Knowledge Matters: Policy Cross-pressures and Black Partisanship

Claudine Gay

doi:10.1007/s11109-013-9227-3

Abstract

Black Americans are a core Democratic constituency, despite holding views on social issues that put them in conflict with the party. Conventional wisdom attributes this partisan commitment to the salience of race and concerns about racial inequality. This paper considers whether the Democratic bias derives in part from low levels of political knowledge. Using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Study, this paper examines how political knowledge moderates the relationship between social issue cross-pressures and partisan attitudes among Black Americans. I demonstrate that the extent to which Democratic allegiance persists despite policy disagreements depends on whether blacks are sufficiently knowledgeable to act on their policy views, and not simply on the importance that blacks assign to their racial commitments. It is only among politically knowledgeable Black Americans that social issue cross-pressures are at all politically consequential; for them, Democratic partisanship is resilient but not immune to policy disagreements. For blacks with low levels of political knowledge, partisan support is unaffected by policy disagreements. This pattern is most pronounced among religiously active Black Evangelicals, for whom social issues are highly salient.

Highlights

Black Americans are a core Democratic constituency
Each graph depicts the expected difference in partisan attitudes associated with a change in policy view from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile Black position, for white respondents at each grade-level of political knowledge.22 (I use the percentile benchmarks for Black respondents to facilitate comparison of the two racial groups.) The shape of the graphs are quite similar to what was observed in the earlier analysis (Figures 2 – 5); there is a consistent pattern of stronger policy–party relationships, with point estimates and 95% confidence intervals further away from the zero-line, at higher levels of political knowledge
Opinions on social issues are relevant to Black partisan attitudes, but only when Blacks are sufficiently knowledgeable to connect these views to partisan judgements

Summary

Introduction

Black Americans are a core Democratic constituency. As a group, they overwhelmingly identify as Democrats, with many describing themselves as strong partisans. Tures that rarely intersect—research on political knowledge that is often silent on race and, may overstate the role of information for blacks; research on black partisanship that is often silent on political information and, may overstate the role of race Taken together, these literatures predict that, given more information about partisan cleavages on social issues, African Americans with conservative policy views should evaluate the Democratic party and political actors less favorably, and the Republican party more favorably, than African Americans with liberal policy views. The alignment of policy and partisan views should be more sensitive to levels of political information for whites than it is for blacks

Data and Methods

How Information Moderates the Policy-Party Link

When Information Matters Most

The Ties That Bind

Findings

Conclusions