Romney Relies On Race To Attack Obama On Welfare

Mitt Romney has stuck with his theme of attacking President Obama over “gutting” the work requirement for welfare. In an often-aired television commercial, Romney’s claims that Obama “quietly” dropped the requirement that welfare recipients find work and instead they “just send you a check”. …

I asked a nationally representative sample of adults if they had heard about Obama’s “announcement” about welfare: 1 out of 3 respondents (31%) said they had heard and, of these, almost half (47%) had said that they thought it was a true story. …

However, once we look a little closer at these survey responses, we can see that if these ads are effective, it is most likely not because the ads are changing opinion, but rather because they are tapping into opinions that voters already hold – in this case opinions that are squarely rooted in attitudes about race. [cont.]

Ryan D. Enos, Harvard (Model Politics)