Black Candidates and Black Voters: Assessing the Impact of Candidate Race on Uncounted Vote Rates∗ Michael C. Herron† Jasjeet S. Sekhon‡ Department of Government Department of Government Dartmouth College Harvard University October 26, 2003 ∗Authors are listed in alphabetical order. Supplementary material is available at http://journalofpolitics.org. Replication material is available from the authors. Ear- lier versions of this article were presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association and the 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. The authors thank Rui de Figueiredo, Jr., Melissa Herman, James Kuklinski, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., John Sides, Suzanne M. Smith, Jonathan Wand, and seminar participants at Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, and the University of California, Berkeley, for comments on earlier drafts, Gary King and Ori Rosen for providing code, Jonathan Smith for GIS consulting, Richard Bill for research assistance, and Thomas Leach of the Chicago Board of Elections and Geetha Lingham of the Cook County Clerk’s Office for providing precinct canvasses. The authors are responsible for all errors. †HB 6108, 223 Silsby Hall, Hanover NH 03755 (
[email protected]). ‡34 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (jasjeet
[email protected]). Abstract Black Candidates and Black Voters: Assessing the Impact of Candidate Race on Uncounted Vote Rates Numerous studies show that the rate at which African-Americans cast ballots with missing or invalid votes, i.e., the African-American residual vote rate, is higher than the corresponding white rate. While existing literature argues that the plethora of African-American residual votes is caused by administrative problems or socioeconomic factors, we show using precinct-level data from two recent elections in Cook County, Illinois, that the African-American residual vote rate in elec- toral contests with black candidates is less than half the rate in contests without black candidates.