Pew Research Center in early 2008. In this study, OFR was measured by endorsement of items stating that whites and blacks should not date or intermarry, an undeniably racist belief still held by about half the white population. The study asked participants their preferences in two hypothetical presidential contests, John McCain vs. Hilary Clinton, and John McCain vs. Barack Obama. Results showed that OFR had a significantly greater effect on the McCain-Obama contest than the McCain-Clinton matchup. The difference between those highest and lowest in OFR was 10% on the McCain-Clinton question, but 35% on the McCain-Obama question. This difference was statistically reliable even after controlling for the effects of party preference, political ideology and modern racism.

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The remaining two studies looked at the spillover effect, sometimes referred to as the racialization of politics. It refers to the possibility that racial attitudes will affect political behavior in contexts having nothing obviously to do with race. For example, since President Obama is associated with health care reform, the spillover effect predicts that old-fashioned racists will oppose the Affordable Care Act, even after controlling for the influences of party preference, political ideology and modern racism. 

In Study 2, the Pew data were used to examine the relationship between OFR and party preference from 1987 through 2009. From 1987 through 2007, there was no significant relationship between OFR and partisanship. However, in 2009, there was a significant association between OFR and self-identification as a Republican. Further analysis showed that, consistent with the spillover hypothesis, this relationship is mediated by attitudes toward President Obama. That is, when the effect of evaluation of President Obama is statistically removed, the association between OFR and partisanship disappears. (See my earlier post for a more thorough explanation of mediation.)

Finally, Tesler did a survey of his own in which respondents were asked to state their preference for candidates for the House of Representatives in the midterm election of 2010. This study contained a manipulation designed to test the spillover hypothesis. Before stating their voting preference, a randomly selected half of the respondents were reminded that President Obama had been campaigning for Democratic candidates in the midterm election and asked whether this affected their preference. This reminder, called the “Obama prime,” was omitted for the other participants. Without the Obama prime, OFR had no effect on voting intentions in the midterm election. However, with the Obama prime, those highest in OFR were 13% less likely to prefer the Democatic candidate than those lowest in OFR.

It is important to note that Tesler is not saying that OFR has increased in recent years. As far as I know, it is still slowly declining. However, prior to 2008, old-fashioned racists were randomly distributed among the two political parties. Since many of them are what are euphemistically called “low information voters,” some of them self-identified as independents. The effect of the Obama presidency and related changes in the political culture, such as the rise of the Tea Party, has been to drive these folks into the Republican party. Thus, being a Republican is now associated not only with modern racism but with OFR as well. Since party identification tends to persist throughout the life cycle, this realignment may affect our politics long after Obama's presidency. Tesler also predicts an increase in overtly racist rhetoric, since it is now useful in mobilizing the Republican base.