Undermining the party: anti-black attitudes, presidential vote choice, and split-ticket voting among white voters

ABSTRACT American politics has entered, what Michael Tesler calls, a “most racial period,” causing racial attitudes to be increasingly salient. This shift provides an opportunity to examine the consequences to white Americans’ political behavior when their racial attitudes are easily activated. In this paper, we examine the influence of racial attitudes on (1) white Americans’ presidential vote choice and (2) how racial attitudes, in this period, may undercut the influence of partisanship on vote choice. We use data from the American National Election Studies Time Series Survey conducted from 2004 to 2020 to explore these questions. First, we find that anti-Black attitudes increasingly predict white vote choice. Next, we find that during this period, racially resentful, white Democrats became less likely to vote for the Democrat. This was not the same for white Republicans who, regardless of their racial attitudes, did not shift to the Democratic party. Finally, we find that white Republicans appear to hunker down and become significantly less likely to split their vote as they express more anti-Black attitudes. White Democrats become significantly more likely to jump ship as they endorse more anti-Black attitudes, revealing that racial attitudes were influential enough to overcome party loyalties during this period.