Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey Research Articles

Clarifying the “People Like Me”: Racial Efficacy and Political Behavior

Political efficacy, or a sense of confidence that “people like me” can understand politics and receive responsiveness from government, is central to the study of political behavior. However, the reference group that respondents view as “people like me” is not always immediately clear. This limits our ability to infer how efficacy informs political participation. We propose a specific concept and operationalization of racial group efficacy, and we distinguish this concept from racial identity, group consciousness, and conventional efficacy measures. Analyses of data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey reveal that for white, Black, Asian, and Latina/o Americans, racial efficacy is a more consistent and robust predictor of political participation than standard internal and external efficacy measures. Further, we show that racial efficacy exhibits associations with conventional and unconventional forms of participation that distinguish whites from people of color. We conclude by discussing how people’s racial efficacy informs their engagement in politics, from voting to protests.

The markings of linked fate among Asian Americans and Latinxs.

Linked fate, or the degree to which individuals feel that their lives are tied to other group members' lives, can mobilize collective action and strengthen commonalities. Yet, linked fate remains underresearched, particularly among Asian Americans and Latinxs. Using the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Postelection Survey, the present study draws on García Coll et al.'s (1996) integrative model to examine associations between three domains of linked fate (immigrant, minority, coethnic) and demographic and structural factors (age, gender, nativity, education, income, language, skin color, neighborhood diversity, social stratification). Education, discrimination, and feeling excluded are positively related to immigrant, minority, and coethnic-linked fate; age is negatively related. Income and nativity were not significant predictors. Implications for fostering linked fate and coalition building within and across Asians and Latinxs are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Married with children: do intermarriage and children impact political orientations?

ABSTRACT We test the possibility that social contact through interracial marriage impacts racial attitudes. We assume that interracial couples experience intergroup contact that is meaningfully different from same-race couples. Little research examines the impact of mate selection and reproduction on political and racial attitudes. In this paper, we advance the research on the potential impact of mate selection and reproduction on couples’ racial attitudes. Using racialized socialization theory, we test whether interracial couples hold similar views to other multiracial couples compared to same-race couples. A secondary hypothesis concerns whether interracial couples with children hold distinct racial and political attitudes. We use the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). We find that non-Hispanic whites, Blacks, and Asians in interracial relationships are more likely to indicate that these groups experience discrimination compared to their co-ethnic counterparts who are in relationships with co-ethnics. We also find some support for our expectation that having children in an interracial marriage has an impact on the racial attitudes of non-Hispanic whites. Our results contribute to the growing research on the political attitudes of interracial couples as well as the impact of their having children upon their political preferences.

Reconsidering Group Interests

AbstractThis paper aims to explore attitudes toward immigration among two non-White groups, Asian Americans and Black Americans. For more than a decade, individuals from Asia have comprised the majority of immigrants entering the United States each year. Today, the majority of the Asian American U.S. population remains foreign-born. Yet using data collected from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey and the 2016 National Asian American Survey—a time period marked by high levels of saliency with regard to immigration issues—we find that Black Americans, the majority of whom are U.S.-born, exhibit even more progressive attitudes towards immigration, both legal and undocumented, than mostly foreign-born Asian Americans. Our research challenges economic and material theories related to immigration attitudes and suggests that political connections to and “linked fate” with other minorities better explain why Black Americans exhibit more progressive attitudes toward immigration than Asian Americans.

Not All Black Lives Matter: Officer-Involved Deaths and the Role of Victim Characteristics in Shaping Political Interest and Voter Turnout

This article presents evidence that exposure to officer-involved deaths of low-threat Black victims increases political interest and voter turnout among Black respondents under age 40 to the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. Victim race, threat level, and visibility affect the likelihood that an officer-involved death will mobilize political interest. Political interest and voter turnout are higher among the treatment group, which was exposed to high-visibility/low-threat Black victims only before participating in the CMPS, than in the control group, which was exposed to such victims only after taking the survey. Exposing young Black respondents to all victims without accounting for threat, visibility, or race does not affect political interest or voter turnout, suggesting the importance of these factors for mobilization. The findings clarify the role that Black Lives Matter activists, journalists, and watchdog groups can play in countering the police actions that shape the visibility and framing of Black victims of police violence.

From Inter-Racial Solidarity to Action: Minority Linked Fate and African American, Latina/o, and Asian American Political Participation

Recent literature in race, ethnicity, and politics has assessed how minority linked fate, defined as “the idea that ethnoracial minorities might share a sense of commonality that extends beyond their particular ethnoracial group to other ethnoracial groups (Gershon et al., in Politics Groups Identities 7(3):642–653, 2019),” shapes attitudes toward descriptive representation and support for coalition building. However, scholarship has yet to examine the influence of minority linked fate on political participation. We argue that similar to those who view the interests of co-ethnics as a proxy for their individual interests, Latina/os, Asian Americans, and African Americans who express linked fate with a more expansive minority community are more likely to take political action. This political participation results from senses of obligation to and solidarity with other racial minorities outside of their own. Results from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey show that controlling for conventional measures of linked fate, minority linked fate is associated primarily with more system-challenging modes of political activity for Latina/os, Asian Americans, and African Americans. We conclude by positioning minority linked fate as a complementary heuristic to traditional notions of intra-racial linked fate and note how shared inter-racial linked fate informs our understanding of recent political activism among people of color.

Explaining the American crisis of policing: Media, malfeasance, and racial prejudice

AbstractObjectiveTo include the factor of police malfeasance in the crisis of confidence in American police. Further, to explain the role of race, media, and contextual factors on individual perception of police performance. We argue that while the BLM movement was amplified by the deaths of Black people at the hands of police, it originates from the reality that police are continuously engaged in nefarious activities that wear down communities of color extensively.MethodsUsing the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post‐Election Survey (CMPS) and data on media reported police malfeasance in 2016 collected from the CATO institute, we explore the relationship between police malfeasance, race, and evaluations of police performance. We create two sets of logit regressions, one for all CMPS respondents and second, disaggregated by race to show the effects of media reported police malfeasance on respondent’s evaluations of police performance.ResultsIn the pooled model, we find a positive and significant correlation between poor police performance evaluations and incidences of police malfeasance. Further, substantive increases in the probability of rating police performance as poor are correlated with all respondents when disaggregated by race. We find a significant correlation among Black and White respondents, who are more likely to rate police performance as poor.ConclusionConventional narratives around the Black Lives Matter movement seem to show that deaths at the hands of local law enforcement “created” the BLM movement. We argue that the current delegitimating of police in terms of public support is related directly to police behavior themselves. Police malfeasance increases the likelihood of negative performance evaluations, thus undermining community trust in the police.

Legal Status, Worries About Deportation, and Depression Among Asian Immigrants.

Although legal status and worries of deportation have been identified as key factors in immigrant health inequities for Latinx immigrants, how they impact health of Asian immigrants is largely unknown. Using 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we used sets of logistic regressions to examine the relationships among legal statuses, worries about deportation, and depression for Asian immigrants (n = 1371). Asian immigrants who are in the process of applying for citizenship, those with visas, and those who are ineligible to apply for citizenship were significantly more likely to be depressed compared with naturalized citizens. The significant associations between legal status and depression were mediated by worries about deportation. Legal status and worries of deportation are important determinants of health for Asian immigrants. The results point to a critical need for systematic investment in data collection for data disaggregation.

Asian Americans’ Indifference to Black Lives Matter: The Role of Nativity, Belonging and Acknowledgment of Anti-Black Racism

This paper assesses how ongoing historical racism and nativism as embedded within U.S. culture requires new and important dialogues about the omnipresence of White supremacy and its interconnected mechanisms that divide communities along the lines of race and perceived in-group status. To assess the role of immigration as it is understood through paradigms of White supremacy and systemic racism, the current study examines individual-level predictors of indifference to the BLM movement based on nativity status among Asian Americans—a racialized pan-ethnic group that is comprised of predominantly foreign-born members. Using the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, one of the few nationally representative surveys that include detailed information about the Black Lives Matter movement, our study includes 1371 Asian immigrants (i.e., foreign-born Asian Americans) and 1635 U.S.-born Asian Americans. Results demonstrate that reporting indifference to the BLM movement differ by nativity such that foreign-born Asian Americans were significantly more likely to report indifference to the BLM movement compared to their U.S.-born Asian American counterparts. However, the impact of nativity disappears once we account for sense of belonging and acknowledgement of anti-Black racism. The sense of belonging was significant in predicting indifference to the BLM movement among U.S.-born Asian Americans only. The findings contribute to our understanding of racial sense making for Asian Americans as well as an understanding of how White supremacy translates to anti-Black racism through multiple and interconnected mechanisms for the maintenance of White supremacy.

The Intersectional Dynamics of Descriptive Representation

AbstractResearch on political representation demonstrates that the presence of historically underrepresented groups in political office (descriptiverepresentation) can have not only asubstantiveimpact on policies and procedures but also asymbolicimpact that changes the attitudes and even behavior of those groups. The dynamics of group identity and its significance for representation, however, are complicated. Individuals often hold multiple identities, and the meanings attached to those identities may vary in relation to each other and to the particular political context. In this article, we provide an intersectional analysis of two minoritized ethno-racial groups, African Americans and Latinos/as. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we explore the extent to which shared identity matters for perceptions of representation. Our findings demonstrate that while shared identity does influence perceptions of representation, the impact varies in complicated ways that are simultaneously raced and gendered.

Destined to Run?

While the candidate emergence literature has provided explanations as to why women do not run or think about running for office, we are still learning about the reasons why they do. This question is of interest for the political candidacy of Black women, as this group is most represented among women of color in political office and their numbers continue to grow. Furthermore, because there is evidence that Black women’s entry into politics is distinct from other groups, it is important to explore how Black women come to participate in politics. The authors examine the extent to which Black women’s level of civic engagement influences their likelihood of considering political office compared to other groups of women. They theorize that running for office is a form of political participation and that previous political activity can act as a predictor for political ambition. The authors explore the likelihood that civic engagement matters for Black women being asked to run and considering running for office on their own. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), a unique dataset that provides a large and generalizable sample of racial and ethnic groups in the United States, the authors examine political ambition beyond the groups that have traditionally run for political office. In sum, our data indicates that political participation significantly predicts being asked to run and thinking about running for office. These results reveal the importance of thinking beyond the traditional candidacy pool and how sociopolitical factors matter for key determinants of seeking political office (being asked and having considered running).

Do Ranked Ballots Stimulate Candidate Entry?

Systems of ranked-choice voting (RCV) have been cast as ways to diversify candidate pipelines. One purported mechanism is that RCV lets trailing candidates seek non-first-place rankings from their competitors' supporters. In turn, that property might encourage more candidate entry. Does that property resonate with people? Does it operate as suggested on under-represented groups? We approach these questions via survey experiments on attitudes toward running for office. Two involve national surveys, one of which over-samples people of color (the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey, or CMPS). Two more are in Philadelphia -- large, diverse, and without local RCV advocacy at the time. Our treatments are: that voters can rank choices unlike in the current system (RCV), that transfers can help a person win (RCV+), and that RCV systems have been shown to benefit women and people of color (RCV++). We find null effects with four exceptions: positive for Black respondents from RCV+ (second Philadelphia experiment), positive for White respondents from RCV++ (second Philadelphia experiment), and negative for Latino respondents from RCV++ (second Philadelphia experiment and CMPS). However, none of these effects is large enough to offset generally low interest in running, and one of them (Latinos, second Philadelphia experiment) depends on the type of post-hoc analysis.

Relative group discrimination and vote choice among Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Whites

ABSTRACT Scholars of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP) have demonstrated that discrimination shapes the political behavior of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Whites. This scholarship, however, tends to focus on a single group or employ variables that make intergroup comparisons difficult. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey, we examine individuals’ perceptions of the discrimination their racial or pan-ethnic group faces relative to other groups and the relationship between those perceptions and presidential vote choice. We argue that perceived relative group discrimination captures group-level perceptions of racial hierarchy in the United States, and present evidence that these perceptions significantly influenced vote choice in the 2016 presidential election. Whites who believe their racial group experiences more discrimination than other groups were significantly more likely to cast a vote for Donald Trump. This finding contradicts similar studies identifying White awareness of their dominance as a catalyst of pro-group behavior. Conversely, Latinos who expressed a greater sense of relative group discrimination were more likely to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. We replicate these findings across multiple datasets and find that relative group discrimination is associated with partisanship among Blacks, Latinos, and Whites since at least 2012.

Black Generational Politics and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Despite its advocacy for justice and accountability in the American political system, the Movement for Black Lives is still considered controversial among groups of Americans. The in-your-face and unapologetic tone of today’s movement stands in contrast to romanticized narratives of the peaceful, nonviolent activism of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. The movement’s titular organization, Black Lives Matter, openly rejects respectability politics—the notion that individuals and groups must conform to the expectations of white mainstream norms to protect themselves from the harms of white racism and discrimination. In this article, we examine whether generational politics affect Black attitudes toward protest movements, focusing especially on the Black Lives Matter organization. We expect that protest politics are affected by generations of Black Americans who have been socialized in different eras of social and political advocacy with differing views about the actions that are acceptable for Black politics. Consistent with prior literature, we anticipate that generational differences in attitudes toward contestation, varying awareness about the political and social goals of new movements, differences in access to political information, and overall generational socialization toward respectability politics will all affect the degree to which Black Americans support the Movement for Black Lives. Using national-level data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), we find that prior theories of generational politics do not fully explain support for Black Lives Matter. Unexpectedly, we find that older generations of Black Americans are more supportive of the movement than younger generations of Black Americans. We do not find strong evidence of generational effects interacting with awareness of the movement, political opportunity structures, or respectability politics, which suggests the diminishing effects of generational differences along with traditional factors that influence support. Our results underscore the need for research on generational effects to consider the context of political socialization, which varies across generations.

Perceived police performance, racial experiences, and trust in local government

ABSTRACT Given the continued revelation of police abuses of racial-ethnic minorities in America, it is of the utmost importance for scholars to focus on questions of how police conduct is related to minority political behavior, in particular their trust in local government. In this paper, we find evidence that both egotropic and sociotropic insecurity and experiences with police have a significant correlation with confidence in local government. The effects of both victimization and negative interactions with police have a substantive association with the ways that communities of color perceive their local government. Combining data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) and contextual data from the U.S. Census Bureau, FBI crime statistics, and “Mapping Police Violence” project, we use maximum likelihood to examine how police conduct, personal experiences with the police, and neighborhood conditions correlate with individuals' trust in local government.

Demographic Context, Mass Deportation, and Latino Linked Fate

AbstractWhat explains why some Latinos feel strongly tied to their coethnics while others do not? Demographic context is one of the most cited predictors of identity strength, but the size and direction of its effects are disputed. Geographic differences in policy environments may explain the phenomenon. We argue that high levels of immigration enforcement indirectly lead to increased feelings of ethnic linked fate by determining where and how demographic context—in this case, the size of the immigrant population—will be salient. To test this, we combine information from local immigration-enforcement data (obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests) with the Latino Decisions' 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. The results suggest native-born Latinos have a stronger sense of ethnic linked fate when they live near large immigrant populations and rates of enforcement are high. When enforcement is low, the presence of immigrants has a negligible effect on native-born attitudes. Foreign-born Latinos' sense of linked fate is unaffected by policy context. These results suggest that as immigration enforcement becomes intensifies, conservative politicians may see increased backlash, at least in certain communities, from native-born Latinos. This is because feelings about ethnic linked fate correlate with increased participation and more proimmigrant policy stances.

Shared Identities: Intersectionality, Linked Fate, and Perceptions of Political Candidates

Scholars of gender and race have long acknowledged the importance that descriptive representation plays for marginalized groups, if not substantively than symbolically. Yet, as candidate pools diversify to better reflect the population, it becomes less clear which among intersecting and overlapping identities will matter and how. Employing data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we explore the association between minority voters’ sense of linked fate and their beliefs about candidates who share (or do not share) their gender and racial identities. Using this timely and unique data, collected immediately after the 2016 election when race and gender were of particular salience, we examine whether shared racial and gender identity is associated with Black and Latina/o voters’ beliefs about how well different candidates will represent their interests. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for the changing face of American political candidates and voters.

Americanness and the “Other” Americans

American identity has become a racialized norm that is primarily applied to those racially identified as White. We examine what it means to be an American from the perspective of racial and ethnic minorities who may not be viewed as prototypical Americans. Because we know comparatively little about what American identity means for those who are not White, it is important to understand this attachment in order to understand how “other” Americans articulate their identity and how their political actions and attitudes are influenced by those sentiments. Using the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we examine attachment to American identity for racial and ethnic minorities (i.e., Blacks, Asians, and Latino/a people) to evaluate levels of political participation and sentiments toward discrimination. Using a novel measure of Americanness (measured here as the extent to which people feel “allegiance” to America and their sense of “belonging” as Americans) we describe the differences between how racial and ethnic groups view their American identity, and how that perception influences electoral and nonelectoral participation. We find not only that there are differences in how various groups attach to American identity, but also that the impact of this identity attachment on electoral and nonelectoral participation is moderated by race and ethnicity.

People of Color, People of Faith: The Effect of Social Capital and Religion on the Political Participation of Marginalized Communities

U.S. immigration policy over the last 100 years has changed the onus of political acculturation from public programs to private groups like churches. After this significant policy change, how do religion, social capital, and nativity intersect in the political mobilization of racial minorities? Furthermore, after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, the country of origin of immigrants shifted from European countries to Latin America and Asia. Scholars have theorized that churches play a pivotal role in the socialization of immigrants by providing a place of belonging and a community willing to teach newcomers about the goings-on of American political society. How have these acculturation policies worked under new immigration populations? Previous scholarly work has connected social capital with churches, though their relationship to political participation has been minimal. We hypothesize that social capital and religious tradition have a multiplicative effect on the participation rates of believers, but that race mitigates that effect. The positioning of racial groups in broader society impacts the significance and role of churches within these communities. We use Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) 2016 data to examine the connection between social capital, religion, and political behavior in a novel attempt to systematically identify the unique role of churches in the mobilization of racial minority communities. We use these results to suggest that the current policies of privatizing political acculturation have had less success with more recent waves of immigrants.

The Ties that Bind: Assessing the Effects of Political and Racial Church Homogeneity on Asian American Political Participation

AbstractResearch consistently emphasizes the importance of religious institutions for influencing political action among Asian Americans. The social capital literature offers two theoretical explanations for why churches increase political activity: bridging capital between different groups and bonding capital among similar groups. The latter argues that individuals who attend racially homogeneous churches are more participatory. This paper expands on these accounts by examining another aspect of bonding. That is, how does similarity in political views among church members affect Asian Americans' political participation? Results from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey show that Asian Americans who attend politically homogeneous churches are more likely to vote and participate in conventional activities. The effects of racial homogeneity are limited once taking political homogeneity into consideration. These findings provide evidence that political homophily within religious organizations may facilitate the bonding of social capital between racial/ethnic minorities, and this homophily is indeed salient to democratic participation.