Religion & Law

"How Overt Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election" 

SPENCER PISTON, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - Department of Political Science

Email: spiston@umich.edu

Some commentators claim that white Americans put prejudice behind them when evaluating presidential candidates in 2008. Previous research on the question of white discrimination against black candidates has yielded mixed results, and suffers from such methodological limitations as hypothetical candidates, local samples of respondents, and racial attitude measures that fail to account for social desirability bias. Fortunately, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, combined with a methodological innovation in the measurement of racial stereotypes in the 2008 American National Election Studies, provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine more rigorously whether prejudice disadvantages black candidates. I find that negative stereotypes about blacks significantly eroded white support for Barack Obama; indeed, the effect of stereotypes may have been sufficient to cost Obama the popular vote among whites. Further, racial stereotypes do not predict support for previous presidential candidates or current prominent white Democrats, indicating that white voters punished Obama for his race rather than his party affiliation or policy platform. This finding indicates that white Americans have not put prejudice behind them after all.