Friday, September 19, 2008

Will Tar Heel Whites Vote Black?

In teaching my U.S. Campaigns & Elections class this fall, I constantly remind my students that as a social scientist, I (and they) study human behavior, and that's pretty dangerous. Because at some point, our data (i.e., human beings as voters) will lack reliability (read: people lie). I know, I know, how dare someone point out that human beings would be deceitful and not give honest answers when asked by a social scientist. Well, here's some evidence from a recent poll that will give pause to how we are interpreting this fall's election, especially in North Carolina.

To put my argument (that human beings lie) into context, here's the results of two questions asked on a New York Times poll taken over the summer, when both nominees were well known to the general public:

Do you think most people you know would vote for a presidential candidate who is black, or not?

  • Would: 69%
  • Would not: 16%
  • Don't know/no answer: 15%

Would you personally vote for a presidential candidate who is black, or not?

  • Would: 90%
  • Would not: 6
  • Don't know/no answer: 5%
So while "most people" would personally vote for presidential candidate who is black, some of us know of "someone" who would not vote for a presidential candidate. So while we're all willing to vote for a black candidate, there are some of us out there who are not.

In a recently-released Elon University poll, a similar set of questions were asked of North Carolina respondents (411 respondents, with a margin of error of 4.9%):

All things being equal, would you rather vote for a black person, a white person, or would a presidential candidate's race make no difference to you?

  • Vote for a black person: 0.7%
  • Vote for a white person: 2.9%
  • Race doesn't make a difference: 95.9%
  • Don't know: 0.5%

Do you know people that will not vote for a presidential candidate is who is black?

  • Yes: 54.7%
  • No: 43.3%
  • Don't know: 1.9%

So, in North Carolina, half of us know someone who won't vote for a black presidential candidate, but it ain't us. Sound fishy?

Well, in the study of white voting behavior when it comes to black candidates, there are two schools of thought. As noted in his excellent study of Changing White Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership, political scientist Zoltan L. Hajnal wrote that while some scholars point to the public opinion polls that report white respondents willing to vote for black candidates and that the number of black elected officials has increased in primarily white areas (states, cities, etc.), the other side of the scholarly fence point to the fact that when there is a white and a black candidate in the same election, whites vote for their own.

For example, in 2006, the U.S. Senate race in Tennessee featured Bob Corker (white Republican) and Harold Ford (black Democrat). In the exit polls from that race, white respondents went 59% for Corker to 40% for Ford. Of course, this was a particularly nasty election battle (the television ads were particularly fierce against Ford), with Corker winning the seat 51% to 48%.

What Hajnal found in his study is that when white voters see black political officials in office, they find themselves more comfortable and will vote for the black incumbent, as opposed to when a black challenger is first running for elected office. As this is the first presidential election with a black candidate as a party nominee, it will be interesting to see how white voters respond and react.

In North Carolina, one can see a partial test of this scenario, in the guise of the May 5th Democratic presidential primary between Obama and Sen. Clinton. Sen. Obama carried the major metropolitan counties along the interstates with over 55% of the vote, along with the "majority-minority" counties in the north-eastern part of the state and stretching along NC's "black-belt" counties. However, Sen. Clinton won significant portions of the white majority NC mountain counties with 55% or more of the vote in these conservative counties (only Buncombe, with UNC-Asheville, and Watauga, with App State University, counties went more than 55% for Obama).

If Sen. Obama is to win North Carolina, some estimates indicate that he needs at least 36% of the white vote. This will be a critical test to see if there is truth in the statement, "whites vote black."

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Is It 4 or 20 for McCain?

According to the polls at RealClearPolitics, it would appear to be good news for both Senators McCain and Obama in North Carolina, depending on which poll you believe.

For the McCain supporters, both history and the Research 2000 and Survey USA polls are worth noting. President Bush won North Carolina in 2000 and 2004 by 13 and 12 points respectively, and with Research 2000 showing a 17 point lead and Survey USA showing a 20 point advantage, McCain should believe that North Carolina will be a reliably Red Republican state at the presidential level in seven weeks.

For the Obama supporters, a trio of polls, taken around the same time, tell a different story: PPP shows a 4 point McCain lead, Civitas shows a 3 point McCain lead, and a just released poll by CNN gives McCain an statistically insignificant 1 point lead over Obama. Not seeing the internals of the CNN poll, we don't know how Obama is doing with several key groups, most importantly with whites in the Tar Heel state.

For Obama to win North Carolina, he needs to claim a higher percentage of white support than what other polls are showing. For example, in the Survey USA poll, only 26% of whites are supporting Obama. Even with a huge turnout of black voters, the senator from Illinois needs to break into the mid- to high -30s in order to claim North Carolina's electoral votes. While there's 48 days to do so, money and manpower will be critical to pulling himself up ten points among white voters.

PS--sorry for the delay in posting since July. It's been a hectic beginning of the school year here at Catawba, but I hope to be able to do some more analysis and posting now that we've got things going here on campus.