Abstract
Simon Cheng, David Weakliem Sociological Science, March 17, 2014 DOI 10.15195/v1.a6 Abstract We use data from a national survey of likely voters conducted before the 2008 election to study the association between Obama's perceived racial identity and voters' choices.
Highlights
Tajfel (1981) proposes that people distinguish between in- and out-group members
It is possible that voters who intended to support Obama assigned him to the Beyond the One-Drop Rule category that they regarded more favorably, while those who intended to vote against him consigned him to the one that they regarded less favorably
Our specification should not be taken as a claim about causal order, which cannot be definitively established with cross-sectional data
Summary
Tajfel (1981) proposes that people distinguish between in- and out-group members (or “we” and “them”). Voters can be expected to react more favorably to candidates who are part of their own group (Block 2011; Caruso, Mead, and Balcetis 2009). They may be influenced by a biracial background, for example by regarding it as “somewhat we” (Cheng and Lively 2009). Our analysis treats support for Obama as the dependent variable and views of his racial identity as an independent variable. The sign and significance of any association will be the same regardless of whether biracial perception is treated as an independent or dependent variable. An association is of interest regardless of the causal order, because in either case it means that one identity is valued over another
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