Race and the 2012 Election

Abstract

Introduction: A Post-Racial Society?President Barack Obama was re-elected forty-fourth president of the United States for a second term in the 2012 election against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Obama gained votes among Asians and Latinos; Latinos represented one in ten votes nationwide who overwhelming supported Obama by a three-to-one mar- gin over Romney (up from 61% in 2008). Minority voters accounted for 45 percent of Obama's support, reflecting the expanded power of African Americans and Latinos in national elections. Strong Latino turnout made previous swing states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada safe for Democrats in presidential politics. And even Texas, a solid Republican stronghold, may turn purple in 2016 driven by the Latino vote. Not only has America elected an African American president for two terms but also Obama won both the 2008 and 2012 elections with solid majorities. On several fronts, this was a first for the United States. This mini-symposium examines various dimensions of the ostensible role of race in the 2012 election.In 2012 Obama's campaign message to keep moving the nation forward replaced the theme of hope which dominated the 2008 election, but the strategic elements of Obama's ground game in key battleground states were similar. His army of volunteers mobilizing voters with door to door visits and phone calls sealed Obama's vic- tory in the 2012 election, as it had in 2008, not to mention the billion dollars in campaign contributions that broke all previous records and effectively ended the nation's system of public financing of presidential campaigns. In soundly defeating Romney, Obama won nearly every battleground state, including Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wisconsin (with a narrow advantage in Florida).A common, and compelling, narrative in the public discourse is that America has become a society as demonstrated in back-to-back elections of an African American president and seventy-three African American and Latino members of Congress, a record, serving in the U.S. Congress. While such outcomes are ostensibly consistent with the post-racial description, the underlying dynamics that produced these results, and other issues of process, policy, and governance in con- temporary American politics, suggest otherwise.While white non-Hispanics made up 77 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 74 percent in 2008, they comprised just 72 percent in 2012, as minority voting rates rose. In recent presidential elections, a majority of whites voted for the Republican presidential candidate. The conver- gence of race and party affiliation is notable. Thus, a counterargument made by some scholars-including a number of papers in this symposium-contends that the supposed dawn of a post-racial America is probably more apparent than real. A fuller understanding of the role of race in the 2012 election requires careful attention to how its implications may be manifest, or latent, in ideas and attitudes, institutions, and practices of American politics (see also Smith and King 2011).While Obama overcame viperous attacks in both elec- tions to win by a convincing margin, race remains an important undercurrent of American life, politics, and electoral politics. Kinder and Sanders (1996) reveal that racial resentment remains the most powerful determinant of white opinion on such racially charged issues as wel- fare, affirmative action, and school desegregation. Tesler and Sears (2010) find that race and racial attitudes were more important in voting in the 2008 presidential election than at any time in recent history. They also argue public opinion about health care, and the Affordable Care, was connected to Obama, in part because of his race. The papers in this symposium suggest the 2012 election, like 2008, continued to be influenced by racial attitudes. Public opinion about candidates and many policy issues, from immigration to electoral rules, remains divided by race. …