The Evolution and Implications of Perceptions of Barack Obama's Ideological Positioning

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Jacobsmeier
Keyword(s):  
Barack Obama ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Rightward Shift ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Social Sorting

Abstract I examine perceptions of Barack Obama's ideological positioning from 2006 to 2016. White Americans perceived Barack Obama to be significantly more liberal than respondents from other racial groups, and whites scoring higher on measures of racial resentment saw Obama as more liberal than those scoring lower. Perceptions of Barack Obama's ideological positioning shifted leftward early in his presidency but shifted rightward after 2010. This rightward shift notwithstanding, Obama was perceived to be quite liberal from the start of his presidency, and perceptions of his ideological positioning were racialized from the beginning. There is some evidence that citizens' perceptions of Barack Obama's ideological positioning became more racialized between 2012 and 2014. Placements of Hillary Clinton were racialized in 2016, suggesting that the Obama presidency may have lasting effects on the ideological stereotyping of Democratic candidates. I discuss these findings in light of recent research on social sorting, affective polarization, and negative partisanship.

Responding to Racial Resentment: How Racial Resentment Influences Legislative Behavior

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 805-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Garcia ◽  
Christopher T. Stout
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
Automated Content Analysis ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Growing Body

Despite the growing body of scholarship urging congressional scholars to consider the racialization of Congress, little attention has been given to understanding how racial resentment impacts legislative behavior. To fill this gap, we ask if and how racial resentment within a member’s home district influences the positions she takes on racially tinged issues in her press releases. Due to constituent influence, we expect legislators from districts with high levels of racial resentment to issue racially tinged press releases. Through an automated content analysis of more than fifty four thousand press releases from almost four hundred U.S. House members in the 114th Congress (2015–2017), we show that Republicans from districts with high levels of racial resentment are more likely to issue press releases that attack President Barack Obama. In contrast, we find no evidence of racial resentment being positively associated with another prominent Democratic white elected official, Hillary Clinton. Our results suggest that one reason Congress may remain racially conservative even as representatives’ cycle out of office may be attributed to the electoral process.

scholarly journals The Anatomy Of EEOs Level Playing Field

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Edward L. Powers
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Equal Employment Opportunity ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Employment Opportunity ◽  
Level Playing Field ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Equal Employment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Sarah Palin

The election of President Barack Obama, and the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin raise the issue of whether we continue to need equal employment opportunity and/or affirmative action. The concept of a level playing field is carefully developed, and provides a basis for a more thorough analysis of the future of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action.

George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Post-Conflict Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
Andrew Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
2008 Presidential Election ◽  
Post Conflict

After Clinton’s second term in office ended, President George W Bush moved the Special Envoy to Northern Ireland to the State Department, but his Envoys, led by Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, were no less engaged in Northern Irish affairs as the political figures there sought to create a functional government at Stormont Parliament Buildings. A series of significant obstacles emerged, but the Northern Ireland Assembly finally formed in 2007 before Bush left office. He was succeeded by President Barack Obama who had little interest in Northern Ireland but Obama’s initial Secretary of State, former Senator Hillary Clinton, was well-versed in Northern Irish issues. This chapter also examines the role of Northern Ireland in the 2008 Democratic Primary contest and, to a lesser extent, the 2008 Presidential Election.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 320-338
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Fault Line ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Sexist Attitudes ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Three Components

The Long Southern Strategy was “long” because all three components of the strategy—choosing to exploit white racial angst, fear of feminism, and evangelical righteousness—were necessary to build a solid red base in the states of the old Confederacy. The stark polarization that resulted from these partisan choices unraveled the New Deal coalition. It also redivided white Americans not just along the Mason-Dixon line, but across the imagined fault line of southern identity. Thus, conservatism was redefined on the basis of white southern identity, and that definition became the baseline ideology of the Republican brand nationwide. A partisan sorting and realignment followed. As a result, the distribution of white Americans who harbor Racial Resentment or Modern Sexist attitudes or who identify as Christian fundamentalists is no longer even across the parties, and now, within the GOP, there is not enough opposition to fully suppress such prejudice or religiosity.

scholarly journals Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle? Experimental Evidence That Racial Resentment and Political Ideology Condition Responses to Racially Encoded Messages

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311986626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Wetts ◽  
Robb Willer
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Racial Stereotypes ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
Total N ◽  
Testing Effects ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Conflicting Evidence ◽  
Racial Resentment

Do appeals that subtly invoke negative racial stereotypes shift whites’ political attitudes by harnessing their racial prejudice? Though widely cited in academic and popular discourse, prior work finds conflicting evidence for this “dog-whistle hypothesis.” Here we test the hypothesis in two experiments (total N = 1,797) in which white Americans’ racial attitudes were measured two weeks before they read political messages in which references to racial stereotypes were implicit, explicit, or not present at all. Our findings suggest that implicit racial appeals can harness racial resentment to influence policy views, though specifically among racially resentful white liberals. That dog-whistle effects would be concentrated among liberals was not predicted in advance, but this finding appears across two experiments testing effects of racial appeals in policy domains—welfare and gun control—that differ in the extent and ways they have been previously racialized. We also find evidence that the same group occasionally responded to explicit racial appeals even though these appeals were recognized as racially insensitive. We conclude by discussing implications for contemporary American politics, presenting representative survey data showing that racially resentful, white liberals were particularly likely to switch from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016.

TRENDS: Racial Resentment and Public Opinion across the Racial Divide

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy D. Kam ◽  
Camille D. Burge
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Quantitative Examination ◽  
Racial Divide ◽  
Black Public Opinion

Research on racial resentment has been meticulously developed, tested, and analyzed with white Americans in mind—yet black Americans have also responded to this battery for the past three decades. To date, little to nothing is known about the implications of responses to the racial resentment battery among black Americans. A burgeoning literature on blacks’ intragroup attitudes suggests that over time, black Americans have increasingly attributed racial inequality to individual failings as opposed to structural forces. As such, unpacking blacks’ responses to the canonical racial resentment battery may provide further insight into the micro-foundations of black public opinion. Using survey data from 1986 to 2016, we engage in a systematic quantitative examination of the role of racial resentment in predicting black and white Americans’ opinions on racial policies, “race-coded” policies, and nonracialized policies. Along the way, we highlight the existence of wide heterogeneity among black respondents and call for further investigation that identifies similarities and differences in the foundations of white and black public opinion.

The “American DREAM”: Understanding White Americans’ Support for the DREAM Act and Punitive Immigration Policies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Yalidy Matos
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Dream Act ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
Primary Predictor ◽  
Hispanic White

The American public has overwhelmingly supported the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act since 2001. The support is widespread and cuts across race, ethnic, and party lines. Given the United States’ anti-immigrant/immigration sentiment in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, support for the DREAM Act is perplexing. To that end, political scientists, sociologists, and education scholars, among others, have pointed to the exceptional framing of the DREAM Act as the primary predictor of support. However, a significant portion of non-Hispanic white Americans who support the DREAM Act also support restrictive and often punitive immigration policies. What influences most white Americans to support DREAM Act legislation? And what leads a subset of these same individuals to simultaneously support restrictive immigration policies that hurt DREAMers and their families? I argue that predispositions explain these two contradictory policy preferences. Data from the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) and the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies (CCES) demonstrates that white Americans use racial resentment and egalitarianism as justifications to support both policies. However, the effects are conditioned on partisanship.

scholarly journals Stereotypes About Political Attitudes and Coalitions Among U.S. Racial Groups: Implications for Strategic Political Decision-Making

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110371
Author(s):  
Maureen A. Craig ◽  
Linda X. Zou ◽  
Hui Bai ◽  
Michelle M. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Coalitions ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Political Decision Making

What are people’s expectations of interracial political coalitions? This research reveals expectations of flexible interracial coalitions stemming from how policies and racial groups are viewed in terms of perceived status and foreignness. For policies seen as changing societal status (e.g., welfare), people expected Black–Hispanic political coalitions and viewed Asian Americans as more likely to align with Whites than with other minorities. For policies seen as impacting American identity (e.g., immigration), people expected Asian–Hispanic coalitions and that Black Americans would align with Whites more than other minorities. Manipulating a novel group’s alleged status and cultural assimilation influenced coalitional expectations, providing evidence of causality. These expectations appear to better reflect stereotypes than groups’ actual average policy attitudes and voting behavior. Yet these beliefs may have implications for a diversifying electorate as White Americans strategically amplified the political voice of a racial group expected to agree with their personal preferences on stereotyped policies.

From Obama Victories to a GOP Edge in Florida

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Alexandra Caffrey
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
The State ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Grassroots Organizing

Many observers believed the state of Florida was trending blue after Barack Obama won it twice, but instead Republicans have since won nearly every statewide election after 2012. What happened? This chapter explores the grassroots organizing strategies of presidential and statewide candidate-led political campaigns in Florida’s pivotal I-4 corridor. After Obama built a formidable ground game, the state Democratic Party allowed it to wither, and neither Hillary Clinton in 2016 nor Andrew Gillum in 2018 built a comparable operation. Meanwhile, Florida Republicans and Koch-aligned groups deliberately—and successfully—imitated and adapted Obama’s organizational strategies. Unless Democrats rebuild, Florida will likely be red for the foreseeable future.

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