Dynamics in American Politics

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines whether the polarization of American politics by race and racial attitudes continues or has become irrelevant to citizen's political evaluations. In particular, four specific areas are examined to advance our understanding of racial dyanics in American politics. These include the impact of racial attitudes on evaluations of the president, the potential spillover of racial attitudes on issues seen as related to the president, the possible reorganization of partisan politics around attitudes toward outgroups, and the the president's effect on racial attitudes. Race is probably the most visceral issue in American public life. As such, increased polarization of the electorate along the lines of race and racial attitudes would likely make it more difficult to achieve common ground on public policy. Understaning if and how racial attitudes have changed over time will help with our understanding of how to achieve common ground on public policy. The research design of re-interviewing at least 3000 respondents from the 2007-2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP) in the fall of 2010 and the spring of 2011 is singulary situated to capture these dynamics in American politics. Because the original CCAP contained excellent meausures of racial and ethnocentric attitudes before the 2008 election, this research can determine how these attitudes continute to affect assessments of the president as well as how his presidency may be influencing underlying belifies about outgroups. Similarly, this research can determine how the impact of racial dispositions on issue positions and party identification changed since 2008 without having to worry about the respondents' underlying attitudes changing in order to rationalize their partisanship and policy preferences. Finally the large sample size allows us to separately assess political changes amongst subgroups like African-Americans, Latinos and first-time voters who figure to become increasingly important in the years ahead.