Some polls have found that white support for President Obama has dropped to unprecedentedly low levels, and this topic is getting no end of media attention. Gawker wrote “Gee, White Voters really don’t like Barack Obama. Huh.” But this misses a central point: Since the mid-1970’s Democrats have had a […] Read more »
The Impact of Anti‐Black Racism on Approval of Obama’s Job Performance and on Voting in the 2012 Election
… In this paper, we explore the extent of implicit and explicit anti‐Black attitudes in 2012 and the degree to which such attitudes shape the American public’s evaluations of Mr. Obama’s performance in office and their intentions regarding voting in the 2012 election. In doing so, we compare the current […] Read more »
Majority harbor prejudice against blacks
Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not. Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as […] Read more »
2012 voters: The deepest racial split since ’88
The 2012 election is shaping up to be more polarized along racial lines than any presidential contest since 1988, with President Obama lagging behind Republican Mitt Romney among white voters by 21 percentage points, a steep drop in support from four years ago. As he did in 2008, Obama gets […] Read more »
Obama’s racial penalty
Barack Obama has run his presidential races with an extra weight on his shoulders: being black. Sure, there are some pundits who claim that he benefits from his race – black loyalty, white guilt, and such – but serious scholars understand that his race has been, in net, a notable […] Read more »
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 […] Read more »