Obama's Missed Landslide: A Racial Cost?

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 69-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Lewis-Beck ◽  
Charles Tien ◽  
Richard Nadeau

AbstractBarack Obama was denied a landslide victory in the 2008 presidential election. In the face of economic and political woe without precedent in the post-World War II period, the expectation of an overwhelming win was not unreasonable. He did win, but with just a 52.9 percentage point share of the total popular vote. We argue a landslide was taken from Obama because of race prejudice. In our article, we first quantify the extent of the actual Obama margin. Then we make a case for why it should have been larger. After reviewing evidence of racial bias in voter attitudes and behavior, we conclude that, in a racially blind society, Obama would likely have achieved a landslide.

Author(s):  
Helen Callaghan

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine empirically why markets for corporate control expanded even though incumbents resisted exposure to competition. The British case, presented in Chapter 3, illustrates the doubly self-reinforcing feedback effects of market-enabling takeover rules. Even in Britain, rules conducive to takeover bids did not emerge until after World War II. The first regulatory blow to the entrenched position of corporate insiders was dealt not by shareholder-oriented market liberals, but by stakeholder-oriented parties to their left. Marketization was an unintended side-effect eagerly snatched up by incumbents’ symbionts, namely merchant banks, who abandoned their former allies to become profiteers. Marketization gathered speed not only because the pro-market clienteles grew, but also because opposition waned as competition intensified. I attribute this to feedback effects of marketization on the power resources, attitudes, and behavior of politically relevant groups, including institutional investors, bankers, managers, and trade unions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (01) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Jacobsmeier ◽  
Daniel C. Lewis

AbstractIn “The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Role of Canines in the 2008 Campaign,” Diana Mutz (2010) argues that dog ownership made voters significantly less likely to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. We examine this claim further. Although President Obama has owned a dog since shortly after his 2008 election, we argue that Bo's presence most likely did little to improve his owner's chances of being reelected in 2012. Rather, the apparent significance of dog ownership uncovered by Mutz is due largely to key variables being omitted from the analysis. Using the same data, we show that Obama didn't so much have trouble with dog owners in 2008 as he had trouble with conservative, rural, Southern whites, who, for reasons we examine, are more likely than other Americans to own dogs. Accordingly, we suspect that Bo failed to boost Obama's vote tally in 2012. While we recognize the tongue-in-jowl tone of portions of Mutz's article, this tale is an important one, and is consistent with recent research linking racial attitudes to levels of support for Barack Obama. We also argue that while scholars are often wise to include control variables such as “South” in studies of political attitudes and behavior, it is important to consider the variety of politically relevant characteristics that such variables may be capturing.


Author(s):  
Eileen H. Tamura

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara's life. From his youth and until World War II, Kurihara pursued a path that he believed would enable him to live the American life, as envisioned in the Progressive Era phrase, “the promise of American life.” He enrolled in schools that offered a quality, Western-oriented education. He also embraced Christianity—the essential source of Western cultural identity at the time—endured anti-Japanese hostility directed at him, and fought as a soldier in the U.S. Army during the Great War. This dogged pursuit of a place for himself as an American in the face of jarring discouragements enabled Kurihara to absorb Western modes of thinking and behavior. As a result, he was able to navigate his way in two cultural worlds, European America and Japanese America.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 648-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Nownes

Here, I report the results of two randomized, posttest only, control group, survey experiments in which respondents were exposed to factual information about celebrity support for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Based on previous research, I hypothesize that celebrity endorsements will affect the emotions of enthusiasm, anger, and anxiety vis-à-vis Secretary Clinton. My results provide support for the general notion that celebrity endorsements can affect voter emotions. Specifically, I find that celebrity endorsements profoundly decreased the negative emotions of anger and anxiety vis-à-vis Secretary Clinton. My research suggests that a broad range of stimuli may affect voter emotions, which in turn affect political attitudes and behavior.


1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 567-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Erikson

This analysis demonstrates that the relative growth of per capita income change is an important determinant of post-World War II presidential election outcomes. Per capita income change is even a better predictor of presidential election outcomes than the electorate's relative attraction to the Democratic and Republican candidates as calibrated in National Election Study surveys. The significance of this finding is discussed.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Stroope ◽  
Paul Froese ◽  
Heather Rackin ◽  
Jack Delehanty

Prior research found that Christian nationalism was strongly associated with voting for Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. However, the effects of Christian nationalism may depend on voters’ religiosity. We assess whether the association between Christian nationalism and Trump support differed for churchgoers and non-churchgoers and find that Christian nationalism is not significantly associated with Trump support among churchgoing voters. Instead, Christian nationalism is only significantly associated with Trump support among unchurched voters. These results suggest that while religious ideology remains a key driver of political attitudes and behavior in the U.S., its effects may have less to do with embeddedness in traditional religious organizations and more to do with the ways people use religious narratives in everyday life to construct and defend symbolic boundaries. At a time when fewer Americans attend religious services, religious narratives about Christian nationhood may have their strongest political effects when, and perhaps because, they are detached from religious institutions.


1969 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Tulchin

Argentine neutrality during World War II with its suspicious leanings toward fascism has become a cliché in inter-American relations. As far as the United States was concerned at that time, the Argentine Republic was the black sheep of the hemispheric community, the only nation that failed to cooperate wholeheartedly in the crusade against the Axis. The famous State Department “Blue Book,” so conveniently published prior to the Argentine general elections of 1946, spelled out the aid and comfort the Nazis had derived from Argentina's neutrality. By only the narrowest margin did Argentina avoid being drummed out of the hemispheric organization and barred from membership in the new United Nations.It seems strange, therefore, to recall that it was the Argentine government that first suggested, in the spring of 1940, that the nations of the Western Hemisphere discard the posture of traditional neutrality in the face of the spreading conflagration in Europe, on the grounds that it was anachronistic and did not protect their interests.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-504
Author(s):  
Peter Tammes ◽  
Peter Scholten

This article examines what assimilation trajectories were manifest among present-day Mediterranean Muslims and pre–World War II Jews in Dutch society. Alba and Nee conceptualized assimilation in terms of processes of spanning and altering group boundaries, distinguishing between boundary crossing, blurring, and shifting. This study carves out to what extent assimilation processes like boundary crossing, shifting, and blurring had taken place for those two non-Christian minority groups in Dutch society. This research is based on findings of recent (quantitative) empirical research into the assimilation of pre–World War II Jews in the Netherlands and on the collection of comparable research and data for the assimilation of contemporary Mediterranean Muslims. Our study suggests that processes of boundary crossing, such as observance of religious practices and consumption of religious food, and blurring, such as intermarriage, residential segregation, and religious affiliation, are much less advanced for Mediterranean Muslims in the present time. Though several factors might account for differences in boundary-altering processes between pre–World War II Jews and contemporary Mediterranean Muslims such as differences in length of stay in the Netherlands, the secularization process, and globalization, Jewish assimilation might provide us some reflections on assimilation of Mediterranean Muslims. The continuous arrival of Muslim newcomers might affect attitudes and behavior of settled Mediterranean Muslims, while policy to restrict family migration might be insufficient to stimulate Muslims to integrate in Dutch society given the quite negative mutual perceptions, the slow process of residential spreading, the continuation of observance of religious practices, and the low intermarriage rate.


Author(s):  
Lucas E. Morel

Lucas Morel’s “‘In a Strange Country’: The Challenge of American Inclusion” interprets Ellison’s 1944 short story as a civics lesson for a republic struggling with the legacy of race. The story follows a black Merchant Marine, Mr. Parker, during World War II as he recovers from a mugging by white American servicemen while on shore leave in Wales. Ellison presents a lesson of civic inclusion by showcasing a “black Yank” being rescued by Welshmen. Parker witnesses how his Welsh hosts transcend class conflict through a common devotion to music, which he likened to the racially mixed “jam sessions” back in America. Herein Ellison articulates the obstacles and pathways to black American citizenship—a reminder that “the land of the free” requires one not only to be “brave” in the face of majority tyranny, but also good-humored, self-disciplined, and hopeful as one seeks full participation in the American regime.


2019 ◽  
pp. 54-77
Author(s):  
Philip Nash

This chapter looks at the tenure of Florence Jaffray Harriman, minister to Norway (1937–1941). Harriman was a prominent New York City socialite and Democratic Party activist. President Franklin Roosevelt agreed to send the sixty-six-year-old Harriman to Norway because it was a small, neutral country unlikely to become involved in a European war. When World War II broke out in 1939, Harriman was caught in the midst of it. She performed admirably in the episode involving the City of Flint, a US merchant vessel captured by the Germans, and even more so when the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940. Harriman risked her life trying to keep up with the fleeing Norwegian leadership, which was being pursued by German forces. Her performance in the face of such danger earned her widespread praise, further strengthening the case for female ambassadors.


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