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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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The color of a candidate’s skin failed to sway voters to depress the lever for either Obama or McCain in the 2008 election, immediate analyses of that contest seemed to suggest. Some pundits hailed it as the first postracial election.
But a closer look after the election has revealed a much more nuanced picture of that historic faceoff. It turns out that as many as a fifth of the voters cared about race more than other considerations like gender, endorsements by a local newspaper or a candidate’s political party.
A study by political scientist Brian F. Schaffner at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the December issue of Political Psychology showed that concerns about race may have meant that Obama procured 3 percent less of the vote than he would have if he were white—enough to decide an election in a close race. “It’s pretty clear that if Obama were white he would have done better than he did,” Schaffner says.
His finding echoes the results of similar probings by other researchers into the 2008 statistics. Schaffner’s work stands out, though, because of the care that he took in trying to figure out whether a voter was trying to mask biases about the hyper-sensitive issue of race. The researcher devised what he calls an “unobtrusive observational measure” to try to elicit a voter’s real opinions.
Schaffner deployed a simple ranking method to get beyond what political scientists call “social desirability bias:” voters’ attempts to cover up opinions that they know might be repellent to others. After the election, Schaffner asked 934 respondents, 825 of whom voted, to rank the importance of six items from most to least helpful in making a decision.
Whites who placed race higher on the list, which included a candidate’s gender, occupation, political party and other factors, were less likely to vote for Obama, The definition of “higher” encompassed any ranking from first to fourth on the list, allowing the survey to detect the importance of race even if respondents didn’t rank that category first and may have wanted to hide their views.
These findings held up even after taking into account a measure of political conservatism, specifically, opposition to affirmative action. A white respondent who opposed affirmative action but put race last instead of fourth on the list was 25 percent more likely to vote for Obama. In the 2012 election, Schaffner wants to use the same method to examine, not only race, but this year’s added hot-button issue of Mitt Romney’s religion.
A well-known political blog, The Monkey Cage, raised the question of whether trying to deduce voters’ recondite opinions was really needed. John Sides, a political scientist at George Washington University, noted that other studies had produced similar results even when asking respondents more directly about their racial prejudices. Schaffner defends his methodology, citing evidence from exit polls that indicates that social desirability bias really matters. “If people are obscuring answers, that’s going to make it much more difficult to detect what the effect is of those answers,” he says.
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Add CommentThe Republican Party is strong in the Midwest and South. Evangelicals, particularly Baptists, are also strong in these areas. Many Evangelical pastors and ministers have spoken out openly in their services against Mormons and the Mormon faith, stating that they are not Christians. I suspect that Evangelical voters who attend such church meetings have developed a bias against Mormons, including Mitt Romney. An open question such as "Can you vote for a Mormon candidate running for political office?" would probably suffice to demonstrate this bias. More subtle methods of demonstrating bias against Mormons and Mormon politicians may well show an even stronger bias. I suspect that at least 20% of Republicans in the Midwest and South would express either direct or subtle bias against Mormon Mitt Romney vs. "Christian" Republican candidates in a poll. What might be more interesting would be to determine which bias is stronger: Romney (Republican Caucasian Mormon) vs Obama (Democratic Black "Christian").
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Whites who placed race higher on the list, which included a candidate’s gender, occupation, political party and other factors, were less likely to vote for Obama"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting how they drew conclusions- and it is interesting to see how this could have negatively impacted how whites voted for him- but by not taking into account that a significant portion of the voting public is not white- and that minorities might have been more biased to vote for him it is impossible to tell if race helped or hurt him.
I'm also interested why he is exclusively refered to as "black" when he has equal "white" ancestry. Is it racism in our culture and media that continually refer to him as black?
There is a reason why he is referred to as Black. In this country it has always been, that even 1/8 Black ancestry is considered Black. That is not a rule made up by Blacks, but imposed upon them. The only people who could get away with not being considered Black, with 1/8 or more Black ancestry, were those who were light enough to pass. Obama's win is the first time in this countries history where a man of obvious ethnic back ground, has been publicly demanded to embrace the White side of his heritage . . . by other Whites. The point is, it doesn't matter how you identify yourself, you will be branded as you are perceived. An example of this would be if Obama wasn't the President, but instead, thief or drug addict accused of a crime with witnesses. How do you think the description of who he is would read: Black male, approx. 150lbs., in his late 40s - early 50s. Do you think the description would be: Black (possibly with White ancestry), approx. 150lbs., . . .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with what you are saying but you still have to understand how the racial dynamic works, especially in the U.S.
Did it occur to anyone that the American people got sick and tired at what Bush was giving us (death, destruction, poverty, and war) and we saw the same thing happening all over again if we put McCain in that seat. A lot of us realized that McCain was just a skin peel from George Bush and there was no way we wanted that idiot to stay in power...remember the boos Bush got when his helo took off? The reason I voted for Obama is I knew he would not take us down the same road Bush took us down; and he hasn't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery President has faced some sort of bias. I have an older family member who only votes Democrat and he is a blatant racist. He was twisted beyond imagination during the last election, but his bias for Democrats was stronger than his racism and he voted for Obama.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you look at the demographics of the voting, the bias favored Obama. The margin he needed to win was not provided by minorities, but by whites in the 19-29 age group. The last election had one of the highest turnouts in this age group ever, which bucks the norm. The reality of the matter is, is that many in this age group who are politically illiterate and usually do not vote, came out in droves to make a social statement by electing for our first black president.
JamesDavis..."Bush was giving us (death, destruction, poverty, and war)"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDuring the entirety of Bush's administration, the Republicans had complete control of not only the White House, but Congress as well. And not one of the Democrats in Congress during the Bush administration ever voted for any of the war's or policies that brought "death, destruction, poverty, and war".
Break the color barriers forget about what you look like Own Your Power from the inside out
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn order to add religion, Schaffner will need to be able to differentiate between "I don't like that candidate's religion" and "that candidate is too religious/not religious enough." I don't care what brand of religion a politician follows, but I do care if s/he is likely to tell me that a god told him/her to invade another country in order to destroy Gog and Magog.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObama win the last election because nonwhite population is increasing in U.S.Some thinkers predicating that within some decade non white population be more than white people and in near future there will be no chances to white man to elect as a president of U.S.A forever
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"You knew he wouldn't take us down the same road, and he didn't"? What alternate universe are you living in? Obama has doubled down on all the malfeasant actions of Bush to utterly shred the Constitution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObama won because both overt racism and unconscious racism is on a slow and steady decline, and the proportion of non-white population is increasing, relative to the 'white' population. Since the election in 2008 we have seen a non stop advertising campaign, both subtle and overt, designed to inflame and inflate racial awareness, passion and group loyalty. If Romney wins the GOP nomination, it will be interesting to see if inspired and, one might imagine, enhanced, racial bias will trump religious bias. My money is on the religious bigots, but one must never count the racists out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“It’s pretty clear that if Obama were white he would have done better than he did,” Schaffner says.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the guy from Massachusetts assumes (a priori) that WHITE voters are more likely to vote with racial bias. He completely ignores the 90 percentile of black voters who voted for Obama.
Taking the race issue into account, would it also have played a role in some white voters voting FOR Obama?