Can Republican African Americans Win African American Votes? A Field Experiment

Abstract

In the face of its 2012 defeat and looming demographic trends that did not bode well for the party’s future presidential candidates, the Republican National Committee officially declared its intention to recruit more African American candidates for office. But will fielding more African American candidates likely attract more African American votes for Republicans? Here, I employ a field experiment using real candidates and real votes cast in two down-ballot races featuring African American Republican candidates. Among voters who received mailings highlighting both race and party, African American voters responded primarily to party, in the process largely rejecting these two candidates. By contrast, African American voters responded more favorably when they learned the race, but not the party, of these candidates. The results here suggest something of a self-affirming political preference order in which African Americans felt affirmed by voting for a fellow African American, but only when they did not see that candidate as conflicting with a more central aspect of their political identity.