The Curious Case of Black “Conservatives”: Assessing the Validity of the Liberal-Conservative Scale among Black Americans

Abstract

Abstract Many Black Americans identify as conservative on surveys, despite their allegiance to the Democratic Party. Prominent theoretical accounts claim this mismatch results from identity-based considerations. I revisit this long-standing puzzle and offer an alternative explanation with broad implications for studying political attitudes and behavior across the social sciences. Leveraging data from the American National Election Studies, I demonstrate that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” are unfamiliar to many Black Americans, compromising the usefulness and validity of the liberal-conservative scale for Black respondents. Respondents unfamiliar with these terms misapply them and choose ideological labels that fail to align with their partisan preferences. Consequently, scholars and political actors make incorrect and imprecise inferences about the contours of Black politics. Findings also raise new concerns about the generalizability of claims that rely on ideological self-identification measures, including popular claims about mass polarization and partisan-ideological sorting among the American public. Critically, this work suggests a need for caution when using concepts that vary in their meaningfulness across social groups.