Out of Options? Blacks and Support for the Democratic Party Vincent

Out of Options? Blacks and Support for the Democratic Party
Vincent L. Hutchings
Hakeem Jefferson
University of Michigan
1
Out of Options? Blacks and Support for the Democratic Party
Abstract
African Americans have, for at least a generation, represented the most Democratic voting bloc
in the electorate. Typically, support for the Democratic Party and Democratic presidential
candidates ranges somewhere between 85-95%. But what accounts for such unprecedented levels
of political homogeneity? In this paper, we review the extant literature on this question and
explore several possible explanations. These accounts primarily center on various indicators of
racial identity, and political ideology. In the case of racial identity, the literature primarily relies
on the groundbreaking scholarship of Michael Dawson in his 1994 book, Behind the Mule: Race
and Class in African American Politics. Dawson argues that Black political unity is a legacy of
the particular historical circumstances that have confronted Black America. He maintains that it
was both logical and efficient for Blacks to perceive the political world through a racial lens and
consequently to make political judgments on the basis of how Blacks as a group would be
affected. Much of the literature on Black public opinion has embraced the Black Utility Heuristic
and sought either to extend it or critique its normative implications. Few, however, have sought
to challenge it by testing alternative explanations for Black political unity. We do not dispute the
central role that racial group considerations play in Black public opinion. Nevertheless, we
believe that it remains unclear whether this particular manifestation of group identity (i.e., linked
fate) is most influential or if alternate forms of identity might also shape African American’s
political views. Additionally, we argue that the literature has neglected the potential role of
ideology in accounting for African Americans’ nearly unanimous Democratic identification. We
explore each of these ideas by analyzing the 2012 American National Election Study survey. We
find that alternate measures of racial identity fare as well as some measures of political ideology
best account for Black partisan identities.
2
Introduction
Public opinion scholars have long argued that ordinary citizens generally think about
politics in terms of social groups (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954; Campbell, Converse,
Miller and Stokes 1960; Nelson and Kinder 1996). Perhaps no social group cleavage is more
enduring and consequential in American politics than the racial divide (Bobo, Charles, and
Krysan 2012; Carmines and Stimson 1989; Hutchings 2009; Kinder and Sanders 1996). In short,
Whites and African Americans differ more than any other salient social groups on matters of
public policy, partisan allegiance, and candidate preference. This was most starkly illustrated in
2012 with the reelection bid of Barack Obama, the nation’s first president of African descent.
According to national exit polls, Obama only received 39% of the White vote. This represents
the lowest percentage of the White vote of any victorious presidential candidate in American
history. In contrast, the president did extremely well among non-White voters capturing 71% of
the Latino vote and 73% of the Asian American vote. Among Black voters, his support was
even higher as Obama garnered a remarkable 93% of the vote. Thus, the Black-White gap in
presidential support exceeds fifty-percentage points and completely dwarfs comparable divisions
with respect to education (4-points), gender (10-points), age (16 points), income (16-points), and
even religion (28-points).
How do scholars account for this racial divide? In part, they refer to the primary
determinant of the vote choice: party identification. Here too, we find substantial racial
differences. According to the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES), fully 90% of
African Americans identify with the Democratic Party and 55% are strong party identifiers.
Among Whites, the comparable percentages are 39% and 13%. Needless to say, the partisan
racial divide is essentially equivalent to the divide in presidential support. And, although these
3
figures have fluctuated a bit at the margins, they have remained remarkably stable over the past
several decades.1 This begs the question, why are African Americans so uniformly committed to
the Democratic Party?2 In this paper, we review the extant literature on this latter question and
explore several possible explanations. These accounts primarily center on various indicators of
racial identity, class, and political ideology. Essentially, scholars have argued that Blacks adhere
to the Democratic Party because of their elevated levels of racial identity, their largely workingclass origins, or their generally liberal policy views. Much of the political science literature has
focused on the importance of racial identity and, as we will show, for good reasons. However,
our argument regarding the reasons that racial considerations influence partisanship differs in
significant ways from the conventional explanation adopted in the literature. Moreover, we
maintain that the central role that ideology plays in shaping Black partisanship is often
underappreciated.
Partisan Identification among Blacks
Near unanimous support among African Americans for Barack Obama, a political
candidate drawn from their racial group may seem unexceptional. However, as indicated above
Blacks’ unique allegiance to Democratic presidential candidates goes back well over a
generation. Although the lion’s share of African Americans have voted for the Democrats since
the Franklin Roosevelt administration, this support did not approach unanimity until the 1964
1
If anything, the racial divide in partisan identification has been growing (Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde
2006). For example, in 2008 “only” 85% of Blacks identified as Democrats compared to 44% among
Whites.
2
Of course, one might also ask about the gradually increasing support for the Republican Party among
Whites. However, this question has already received considerable attention and is beyond the scope of
this paper.
4
presidential contest (Fauntroy 2007; Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989). What distinguished the
1964 election was the unambiguousness of the racial platforms of the two major party candidates
for the presidency. The Democratic incumbent, Lyndon Johnson – newly elevated to the
position of commander-in-chief following the assassination of President Kennedy in the fall of
1963 – had come out firmly in support of the Civil Rights Act whereas his Republican opponent,
Barry Goldwater, was vehemently opposed (Carmines and Stimson 1989). Goldwater couched
his opposition in ostensibly principled, rather than segregationist, terms but the signal sent to
recalcitrant White southerners was unmistakable.3 Johnson ultimately won the election in a
landslide, but Goldwater made historic gains in the south by picking up five deep southern states.
No Republican presidential candidate had fared so well in this part of the south since
Reconstruction. However, just as the White south became receptive to the new GOP, African
American support for Republicans all but vanished. Support among Blacks for Democratic
candidates and the Democratic Party has hovered around 85-95% right up to the present day
(Abramson et al. 2006; Carmines and Stimson 1989; Gurin et al. 1989).
This historical account understandably suggests a dominant role for racial considerations
in the formation of partisan identities among Blacks. Thus, not surprisingly, a number of
researchers have offered support for this proposition. In her 1993 book, entitled From Protest to
Politics, Katherine Tate reported that racial group identification “appears to be the major
component of Black partisanship today” (Tate 1993, pg. 65). This research was based on survey
3
Goldwater may not have publically embraced segregation but his campaign engaged in fairly overt
efforts to inflame racial passions – especially in the south. For example, the Goldwater campaign in
Texas distributed posters that, “had images of an unsmiling white man with the word ‘fired’ placed below
his face and a smiling black man with the word ‘hired’ placed below his face. The language [of the
poster] was stark: ‘Employees read this: Did you know that Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill can get
you fired from your job and give to a person of another race? No matter what ability you have to do your
job…or how much seniority you have on your job…you can lose your job because of Johnson’s Civil
Rights Bill. This is your last chance. Vote to put an end to racial favoritism” (Fauntroy 2007).
5
data drawn from the groundbreaking National Black Election Study (NBES), patterned after the
American National Election Study (ANES).4 Building on this work, Michael Dawson provides
the most elaborate theoretical framework for the influence of racial group identity, typically
assessed with the “linked fate” survey items, among Blacks in his book entitled Behind the Mule:
Race and Class in African American Politics (Dawson 1994). 5 Dawson is primarily interested in
explaining why Blacks remain so politically unified even as they have grown increasingly
divided on economic grounds. He argues that this political unity is a legacy of the particular
historical circumstances that have confronted Black America. More specifically, he notes that
prior to the end of legalized segregation in this country the practical realities of racial hierarchy
were such that all African Americans could expect to be treated like any other African American
– that is, as inferior to Whites. Consequently, he maintains that it was both logical and efficient
for Blacks to perceive the political world through a racial lens and consequently to make political
judgments on the basis of how Blacks as a group would be affected. Dawson refers to this
process as the Black Utility Heuristic. He argues further that, even with the successes of the
Civil Rights Movement, this perspective has sustained itself because institutions such as the
Black church and African American media outlets reinforce it.
Much of the literature on Black public opinion has embraced the Black Utility Heuristic
and sought either to extend it (Brown and Shaw 2002; Davis and Brown 2002; Harris-Lacewell
2004; Simien 2006) or critique its normative implications (Cohen 1999; White 2007). Few,
4
The 1984 NBES involved telephone interviews with 1,150 African American adult respondents prior to
the presidential election. Eight-hundred and seventy one respondents were subsequently re-interviewed
after the election (Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989; pg. 9).
5
The linked fate, or common fate, survey measure was initially designed for the 1984 NBES. The item is
traditionally worded as follows: “Do you think that what happens to Black people in this country will
have something to do with what happens in your life?” If respondents answer in the affirmative, they are
then asked if this “will affect you a lot, some, or not very much?”
6
however, have sought to challenge the view that racial group considerations influence Blacks’
political perceptions because it is a more straightforward and efficient means to interpret politics
from an individual standpoint. By this we mean that scholars have mostly accepted that the
Black Utility Heuristic represents the manner by which African Americans view the political
world. Consequently, they have sought merely to apply this model to previously unexplored
areas of African American public opinion or they have criticized the normative implications of
this model for marginalized members of the Black community.
We do not dispute the central role that racial group considerations play in Black public
opinion. Nevertheless, we believe that it remains unclear whether this particular manifestation of
group identity (i.e., linked fate) is most influential or if alternate forms of identity might also
shape African American’s political views. As it turns out, the conclusion that the linked fate
perspective is uniquely responsible for shaping Blacks’ partisan affiliations is based on very
limited evidence. As mentioned previously, Tate (1993) does show such a relationship based on
her analysis of the 1984 NBES. This analysis also controlled for social class identification,
ideological identification and standard demographics. However, only one measure of racial
identification (linked fate) was included in her model. Dawson (1994), relying on the same
dataset, examines a broader range of partisan variables including identification, and perceptions
of how hard each of the major parties works on behalf of “issues black people really care about.”
Dawson concludes that, “perceptions of linked fate played an indirect role in shaping evaluations
of the two parties” (pg. 116). It is not clear how he arrives at this conclusion, however, as the
linked fate variable is not included in his analyses of partisan attitudes (see tables 5.2, 5.3, and
5.4, pages 126-128).
7
There are, of course, multiple ways of conceptualizing and measuring group identity and
linked fate represents only one such approach (Burke and Stets 2009; Tajfel and Turner 1986).
In order to conclude that partisan decisions are structured by racial concerns and particularly that
Blacks use racial considerations as a type of mental shortcut in order to discern their own best
interest, we need to evaluate the linked fate explanation relative to other indicators of racial
group identity. As far as we can tell, scholars of Black public opinion have not generally taken
up this challenge.6 Thus, our aim in this paper is not to determine whether racial identity
influence Black public opinion in the domain of politics but rather how and why this occurs.
Aside from the role of racial concerns, there is another simple explanation for the
lopsided nature of African Americans party identification. All things considered, Blacks may be
aligned with the Democrats because they are generally the more liberal of the major parties.
That is, Blacks may simply have an ideological affinity for the Democrats over an above their
concerns about, or identification with, their racial group. Tate (1993) does explore this
possibility, but finds that ideological identification and partisan identification are unrelated.7
Kinder and Winter (2001), in their examination of the racial divide on policy matters, find that
ideological principles do account for much of these differences, at least outside the domain of
race. However, they rely on measures of specific ideological principles – egalitarianism and
support for limited government – rather than ideological self-identification. Thus, perhaps a
6
Gurin et al. (1989) represent an exception to this rule as they examined multiple indicators of racial
group identity and group consciousness. Their principal goal however was not to examine the correlates
of Black party identification.
7
Using a somewhat different model in his analysis of the 1984 NBES, Dawson finds that ideology does
contribute significantly to Black partisanship. However, Dawson’s model is more basic that Tate’s and
includes only five variables, excluding demographic variables such as age, and education.
8
more expansive examination of ideology will provide a more definitive result regarding its
linkage with party identification among Blacks.
In summary, we hypothesize that racial group identity will influence partisan support
among African Americans although we remain agnostic as to whether this will necessarily apply
only to identity conceptualized as linked fate or in some other manner. Blacks may in fact rely
upon racial identification as a heuristic when making political decisions, or alternatively they
may perceive the political world through a racial lens simply because of their psychological
sense of identification with their racial group. According to this latter interpretation, racial
identification influences political judgments – such as partisanship – not because of its efficiency
but because of some psychological value accorded to the status of the group. Consequently,
political decisions may be made on behalf of the group even when it is clear that it will not lead
to direct material benefits for the individual. If we find support for this latter interpretation it
would differ substantially from the dominant view in the literature on Black public opinion.
Finally we have argued that ideology, broadly defined, may also encourage African Americans
to identify with the Democratic Party. That is, Blacks may support the Democratic Party and
eschew the Republican Party because of their adherence to the principle of equality and their
general support for activist government. To the extent that this latter argument is true, then we
would not expect any significant move toward the Republican Party as long as they continue
their support for limited government.
Methods and Procedures
The American National Election Studies (ANES) remains one of the premier surveys of
American public opinion. Conducted before and after presidential elections, the ANES provides
9
scholars a great opportunity to explore attitudes toward political candidates and public policies
using a nationally representative sample. The 2012 ANES, from which we draw our data,
includes the traditional face-to-face sample and a web-based sample, which is unique to this
iteration of the ANES. Because we do not yet have evidence that the face-to-face and web-based
samples are comparable, we restrict our analyses to respondents in the face-to-face sample, with
hopes that future validation efforts might allow us to take advantage of both modes. More
specifically, we focused our attention on the 511 Black respondents who were interviewed before
and after the 2012 presidential election. To account for design effects of the ANES, we weighted
the data using face-to-face weights and used Taylor series estimation to obtain correct standard
errors and significance tests.
The principle aim of this project, as discussed in the sections above, was to leverage data
from the 2012 ANES to explore the correlates of partisanship among blacks in the U.S, paying
particular attention to the role ideology and racial group identity play in structuring black
partisan preferences. Thus, our dependent variable is a standard 7-point measure of partisanship
often used to capture both the direction and strength of partisan attachment in the U.S.
Given the strong relationship one observes between ideology and partisanship when
analyzing data on white respondents, we suspected that a similar relationship might exist for
Blacks. Based on earlier analyses, however, we had reason to believe that the standard measure
of ideology often used in the literature, a 7-point liberal-conservative self-placement scale, would
fail to be predictive of black partisanship. One might get a sense of why that is by looking at the
distribution of ideology in Table 1. In light of the homogeneity we observe when we look at
partisanship among blacks, what is most striking about this particular variable, of course, is the
lack of unanimity in placement along this one-dimensional scale. Forty-five percent of blacks
10
identify as conservative, with 47% identifying as liberal. Insofar as partisanship and electoral
choice are concerned, there is a clear mismatch between this particular measure of ideology and
political decision-making among a non-trivial set of black voters.
Though a complete discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this paper, our analyses
suggest a real need among scholars to think more intently about the utility of familiar constructs
like the 7-point ideology scale when seeking to make inferences about the nature of Black
political attitudes and behaviors among African Americans.
[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]
With this in mind, we decided to test the influence of three more direct measures of
individuals’ political worldviews, describing each loosely as a sort of ideological measure that
taps into a separate dimension of political attitudes and preferences. We will briefly discuss each
below, but a full list of questions used to construct these ideological measures can be found in
the appendix.
Believing that a strong commitment to egalitarian norms might lead blacks to support the
party perceived to care more about egalitarianism, we include such a measure in our model.
Using a six-item battery, we are able to gauge the extent to which respondents believe that
society should strive to allow for more equal access to opportunities and fairer outcomes. This
variable has been recoded onto a 0-1 scale, such that a higher score on the egalitarianism index
reflects a greater commitment to egalitarianism.
Given the different positions articulated by the two parties on a host of social issues, we
wanted to test whether Blacks who adhered to traditional views of morality were less closely tied
11
to the Democratic Party. Four questions that tap into support for traditional family values and
tolerance of new lifestyles make up this index. Again, the index is recoded 0-1, with higher
scores indicating higher levels of moral traditionalism.
Our final ideological measure is intended to capture what has long been at the center of
conversations about ideology in the U.S. and elsewhere: what is the proper role of government in
society and should it be more active or more constrained in its approach? It seems
uncontroversial to suggest that the parties occupy two relatively different positions on these
issues and even a casual observer of American politics has some sense of which party is more or
less supportive of “big government”.8 It is important to note that support for big government, as
we are thinking about it here, concerns whether government should be active in solving problems
and regulating markets. Scaled from 0-1, higher scores are consistent with greater support for a
bigger, more active government.
Across two of our measures of political principles, Blacks are predictably more liberal
than Whites, as shown in Table 2. This is especially true for the index of support for big
government. The average score for African Americans is thirty points higher than the
comparable score for Whites. In the case of egalitarianism, Blacks are also more liberal but the
difference compared to Whites is only about half as large. Interestingly, on support for moral
traditionalism, Blacks and Whites hardly differ at all. There is a mild indication that Whites are
the more conservative group but this difference is not substantively large. Given the small racial
differences on this ideological dimension we would not expect it to contribute significantly to
Black partisan identities.
8
Kinder and Winter (2001) refer to this index, reverse coded, as the “limited government” scale.
12
[TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]
Of course, on first read, one might question the extent to which these ideological
constructs are capturing the same thing. Intuitively, this might appear to be the case.
Methodologically, we would certainly worry if there were too much overlap between any of our
independent variables. Among Black respondents, however, this concern does not seem to be
borne out in the data. The strongest correlation in this data is between the 7-point ideological
measure and egalitarianism, with a correlation of .18. As a comparison, the correlation between
these two measures is .42 among whites. A more direct test of multicollinearity in the model, an
examination of variance inflation factors, also indicates that insofar as Blacks are concerned,
these measures tap into different ideological constructs and can be used alongside one another in
a multivariate model of partisanship.
Alongside these measures, we included two measures intended to capture the centrality of
racial group identity and linked fate attitudes in the structuring of Black partisan preferences. To
gauge racial group importance, we took advantage of a new set of questions added to the 2012
ANES, which asks respondents how important being a member of their racial group is to them.9
These items were also coded from 0-1, such that higher values indicate greater importance for
racial identity, or higher levels of linked fate.
Again, one might wonder whether these key independent variables are highly correlated
with one another. Based on our analyses, they are not. In Table 3, we explore the distribution of
9
The racial group importance question was in the self-administered portion of the face-to-face interview.
The exact wording of this question for Black respondents is as follows: “How important is being black to
your identity? Is it extremely important, very important, moderately important, a little important, or not at
all important?” The order of the response options was randomized beginning with either “extremely
important” or “not at all important” across respondents.
13
these variables. At the top of the table, we report results for the racial group importance item. For
many African Americans, their racial group identity is of utmost importance. Almost two-thirds
of the sample (61%) are at the highest level for this measure, and only 5% of Blacks report that
their racial group identity is “not at all important.” Assessing the results for the linked fate item
presents a very different picture. Here we find that 38% of blacks indicate that they feel no sense
of linked fate with other African Americans. This result is somewhat higher than the 26 percent
figure reported from the 1984 NBES (Gurin et al. 1989; Dawson 1994).10 It is unclear whether
this represents a real change over time or if this discrepancy is due to sampling and mode
differences between the two surveys. Still, even the lower figure derived from the 1984 survey
suggests that dramatically high, and persistent, levels of black electoral unity are probably not
driven solely by linked fate attitudes. After all, if 26% of African Americans — let alone 38% —
supported the Republican Party or the Republican presidential nominee, recent American history
would look quite different.
[TABLE 3 ABLOUT HERE]
With that said, we test our hypotheses that ideology and racial group identity are key
correlates of partisanship among Blacks using a multivariate regression model that regresses our
key independent variables and a set of controls on our key dependent variable, a measure of selfreported partisan identification.
Results
10
The linked fate item was also included in the 2008 ANES. In this survey, 31% of Blacks indicated that
they did not believe that what happens to Blacks as a group will affect them individually.
14
We will begin first by discussing results from the multivariate model of partisanship for
blacks. The dependent variable, as noted above, is represented by the traditional 7-point ANES
party identification measure. Like all variables in the model, partisanship is coded between 0 and
1, with 1 representing strong attachment to the Democratic Party. Turning our attention to Table
4, we find that our hypotheses are partly confirmed. Of the four ideological measures included in
our model, a support for a bigger, more active government is the only measure that meets the
standard level of statistical significance in predicting the partisanship of African Americans.
Blacks who are more supportive of big government are more likely than their “conservative”
counterparts to have strong ties to the Democratic Party (p<.001). Perhaps a result of different
meaning being ascribed to liberal and conservative or because of certain issues being more or
less salient for blacks, we find no effect for the standard liberal-conservative self-placement
measure in predicting partisanship among blacks. Likewise, we find no support for the idea that
moral traditionalism or feelings of egalitarianism are at all correlated with partisanship among
Blacks.
Conventional wisdom, based on Dawson's Black Utility Heuristic, would suggest that
African Americans who perceive that what happens to other members of the group also affects
their own lives would be more strongly tied to the Democratic Party (also see Tate 1993; pg. 64).
We find no evidence to support this claim. This null finding with respect to linked fate not only
holds in the extensive model we have constructed, but is robust to simpler models that exclude
racial group importance and egalitarianism.11 This finding holds, even if we restrict the model to
those Blacks whose income is above the mean of the group, suggesting that higher income
Blacks are not Democrats because of some feeling of linked fate with other members of their
11
We also find no association between linked fate attitudes and party identification among Blacks in the
2008 ANES.
15
community. We do find, however, that racial group importance is a statistically significant
(p< .05) predictor of partisan leanings for Blacks, in the hypothesized direction. African
American respondents who assign greater import to their racial identity have stronger
attachments to the Democratic Party than those for whom being Black is less important to their
identity. This finding suggests that a more individual-level sense of identity might be a greater
predictor of partisan homogeneity for Blacks than a more outward looking, and heuristic based,
sense of identity as posited by Dawson. Of our control variables, homeowners, those who live in
the South, and married Blacks are more closely tied to the Democratic Party.
[TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE]
Determining the Correlates of Support for Big Government
Given the central role that support for big government seems to play in structuring
partisan identities, we want to explore its demographic and attitudinal correlates. These results
are shown in Table 5. First, examining Table 5, it does appear that self-placement on the onedimensional ideological scale does convey some political information. Those who self identify as
liberal are more supportive of big government than comparable respondents who do not adopt
this label to describe their political views. More importantly for our purposes, we also find that
the more important being black is to one’s identity, the more supportive the individual is of big
government. No such relationship applies for the linked fate measure of group identity. This
indicates that racial group importance has both direct and indirect, via its influence on attitudes
about the role of government, effects on partisan identities among Blacks. Of the control
variables included in the model, we find that only gender is associated with support for activist
16
government. In particular, women score somewhat higher on this construct than do comparable
men.
[TABLES 5 ABOUT HERE]
Conclusion
We believe these analyses of the 2012 ANES survey provide at least two important
findings regarding the role that racial considerations play in shaping partisan identities among
African Americans. First, contrary to the expectations of the Black Utility Heuristic, the
predictive power of the linked fate measure of group identity is considerably limited among
African American respondents. It is not a significant predictor of party identification or the most
consequential political principle in our analyses – support for activist government. Moreover, in
parallel analyses of the 2008 ANES, we also did not find a relationship between partisanship and
endorsement of the concept of linked fate. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom among
scholars of Black public opinion, an alternative measure of African American racial group
identity showed far more promise as a predictor of fundamental political principles than the more
popular linked fate measure. Both the distribution of the racial group importance item and its
strong association with partisan identification suggests that it may represent a more credible
explanation for Black political homogeneity. We would urge scholars to examine multiple
indicators of group identity before concluding, perhaps prematurely, that the Black Utility
Heuristic, and its accompanying theoretical architecture, represents the most compelling
explanation of African American public opinion.
In closing, we note what we highlighted at the outset: the American political system is
17
significantly divided on the basis of race and ethnicity. We believe it is imperative that social
scientists understand how and why these racial divisions persist. This is because it only when
society develops a deeper and more accurate understanding of this divide will we be in a position
to resolve this enduring problem. Perhaps then, we will finally be able to claim that we have
truly achieved a “post-racial” society.
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19
Appendix
7-point Ideology Measure:
We hear a lot of talk these days about liberals and conservatives. Here is a seven-point scale on
which the political views that people might hold are arranged from extremely liberal to extremely
conservative. Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven’t you thought much about
this?
Egalitarianism:
Our society should do whatever is necessary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to
succeed. Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
We have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
One of the big problems in this country is that we don’t give everyone an equal chance.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
It is not really a big problem is some people have more of a chance in life than others.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
If people were treated more equally in this country we would have many fewer problems.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
Moral Traditionalism:
The world is always changing and we should adjust our view of moral behavior to those changes.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
The newer lifestyles are contributing to the breakdown of our society.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
We should be more tolerant of people who choose to live according to their own moral standards,
even if they are very different from our own.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
This country would have many fewer problems if there were more emphasis on traditional family
ties.
Agree strongly-Disagree strongly (order randomized across respondents)
Big government:
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Which is closer to your view?
1. The main reason government has gotten bigger over the years is because it has gotten involved
in things that people should do for themselves; or
2. Government has become bigger because the problems we face have become bigger.
1. We need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems; or
2. The free market can handle these problems without government being involved.
1. The less government the better
2. More things government should be doing
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Table 1: Ideology by Race
Extremely conservative
Black
3%
White
5%
Conservative
9%
19%
Slightly conservative
33%
33%
Moderate; middle of the
road
8%
7%
Slightly liberal
32%
24%
Liberal
10%
10%
Extremely liberal
5%
1%
N
475
868
Note: Moderate “leaners” are categorized as ideologues. Results are based on
weighted data and incorporating survey design effects.
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Table 2: Mean Scores on Alternative Measures of Ideology by Race
Egalitarianism by Race (average)
Average
Egalitarianism score
N
White
.60
Black
.75
839
474
Variable coded 0-1, with higher values indicating higher levels of
egalitarianism
Support for Moral Traditionalism by Race (average)
Average Moral
Traditionalism score
N
White
.56
Black
.51
847
473
Variable coded 0-1, with higher values indicating higher levels of support
for big government
Support for Big Government (average)
Average Big
Government score
N
White
.50
Black
80
808
446
Variable coded 0-1, with higher values indicating higher levels of support
for moral traditionalism
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Table 3: Alternate Measures of Racial Identity among African Americans
Importance of Racial Group Identity
Not at all Important
5%
A little important
4%
Moderately important
14%
Very Important
17%
Extremely important
61%
N
479
Results are based on weighted data and incorporating survey design effects.
Linked Fate Attitudes
Not at all
Black
38%
Not very much
5%
Some
29%
A lot
28%
N
457
Results are based on weighted data and incorporating survey design effects.
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Table 4: The Demographic, Ideological, and Racial Identity Correlates of
Party Identification among African Americans
Intercept
.31**
(.10)
Ideology
-.01
(05)
Support for Big Government
.29***
(.06)
Moral Traditionalism
.03
(.08)
Egalitarianism
.10
(.08)
Identity Importance
.12*
(.06)
Linked Fate
-.00
(.03)
Control Vars.
Female
.04
(.03)
Age
.07
(.06)
Education
-.06
(.05)
Income
.05
(.05)
Own Home
.05*
(.03)
South
.05+
(.03)
Married
.05**
(.03)
R squared
N
.30
380
25
Notes: + p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 for two-tailed test. Party identification is coded such that higher
values indicate greater attachment to the Democratic Party. All variables coded 0-1. Results are based on weighted data
and incorporating survey design effects.
Table 5: Predictors of Support for Big Government
Intercept
.64***
(.13)
Ideology
.20*
(.08)
Egalitarianism
.09
(.11)
Moral Traditionalism
-.13
(.10)
Identity Importance
.15*
(.07)
Linked Fate
-.02
(.04)
Control variables
Female
.08*
(.03)
Age
-.05
(.07)
Education
-.02
(.05)
Income
-.11
(.08)
Own Home
.05
(.03)
South
-.01
(.03)
Married
-.04
(.03)
R squared
N
.14
381
26
Notes: + p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001 for two-tailed test. Support for big government is coded such that
higher values indicate greater levels of support for big government. All variables coded 0-1. Results are based on
weighted data and incorporating survey design effects.
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