How Racially Resentful Voters Respond to Campaign Cues from Black Candidates

December 5, 2017

Abstract

In studies of voting behavior, racial resentment has consistently been associated with decreased support for black candidates. In this paper we bring together a collection of observational data and survey experiments to show how, in the certain contexts, exactly the opposite occurs: racially resentful voters prefer to vote for a black candidate over a white competitor. Higher levels of racial resentment do not imply an unyielding opposition to black candidates because such voters respond to partisan and ideological cues about the preferences of black candidates. Because the traditional measure of racial resentment captures more than just racial animus, some black candidates—most notably, Republicans with an individualist message—actually beneﬁt from higher levels of racial resentment in the electorate. These results highlight the importance of campaign context in shaping how voters respond to racial, partisan, and ideological cues. America’s original sin of slavery echoes through contemporary politics in many ways, not the least of which is a reluctance of white voters to support black candidates. Far from being an attitude held by a small minority, a large swath of racially resentful voters has proved quite unlikely to support black candidates (Frederick and Jeﬀries 2009; Highton 2004; Stout 2015)—a dynamic on display not only in local and congressional elections, but also in the 2008 election of President Barack

Obama (Tesler and Sears 2010). Racially resentful white voters react poorly to black candidates for reasons ranging from policy diﬀerences to simple racism, but recent electoral cycles have also included victories for conservative black candidates in places like Florida (Allen West), South Carolina (Tim

Scott), Texas (Will Hurd) and Utah (Mia Love). Though black Republicans are far from common, their electoral victories have occurred in districts that are not majority-black, and are often highly conservative. Understanding the appeal of these black Republican candidates to white, racially resentful voters is crucial for a complete picture of how race and white reactions to race work in electoral politics.

Mia Love’s campaigns provide an instructive example of how black Republicans raise issues of race on their own terms and in ways that are very diﬀerent from the typical black Democrat.

Other than a promise to join the Congressional Black Caucus, Love avoided explicit discussions of race or racial politics, though her racial identity was prominently featured in campaign photos and advertisements. At the same time, her primary messages centered around individual initiative and opposition to government assistance. As her 2012 campaign website explained, “Love is best known for her conservative positions on limited government . . . She advocates a return to personal responsibility and reduced government dependency.” Love did not hide her racial identity, but she used her Haitian immigrant family background to emphasize lessons of hard work and individualism learned from her parents. On her 2012 campaign website, for example, Love described herself by talking about one of her father’s favorite statements: “Mia, your mother and I never took a handout.

You will not be a burden to society. You will give back.” Her entire campaign persona was built around her identity and its connection to conservative issue positions.

How do whites react to these types of messages? Though we know from previous scholarship that conservative whites will vote for black candidates (Hood and McKee 2015; Hood, Kidd and

Morris 2015; Huﬀmon, Knotts and McKee 2016), no previous work has developed a theory about the conditions under which such voting behavior is likely, nor has any comprehensive test of such a

1 theory been conducted. We know little about how the kinds of messages emphasized by candidates like Mia Love, delivered by a Republican, play out in campaigns where many voters are, to some degree, racially resentful. We bring together a new series of experiments combined with available observational data to examine the relationship between racial resentment, candidate evaluations, and ultimately voting behavior, showing surprising findings.1 We demonstrate that when black candidates send conservative cues, racially resentful whites respond, making different inferences about the candidate’s attributes and ultimately making different vote choices. Black candidates with a conservative message of individualism or self-reliance counter stereotypical expectations about black behavior (Steele 2011) and black interests (Price 2016; Goldman and Mutz 2014) and thus stand out, especially to the racially resentful. Such candidates challenge the stereotypes of black candidates as unwavering champions of government intervention and can lead racially resentful white voters to evaluate a particular type of black candidate as an exception to the rule (Sears and Savalei

2006). The racially resentful see such black candidates so diﬀerently as to utterly shift their reactions from opposition to support.

More broadly, the results demonstrate how context channels the eﬀect of racial resentment on political decisions. The response of whites to racial cues—and the way certain candidates can exploit cues to cull favor from whites and blacks—is not a static factor in elections. Rather, a candidate’s race, partisanship, and message all interact to shape how whites interpret their choices and make decisions about elections. Our approach is thus consistent with the view of Hutchings and Piston

(2011), whose review of the literature concludes that scholars should focus on the conditions under which racial attitudes aﬀect the electoral chances of black candidates (pp. 589-590).

Theory & Hypotheses

The idea of racial resentment began with the notion that traditional, biological racism—the kind most virulently expressed during the Jim Crow era—has declined and that contemporary racial prejudice is “expressed in the language of American individualism” (Kinder and Sanders 1996, p. 106).

1Some readers have commented that the results are so surprising that they do not believe them, while others have argued they are exactly what we should expect given how racial resentment is measured. The fact that such disparate reactions occur is, in our opinion, a key reason for the study.

2 Kinder and Sears(1981, p. 416) deﬁned this attitude, which they labeled symbolic racism, as “a blend of anti-black aﬀect and the kind of traditional American moral values embodied in the Protestant

Ethic.” Their deﬁnition of a new form of racism blends racial prejudice with “moral feelings that

Blacks violate such traditional American values as individualism and self-reliance, the work ethic, obedience, and self-discipline.” As Kinder and Mendelberg(2000) put it, racially resentful citizens

“are preoccupied with Black Americans’ specifically individualistic shortcomings: that Blacks fail to display the virtues of hard work and self-sacrifice that white Americans claim as central to their own lives and to their society” (p. 60). The theory suggests that the racially resentful are skeptical of blacks, at least in part, because they see blacks as a group less willing to work hard in order to get ahead, instead choosing to benefit from undeserved government support.

As it is both theorized and typically measured, racial resentment is multi-faceted and captures more than racial animus alone; it also includes individualist values and a conservative view of the appropriate role of government. Scholars of race and public opinion have shown (Kinder and

Mendelberg 2000; Huddy and Feldman 2009; Feldman and Huddy 2005) that the various elements of the measure may be intertwined in complex ways—ways that mean the partisanship and message of a black Republican may matter quite a bit to the racially resentful, who favor messages about individualism as opposed to messages of structural racism.2 Moreover, while not every invocation of individualism is necessarily tied to race, appeals to individualism in contexts where race is salient cannot be fully disentangled from the history of white racial animus towards minorities and thus represent a form of “dog whistle politics” that invokes stereotypes about race and hard work (Lopez

2015).

If this perspective is correct, an implicit possibility is that when black candidates send cues, whether through their partisan labels or through direct messages, about individual as opposed to systemic causes of political or social disadvantage, white respondents will treat those candidates diﬀerently. In essence, they will “exceptionalize” the black candidate with the welcome message and

2For a critique of the measure, see Wilson and Davis(2011), and for an exploration of how white and black respondents interpret the items in the measure, see Kam and Burge(2017). Without taking a position on debates over the complexity of the measure, we simply note that the fact that the elements of the measure are not fully independent complicates inferences and predictions about what the measure will do under diﬀerent contexts—hence the need to test the measure across multiple electoral contexts.

3 draw quite diﬀerent inferences about that candidate, inferences that can lead to outright support for the black candidate.

Consistent with this view, Carney and Enos(2015) argue that racial resentment relies on a belief system that is primarily deﬁned not by “targeted anti-black aﬀect,” but by a worldview that refuses “to acknowledge the historical and contemporary injustices” experienced by African-Americans

(p. 2). They show that in keeping with a belief system that emphasizes the idea that “people get what they deserve” and that disadvantages in life are due to a lack of effort, racially resentful conservatives emphasize individual effort as the solution for the challenges facing many racial and ethnic groups—not just blacks.3 It follows that the racially resentful may be especially accepting of messages that de-emphasize systemic disadvantages and that instead emphasize the relationship between individual effort and success, especially when those messages come from black candidates.

The traditional view of voting behavior has long noted that increased levels of racial resentment lead to decreased support for black candidates. Such racially resentful voters have inarguably shown themselves to be averse to voting for black candidates (Frederick and Jeﬀries 2009; Highton

2004). However, the cases that have been tested most frequently (black Democrats running against conservative white Republicans) involve the diﬀerent elements of racial resentment pointing in the same direction and thus consistently working against the black candidate among the racially resentful.

In this typical case, the black Democrat sends messages about systemic inequalities and the need for government intervention, while the white Republican opposes those messages. In these contexts, racial resentment, perceptions of ideological distance, partisanship, and social conservatism have been shown to be strong negative predictors of white support for black candidates (Stout 2015;

Gillespie 2010; Tesler and Sears 2010; Jackman and Vavreck 2010).

Conclusions drawn from this scholarship should not be overgeneralized, however. Contests where white conservative Republicans face black liberal Democrats leave unanswered the question of whether race and racial sentiment trump partisanship and ideology when voters make their electoral choices (Highton 2011). And the presence of contests involving black Republicans with a conservative message raises questions about how social identity and partisan aﬃliation interact

3By contrast, racial liberals are more likely to distinguish the systemic disadvantages faced by African Americans from challenges faced by other groups.

4 with policy preferences to drive white and black vote choice (Kidd et al. 2007; King-Meadows 2010).

For example, Carsey and Windett(2013) show that shared partisanship strongly correlated with white support for the 2006 senatorial and gubernatorial candidacies of black Republicans in Ohio,

Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Other work shows how white respondents might share a policy outlook with conservative black candidates (Porter and Wood 2016; Sniderman et al. 1991), but an existing direct test of how the racially resentful react to campaign cues is absent from the literature.

Hood and McKee(2015) and Hood, Kidd and Morris(2015) offer initial insights into why the attitudinal and contextual correlates of support for black candidates might operate differently for black Republicans. They show that in statewide contests, racial resentment was positively associated with white support for minority candidates who ran as Republicans—a finding presented as a function of rising political polarization. We suggest, however, that the findings of Hood and colleagues are more consistent with a theory of white reactions that emphasizes how whites exceptionalize certain kinds of black candidates (Sears and Savalei 2006; Welch and Sigelman 2011; Price 2016). Though their focus is not on the substance of campaign messages, Porter and Wood(2016) show, for example, that black candidates who displayed counter-stereotypical behaviors that signaled personal affinity for white voters were evaluated more positively, including by racially resentful voters—consistent with the notion that signals can lead to exceptionalizing.

While all candidates have to navigate the troubled waters of constituent-level and party-level expectations, candidates of a particular type (and promoting a particular message) will have a more diﬃcult time than others in managing expectations (Wilson and Brown-Dean 2012; Stout 2015).

Black Republicans often challenge the expectations of fellow blacks and of fellow Republicans (King-

Meadows 2010). Rigueur(2014); Fields(2016), for example, show that black Republicans were often ostracized by fellow blacks, antagonized by fellow Republicans, and troubled by the cross-pressures of being situated within two different (racially-identified and party-identified) communities. Rigueur demonstrates how black expectations about Republican interests, and white expectations about black interests, undermined efforts by Republican operatives and black party supporters to raise awareness about their overlapping interests.

Together, all of these ﬁndings suggest the possibility that racially resentful whites will react to campaign cues or messages that emphasize the importance of individual hard work and reject the idea of group-based disadvantages (Sears and Savalei 2006; Hood, Kidd and Morris 2015; Carney and

5 Enos 2015). Cues like Republican partisanship and individualist messages are counter-stereotypical

(Fields 2016; Lewis 2013), and for precisely that reason, they fulﬁll the implicit expectations of racially resentful voters about the causes and remedies for racial disparities, prompting those voters to exceptionalize black Republicans and change their voting behavior toward minority candidates.

The contrasting, more traditional approach to the eﬀects of racial resentment, which we call the standard hypothesis, is straightforward:

Standard Hypothesis: The racially resentful will be consistently less likely to like or vote for a black candidate, regardless of campaign cues and context.

If the message and the partisanship of a black candidate is irrelevant, we should see no effect of those variables. But if we do find exceptionalizing effects, what should they look like? Colin Powell—a well-known Republican who espoused many conservative positions—serves as an example. Despite

(or perhaps because of) Powell’s partisan attachments and issue positions, Kinder and McConnaughy

(2006) ﬁnd no connection between racial resentment and attitudes about Powell, a ﬁnding that contrasts sharply with the role of racial resentment in whites’ attitudes about Jesse Jackson. This suggests it is possible for candidates to develop a reputation outside of the stereotypical roles. Was it because of his message? Was it because of his partisanship? Or was it a phenomenon unique to

Colin Powell and that particular moment in American politics? These questions turn on the nature of cues and how those play out in voter decision-making (Kuklinski and Hurley 1994; Popkin 1994;

White 2007; Mendelberg 2001). When a voter is presented with unexpected or counter-stereotypical cues—a black candidate who is a Republican or one with an individualist message—we hypothesize that the racially resentful will attach more positive characteristics to the candidate who validates their beliefs:

Candidate Attributes Hypothesis: Racially resentful voters will be more likely to associate black

Republicans who send counter-stereotypical partisan or ideological cues with positive characteristics and less likely to associate that candidate with negative attributes. Put diﬀerently, counter-stereotypical campaign cues will cause the racially resentful to exceptionalize black Republicans, rating the black

Republican as having more positive characteristics than a white opponent.

6 If the candidate attributes hypothesis turns out to be true, racially resentful citizens might

treat a black Republican diﬀerently from a black Democrat because the party-message combination

suggests that this candidate is exceptional in some way, or at least just diﬀerent enough to merit a

closer look. To the extent that it signals ideological or other aﬃnities, these cues could mean so

much to some voters that it would overcome reluctance to vote for a black candidate, suggesting a

second hypothesis.

Vote Choice Hypothesis: Racial resentment interacts with a candidate’s partisanship and message,

sometimes making the racially resentful citizen relatively more willing to vote for a black candidate—

in extreme cases, clearly preferring the black candidate.4

In each of these alternative hypotheses, the underlying theory is that racial resentment has

diﬀerent eﬀects depending upon the cues provided by the campaign context. While it may work

against a Democrat, racial resentment may well be associated with increased support for a black

Republican, or a black Republican with a message that ﬁts the racially resentful voter’s worldview.

Because racial resentment is a complex combination of anti-black aﬀect and attitudes about individual

responsibility, racial resentment should not invariably work as a negative against black candidates,

including with voters with the highest levels of racial resentment. Cues about the candidate’s

commitment to individualistic values change the normal patterns of racial resentment, and such

voters may even choose the exceptionalized black candidate over a white opponent.

Empirical Analysis

Our analysis unfolds as follows. We ﬁrst examine the standard hypothesis of no campaign eﬀect by

reviewing the available observational data, which clearly shows the racially resentful supporting black

Republicans. We then turn to the candidate attributes hypothesis and the vote choice hypothesis

with a series of experiments.

4This hypothesis could be broken up into sub-hypotheses about partisanship and message simultaneously, and we will test for diﬀerent eﬀects depending on the set of cues. However, we present the collective hypothesis here for ease of presentation.

7 Observational Data

We begin by examining the eﬀects of racial resentment in all 2010, 2012, and 2014 congressional races where a black candidate faced a white opponent (see Appendix Table A2 for details). In most such districts, the black candidate ran as a Democrat, but in all three years, black Republicans were also on the ballot contending against white opponents, contending in multiple races and sometimes even winning.

To analyze these races, we use data collected as part of the 2010, 2012, and 2014 Cooperative

Congressional Election Study (CCES). The CCES is a collaborative research eﬀort involving many diﬀerent research teams, with each team developing a survey questionnaire for a national sample of approximately 1,000 respondents and all respondents answering a series of Common Content questions (Ansolabehere and Rivers 2013). In 2014, the Common Content sample included 56,200 cases, with 54,535 cases in 2012 and 55,400 cases in 2010. Respondents were selected for the survey using YouGov/Polimetrix’s matched random sample methodology and completed the surveys via the Internet.5

Because of the large number of respondents to the Common Content questions, we are able to restrict our analysis to districts in which a black candidate ran against a white opponent and still have suﬃcient numbers of white respondents who reported participating in the congressional election for robust analysis (1,696 in 2010, 2,933 in 2012, and 2,378 in 2014). In 2010, a total of 1,406 white self-reported voters lived in the 35 districts where a black Democrat ran against a white Republican, and 290 respondents lived in the 5 districts where a black Republican ran against a white Democrat. In 2012, 2,494 respondents lived in the 49 districts where a black Democrat faced a white Republican, and 439 respondents lived in the 5 districts where a black Republican competed with a white Democrat. In 2014, 2,028 white voters came from the 41 districts where a black Democrat opposed a white Republican, compared to 350 from the 8 contests in which a black

Republican opposed a white Democrat.

In all three election years, the post-election wave of the Common Content included two Likert-style questions drawn from the traditional racial resentment index:

5See Jackman and Vavreck(2010); Vavreck and Rivers(2008) for additional details about the sample and its relationship to other types of representative samples collected at a similar point in time.

8 • “The Irish, Italians, Jews and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way

up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors”; and

• “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it diﬃcult for

Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.”

Respondents answered on a ﬁve-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”

Despite the limited number of questions, the items scale together well (Cronbach’s α=0.77 in 2010,

0.76 in 2012, and 0.77 in 2014), and we have combined them into an index, which we then recoded to run from 0 to 1 for ease of interpretation.6

Observational Results

For a formal test of the interaction between racial resentment and the candidate’s race, we stack data from all three election years and employ a probit model that includes a measure of racial resentment, a dummy variable for whether or not the black candidate was a Republican, and the interaction between resentment and the black candidate’s party. We also include controls for the respondent’s party identification, ideology, several other demographic characteristics, and election year. As can be seen in Model 1 of Table1, in analysis without an interaction between the race of the candidate and racial resentment, the effect of resentment is negative and strongly significant. As the standard hypothesis would lead us to expect, more racially resentful respondents are less likely to vote for black candidates.

But the subsequent models show a robust interaction between resentment and the black candidate’s party. When the black candidate is a Democrat, racial resentment works, as expected, in a negative direction. But in races where the black candidate is a Republican, the effect of racial resentment reverses, even in the presence of controls for party identification and ideology. This is strong evidence that the candidate’s party moderates the effect of racial resentment. The effect persists when we add controls for each district (Model 3), when we restrict the analysis to only those respondents for whom

6See Appendix Figure A1 for the distribution of racial resentment in all samples used in this article. In the experimental data, we are able to use the full four-item racial resentment index, though the dynamics we report below are identical whether the two- or four-item measure is used. In studies for which we can compute both measures, they are correlated at 0.95.

9 we have validated their electoral participation (Model 4), when we add controls for incumbency

and candidate quality (Appendix Table A3), and when we examine each election year separately

(Appendix Table A4).

Table 1: Determinants of Vote for Black Candidate, 2010-2014 CCES Common Content All Election Years Combined Null Basic District Valid. Model Model Con- Vote trols (1) (2) (3) (4) Racial Resentment -0.73*** -2.31*** -2.33*** -2.32*** (0.13) (0.18) (0.10) (0.20) Black Republican Candidate -4.51*** -4.38*** -4.60*** (0.18) (0.36) (0.20) Racial Resentment x Black Republican 7.08*** 7.28*** 7.28*** (0.33) (0.25) (0.37) Democrat 0.63*** 0.66*** 0.65*** 0.72*** (0.11) (0.10) (0.07) (0.11) Republican -0.54*** -0.53*** -0.55*** -0.55*** (0.09) (0.10) (0.07) (0.11) Ideology -0.17*** -0.23*** -0.23*** -0.21*** (0.04) (0.05) (0.03) (0.05) Age -0.001 -0.001 -0.001 0.001 (0.001) (0.002) (0.001) (0.002) Male 0.04 0.02 0.03 0.05 (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.05) Education 0.01 0.01 -0.00 0.02 (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) Family Income -0.001 -0.01** -0.01* -0.02** (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) Constant 0.93*** 2.24*** 1.85*** 2.06*** (0.21) (0.16) (0.26) (0.18)

Observations 6,994 6,994 6,987 5,445 Control for Election Year Yes Yes Yes Yes Control for Congressional District No No Yes No Pseudo-R2 0.281 0.457 0.493 0.476 Log Likelihood -3463 -2618 -2441 -1961 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the Black candidate. Cell entries are probit coeﬃcients; robust standard errors in parentheses (in models without control for district, standard errors are cluster robust, with cluster by congressional district). The excluded category of partisanship includes independents and other parties; leaners are counted as partisans. *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1

The eﬀect is quite large, as can be seen in Panel A of Figure1, which presents the predicted

probability of voting for the black candidate by the candidate’s party aﬃliation and at various levels

of respondent racial resentment. In races where the black candidate ran as a Democrat, the eﬀect of

10 racial resentment is negative and steep. Moving from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile of racial resentment reduces the predicted probability of voting for the black candidate from 69 percent to a mere 25 percent. When the black candidate is a Republican, however, the eﬀect runs in the opposite direction, increasing the predicted probability of voting for the Black candidate from about

9 percent to over 85 percent as we move from the 10th to the 90th percentile of racial resentment.

The candidate’s political party thus reverses the effect of racial resentment on vote choice. Whether the three elections are analyzed separately (see Figure A2) or together, the marginal effect of racial resentment is negative and strongly significant when the black candidate is a Democrat (p < 0.01), but positive and strongly significant when the candidate is a Republican (p < 0.01). We take this as strong evidence against the standard hypothesis.

Because of the size of the CCES dataset, we have sufficient numbers of respondents to analyze the data separately by respondent party, and predicted probabilities from those models are shown in Panels B-D of Figure1. These results confirm a strong interaction between respondent racial resentment and the black candidate’s party—in the models used to construct each figure, the interaction term is large and statistically significant (Appendix Table A5), indicating that the effect of racial resentment is moderated by the party of the candidate, no matter what the respondent’s party. Democrats are generally more likely to choose the Democratic candidate and less likely to choose the Republican candidate at all levels of racial resentment, but the difference between the two narrows considerably as levels of racial resentment increase, with more racially resentful Democrats becoming more likely to vote for a black Republican. Among Republican respondents, increasing levels of racial resentment are associated with an even higher probability of voting for a black

Republican and a lower probability of voting for a black Democrat.7 Among independents, for whom the attachments of party are not present, racial resentment is the key variable. At low levels of racial resentment, independents are highly likely to vote for black Democrats; among respondents with high levels of racial resentment, independents are much more likely to vote for a black Republican

7Results are very similar when disaggregated by election year (see Appendix Table A6 and Figure A3). The only exception to the pattern is Republican respondents in 2010, an overwhelmingly Republican midterm election and one in which 100% of respondents scoring below the median in racial resentment voted for black Republican candidates, as opposed to the 95% of respondents who scored above the median in racial resentment.

11 (a) All Respondents (b) Independents

Note: Predicted values from Model 2 in Table1 and all models in Table A5. Shaded areas represent 95% conﬁdence intervals.

Figure 1: Racial Resentment and Probability of Voting for Black Candidates, 2010–2014 All Election Years Combined over a white Democrat.

These results allow us to ﬁrmly reject the standard hypothesis. It is clearly not the case that racially resentful voters are uniformly less likely to support a black candidate. Black Republicans are capturing the votes of racially resentful voters. This alone is an important fact about American elections, and it is obviously our most generalizable result, one that is consistent with previous state-level studies (Hood, Kidd and Morris 2015). However, the observational data do not pin down the causal mechanism. Is it just partisanship? In other words, do all Republicans beneﬁt from this pattern? Or does the campaign message matter at all to the racially resentful? Which cues make

12 the most diﬀerence? To answer those questions we turn to experimental evidence.

Experimental Data

With the observational data we have presented so far, we cannot disentangle the eﬀect of candidate party labels from candidate message. We know that candidates like Tim Scott, Allen

West, Mia Love, and others tended to emphasize messages of hard work and individual responsibility, but we do not know whether more racially resentful voters rally to the cause of black Republicans because they hear and respond to messages about individualism, speciﬁcally, or because more racially resentful respondents prefer the Republican Party generally.8 Indeed, across multiple datasets, party identiﬁcation is correlated with racial resentment (see Appendix Table A7)—where Democrats tend to have the lowest levels, Republicans much higher, and independents somewhere between the partisans.

Experimental Design

An experimental research design allowed us to exercise control over the information respondents received and to manipulate a hypothetical candidate’s party aﬃliation and the presence or absence of a message about individualism. Respondents were introduced to two hypothetical candidates named Jamal Williams and Brad Anderson. Both were described as college-educated, married men who had been involved in their communities and experienced success in the business world — typical attributes for candidates for Congress. The speciﬁc descriptions can be found in Table2. Jamal

Williams was not ever directly identiﬁed as an African-American, but he was described as playing a key role in a community organization that has helped “many African-American young people in his hometown.” In addition, his name was chosen because it was likely to signal his race (Bertrand and

Mullainathan 2004; Butler and Broockman 2011).

The experiment is a 3 (party aﬃliation of the candidates) x 2 (presence or absence of a campaign message about individualism from the black candidate) design. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three candidate party aﬃliation conditions – Jamal Williams as a Republican and Brad

8Such party preferences could occur for any number of reasons, including the fact that Republicans are generally more likely than Democrats to emphasize the limits of government and the need for individuals to be self-reliant.

13 Table 2: Text of Experiment Jamal Williams is [a Republican / a Democrat] running for the United States Congress. He is forty-ﬁve years old, married, and the father of three school-age children. Williams met his wife at his ﬁrst job after graduating from college. According to his campaign website, Williams founded a successful and growing real estate company and has served on the board of the Boys and Girls Club, which has played a key role in helping many African-American young people in his hometown. Williams hopes to bring his leadership experience to Washington, DC. [In a recent speech, Williams emphasized that his campaign’s main theme is the importance of personal initiative, not government handouts. He said, “My parents taught me that I should not be a burden to society. Instead, everyone has an obligation to work hard and give back. We need more of that attitude in America today.”]

Williams’s opponent is [Republican / Democrat] Brad Anderson, a forty-four year-old father of two teenage children. Anderson and his wife were married shortly after his graduation from college. His campaign website lists him as a partner in a small local law ﬁrm that specializes in estate planning and tax law. Anderson has recently served as the vice-president of the local chapter of the Rotary Club, a fraternal organization devoted to serving the community, and has also been very active in eﬀorts to improve local schools. On his website, Anderson emphasizes that if he is elected, he will work hard for his constituents, bring their values to Washington, DC, and get things done. Note: In the MTurk version of the experiment, the names of the colleges attended by the hypothetical candidates were included.

Anderson as a Democrat; Jamal Williams as a Democrat and Brad Anderson as a Republican; or no party label given to either candidate. In addition, half of the respondents received descriptions in which Jamal Williams expressed a message about individualism, and half received no such message.

Other than his partisan aﬃliation, the description of Brad Anderson was held constant across all conditions. The content of the individualist message (which is shown in italics in Table2) was drawn directly from the actual campaign materials of a black Republican who ran for oﬃce in 2012.

To summarize, respondents were randomly assigned to one of six conditions:

1. GOP / No Message: Black candidate is Republican and gives no individualist message

2. GOP / Message: Black candidate is Republican and gives an individualist message

3. Democrat / No message: Black candidate is Democrat and gives no individualist message

4. Democrat / Message: Black candidate is Democrat and gives an individualist message

5. No Party / No Message: Black candidate’s party is not mentioned and the candidate gives

no message

14 6. No Party / Message: Black candidate’s party is not mentioned and the candidate gives an

individualist message

We ran the experiment in 2014 on three distinct populations: a sample of MTurk workers and respondents to two separate modules of the CCES. A total of 614 white respondents completed the

MTurk survey, and as is typical of Mechanical Turk samples, participants tended to be somewhat younger and more liberal than a representative sample of voters (see Appendix Table A1 for descriptive statistics). Despite these characteristics, the sample does include suﬃcient variation in the racial resentment scale (see Appendix Figure A1), which we measured using the traditional four-item index (Cronbach’s α = 0.88).9 Participants answered the racial resentment questions at the beginning of the survey experiment, and several distractor questions occurred between the racial resentment questions and the experimental treatments.

The two CCES modules were ﬁelded in October of 2014, just prior to the midterm elections.

In one module, 701 white respondents completed the survey, and the racial resentment index was again measured using the traditional four-item set of questions (Cronbach’s α = 0.85). In the other module, 663 white respondents completed the survey, and the racial resentment questions again scale together well (Cronbach’s α = 0.83). Not surprisingly, given that they are intended to mirror a more representative sample of the population, the CCES modules were more balanced in terms of respondent partisanship than the MTurk sample. On both modules, approximately 40% of respondents were self-identiﬁed Republicans, 40% were Democrats, and a little under 20% were independents who said they did not lean toward either party.

Because our description of candidate race is subtle, with no explicit labeling of the candidate as

African-American, we chose to include photos of the candidates on one of the CCES modules. The pictures were drawn from previous work by Krupnikov and Piston(2015, used by permission) and had been pretested to ensure that both candidates were evaluated similarly on dimensions other than race, such as attractiveness (see Figure A4).

9These are the four items used by the American National Election Study and are commonly used in other contexts as well (Feldman and Huddy 2005; Henry and Sears 2002) Exact question wording available in the Appendix.

15 Manipulation Checks

Our experiment hinges on respondents knowing the racial identities of those running for office, so we conducted a manipulation check later in the survey in which respondents were asked to indicate each candidate’s race.10 The treatments were relatively subtle, but in all conditions, high percentages of white respondents correctly reported the race of the black candidate, and the percentages were highest in the MTurk sample and in the CCES module accompanied by pictures (Table A8). While there is some variation across the conditions, formal tests (not shown) confirm that within each version of the experiment, none of the differences between the conditions is statistically significant.

Note: CCES with pictures and MTurk studies combined. Points represent estimated ideology of Jamal Williams across conditions. Spikes represent 95% conﬁdence intervals.

Figure 2: Candidate Ideology by Experimental Condition

On the CCES module with pictures and the MTurk survey, we also asked respondents their beliefs about the candidates’ ideology on a scale ranging from very liberal (1) to very conservative

10Respondents could choose multiple races/ethnicities, so these results indicate whether or not the respondent chose Black/African-American, regardless of whether they also chose other race/ethnicity categories.

16 (7). Consistent with our expectations, respondent beliefs about the candidates’ ideology varied by experimental condition in precisely the pattern we would expect given the content of the treatments.

As shown in Figure2, where the reference line shows the midpoint of the scale (4), the black candidate was seen as more conservative in the conditions where he was described as a Republican, where he offered an individualist message about the importance of hard work in the absence of a party cue, or when party and message cues were both present. When the black candidate was described as a Democrat or when no party or message cues were included, he was judged by respondents as significantly more liberal. The effects are sizeable: the difference between the black Democrat with no individualist message and the black Republican with an individualist message is well over one standard deviation of the ideology measure. The experimental treatments clearly shaped respondents’ beliefs about the political views of the candidates.

Experimental Results: Candidate Attributes Hypothesis

Beyond ideology, how did the experimental conditions aﬀect assessments of the two candidates?

As part of the MTurk study and the CCES module with pictures, we asked respondents to place the two candidates on commonly used indicators of stereotypes (“lazy” and “intelligent”) and leadership traits (“trustworthy,” “strong leader,” and “cares about people like me”). Respondents placed each candidate on a 1 to 5 scale, with low scores indicating that the attribute did not describe the candidate well at all and high scores indicating that the attribute applied “extremely well.” We then constructed a measure of the diﬀerence between the two judgments, and this measure ranged from

4 to -4, with positive scores indicating that the attribute applied much more to Williams than to

Anderson and negative scores representing the opposite.

Computed from the results in Table3, Figure3 shows the predicted effect of racial resentment on this difference measure across four of the experimental conditions and for each of the candidate attributes.11 Models from which these predictions were generated included controls for respondent partisanship. The clear pattern is that when the black candidate was a Republican, and especially when the black Republican offered an individualist message, racially resentful respondents viewed

11We focus on the four experimental conditions for which the moderating eﬀects of racial resentment were the largest across each of the candidate attributes. In both the Democrat/Message and No Party/Message conditions, the marginal eﬀect of racial resentment was rarely distinguishable from zero.

17 the black candidate much more positively relative to the white candidate. Conversely, when the black candidate was presented as a Democrat or with no party and no individualist message, the racially resentful judged the white candidate comparatively more positively. Those who scored low on the racial resentment scale demonstrated exactly the opposite pattern.

Note: CCES with pictures and MTurk studies combined. Point estimates represent predicted values from models in Table3.

Figure 3: Predicted Eﬀect of Racial Resentment on Candidate Traits by Experimental Condition

The top two panels of Figure3 show how the interaction between racial resentment and the experimental conditions affected racial stereotypes. When Jamal Williams was presented as Republi- can who offered a message about the importance of individual effort, racially resentful respondents judged him as less lazy and more intelligent than the white candidate. When Williams offered no message about individualism and was presented as a Democrat or was assigned no party, the effect of racial resentment was large and negative (for intelligence) or statistically indistinguishable from zero (for laziness). Put differently, racially resentful respondents evaluated a black Republican with a message about individualism in ways that countered racial stereotypes – as working harder and

18 Table 3: Eﬀect of Racial Resentment and Experimental Conditions on Candidate Traits Condition Lazy Intelligent Trustworthy Strong Cares Leader

GOP / No Message 0.37*** -0.55*** -0.97*** -0.72*** -1.53*** (0.14) (0.18) (0.24) (0.23) (0.31) GOP / Message 0.26** -0.37** -1.02*** -0.85*** -2.00*** (0.11) (0.18) (0.21) (0.21) (0.28) Democrat / No Message 0.19 0.24 0.30 0.11 0.25 (0.13) (0.16) (0.20) (0.21) (0.26) Democrat / Message -0.02 -0.09 0.03 0.08 -0.24 (0.12) (0.14) (0.18) (0.19) (0.24) No Party / Message 0.24 -0.22 -0.51** -0.40* -1.16*** (0.15) (0.14) (0.21) (0.21) (0.28) Racial Resentment 0.21 -0.59*** -0.82*** -1.02*** -1.73*** (0.14) (0.20) (0.25) (0.26) (0.32) GOP / No Message x Racial Resentment -0.65** 1.03*** 1.60*** 1.42*** 2.46*** (0.27) (0.35) (0.43) (0.43) (0.53) GOP / Message x Racial Resentment -0.69*** 1.13*** 1.90*** 1.91*** 3.28*** (0.20) (0.31) (0.38) (0.38) (0.47) Democrat / No Message x Racial Resetnment -0.48** -0.16 -0.52 -0.13 -0.50 (0.22) (0.27) (0.33) (0.34) (0.45) Democrat / Message x Racial Resentment -0.14 0.58** 0.56* 0.52 1.40*** (0.22) (0.26) (0.34) (0.35) (0.43) No Party / Message x Racial Resentment -0.55** 0.72*** 1.27*** 1.31*** 2.49*** (0.24) (0.26) (0.35) (0.36) (0.45) Source 0.05 -0.07 -0.13** -0.05 -0.12 (0.04) (0.05) (0.06) (0.06) (0.08) Constant -0.12 0.27** 0.79*** 0.64*** 1.19*** (0.10) (0.13) (0.16) (0.17) (0.23)

Observations 1,206 1,208 1,210 1,208 1,207 R-squared 0.03 0.05 0.08 0.07 0.12 Note: Dependent variable is the difference between the respondent’s evaluation of how well each of the traits described Jamal Williams and how well the trait described Brad Anderson. Scale ranges between 4 and -4. Positive scores indicate that the respondent thought the trait applied more to Williams than to Anderson; negative scores indicate the opposite. Cell entries are OLS coefficients, with robust standard errors in parentheses. Models control for study source (CCES module with pictures or MTurk) and for respondent’s party identification (not shown). The excluded experimental condition is No Party No Message. *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05,* p < 0.1

being smarter than his white opponent. In the absence of cues about a commitment to individualism

and when the black candidate in our experiment was assigned to be a Democrat or was given no

party label, racial resentment was associated with stereotypical views about his relative intelligence

19 and work ethic.12 The diﬀerences in views of the candidates were statistically robust. For example, a simple diﬀerence-of-means test shows that for respondents above the scale midpoint on racial resentment, those in the GOP/Message condition were substantially more likely to believe the black candidate was more intelligent than his white opponent, compared to those in the Democrat/No

Message condition (p = 0.0002), and equally powerful diﬀerences occurred when comparing the

GOP/Message condition to the No Party/No Message condition.

The eﬀects on leadership traits were even larger, as can be seen in the remaining panels of

Figure3. When Jamal Williams was a Republican, racially resentful participants judged him as more trustworthy, a stronger leader, and more caring than his white opponent. This eﬀect was especially large when the message cue was added to the party cue. When Jamal Williams was described as a Democrat or was given no party label, racial resentment had the opposite eﬀect, leading to comparatively more positive evaluations of the white candidate.13 Thus, racial resentment moderated respondents’ views of the partisan and ideological cues they received.

This is unmistakable evidence for our candidate attributes hypothesis. The interaction between the experimental treatments and racial resentment substantially changed how respondents judged the candidates. The size of the effect was quite large, especially for the leadership traits. For example, for the “cares about people like me” attribute, the difference between the effect of racial resentment in the GOP/Message condition and the effect in the Democrat/No Message condition was nearly three standard deviations of the range of the dependent variable.14 Simply put, the most racially

12Respondents were generally hesitant to draw sharp distinctions between the candidates with respect to the negative trait of laziness. For respondents in the Democrat/No Message condition, the point estimates for the laziness trait were negative but only statistically distinguishable from zero at the scale maximum of racial resentment and were never distinguishable from zero for those in the No Party/No Message condition. 13However, in the experimental conditions not shown in the figure, all of these predicted effects disappeared when the Democratic candidate offered an individualist message, strongly confirming that the message alone carried significant power. For Democratic candidates or those with no party label, the presence of the individualist message muted or even reversed the effect of racial resentment on candidate evaluations. 14A simple difference-of-means test is also instructive. Among respondents above the scale midpoint in racial resentment, the difference between the GOP/Message condition and the Democrat/No Message or No Party/No Message conditions was significant at p < 0.01 for all leadership traits.

20 resentful respondents regarded black Republicans with a conservative message of individualism much more positively than either a black or a white Democratic opponent. Black candidates with counter-stereotypical partisan or ideological cues were, in the eyes of the racially resentful, more intelligent, less lazy, more trustworthy, more likely to be regarded as a strong leader, and especially as someone who cared about the respondent than were Democrats or unlabelled candidates, whether white or black.

Experimental Results: Voting Hypothesis

Given that racial resentment moderated assessments of candidate attributes, how would they treat them in a campaign? Because individualism is a pillar of American political culture and public opinion, we anticipated that candidates who emphasized the importance of individual effort would tend to be rewarded by American voters generally. These expectations were borne out in all three studies: when an individualist message was present, higher percentages of respondents indicated that they would vote for the black candidate, though the magnitude of the effect varied with the sample and with the party affiliation of the candidate (see Table A10).

Beyond the main effects of the experiment, however, our more specific interest is in the interactions between racial resentment and the party and message treatments. To explore those dynamics, we first regressed vote for the black candidate on the six experimental conditions and the interaction between those conditions and racial resentment. Predicted probabilities of voting for a Black candidate are computed from the results in Table4 and can be seen for all three studies combined in Figure4, which shows the effect of racial resentment across the conditions.

The results indicate a strong interaction between the presence or absence of an individualist message and the respondent’s racial resentment. To interpret the results, it is helpful to begin with the No Party Label conditions. In the absence of both a party cue and a strong message about individualism, racial resentment strongly depressed the probability of voting for the Black candidate.

In the absence of party cues, racial resentment worked in the opposite direction when the candidate embraced a message of individual responsibility, increasing the probability of voting for Williams.

Thus, without a party cue to guide them, racially resentful participants rejected Williams when he sent no individualist message, but became more likely to embrace him when he did. More racially liberal respondents did the opposite.

21 Table 4: Eﬀect of the Conditions and Racial Resentment on Vote for the Black Candidate All Studies

GOP / No Message -1.48*** (0.23) GOP / Message -1.73*** (0.23) Democrat / No Message 0.68*** (0.25) Democrat / Message 0.39 (0.24) No Party / Message -0.96*** (0.22) Racial Resentment -1.62*** (0.26) Racial Resentment x GOP / No Message 2.70*** (0.37) Racial Resentment x GOP / Message 3.50*** (0.37) Racial Resentment x Democrat / No Message -1.11*** (0.41) Racial Resentment x Democrat / Message 0.40 (0.37) Racial Resentment x No Party / Message 2.44*** (0.35) Constant 1.00*** (0.17)

Observations 1,971 Pseudo-R2 0.110 Log Likelihood -1187 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the Black candidate, Jamal Williams. Cell entries are probit coefficients; robust standard errors in parentheses. Excluded category is the “No Party / No Message” condition. Model includes fixed effects for the experimental study (not shown). *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05,* p < 0.1

22 Figure 4: Predicted Eﬀect of Racial Resentment by Experimental Condition (All Studies Combined)

In the experimental conditions where Williams was described as a Democrat, the effect of racial resentment in the absence of an individualist message was negative and substantial. Consistent with previous studies, increasing levels of racial resentment were associated with a much lower likelihood of voting for the black candidate. When Williams the Democrat sent an individualist message, however, the probability of voting for him flattened considerably across the span of the resentment index. Racial resentment still depressed the likelihood of voting for the black Democrat, but the size of the effect was considerably smaller. Compared to their responses to Democrats who did not send an individualist message, highly racially resentful participants proved comparatively more willing to vote for a black Democrat when he emphasized the importance of hard work and individual initiative.

Finally, when Williams was described as a Republican, more racially resentful respondents were much more likely than less racially resentful respondents to vote for him, regardless of whether the candidate sent an individualist message or not. Across all samples, the presence of a speciﬁc cue about the value of individualism increased the slope of the line slightly, but the increase over

23 the Republican cue was not statistically significant. Put differently, when the black candidate was presented as a Republican, more racially resentful voters were always more likely to vote for him than their more racially liberal counterparts, and the candidate did not need to send a message about individualism to produce this effect.15

Results were unchanged when we analyzed each study separately (see Table A12 and Figure A5) and when we added controls for party id, age, gender, and education (see Table A13). In addition to the demographic controls, the CCES module with pictures also included questions about individualism, allowing us to control for the effects of a measure of individualistic values that is divorced from issues of race. The two indexes are correlated, though not perfectly (r = 0.52, p < 0.01). Even when we controlled for individualism, however, the effect of racial resentment remained, while the effects of individualism alone were smaller and seldom statistically significant. (Full results in Table A14.)

By combining the three separate experimental studies, we also had sufficient statistical power to run the analysis separately by the respondent’s party (Figure5). It is clear that the respondents’ party attachments mattered a great deal for their vote choices. Nonetheless, the effect of the individualist message still mattered. In the absence of candidate party cues, the message substantially altered the willingness of more racially resentful respondents, whether Republicans or Democrats, to vote for the black candidate. For Democratic respondents considering a black Democrat, the presence of the message changed the effect of racial resentment from a pronounced downward slope to essentially

ﬂat. And racially resentful Democrats were slightly more likely than their less resentful counterparts to support a black Republican who articulated an individualist message. More racially resentful

Republican respondents were somewhat less likely to vote for a black Democrat when he sent an individualist message: somewhat surprisingly, it was the least racially resentful Republicans who responded most to the individualist message when it came from a black Democrat. At the same time, racially resentful Republicans were highly likely to vote for a black Republican, whether or not he explicitly signaled support for individualist values.

Taken together, the results shown in Figures4 and5 allow us to reject the idea that it is only the message or only the party that matters to voters; instead, candidate partisanship and campaign

15Another way of conceptualizing these relationships is to show the average marginal effect of racial resentment and its statistical significance across each of the conditions. These results can be seen in Table A11 and confirm the results seen in the figures above.

24 (a) Republican Respondents

(b) Democratic Respondents

Note: Predicted values computed from models with fixed effects for experimental study (Table A15). Shaded areas represent 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 5: Eﬀect of Racial Resentment on Probability of Voting for Black Candidate messages interact to shape respondent vote choices. In the absence of party cues, the message can move even the most racially conservative voters to choose the black candidate over his white counterpart. It is true that, alone, partisanship and message each send important signals to voters.

25 For instance, racially resentful voters were highly unlikely to vote for a black Democrat in the absence of an individualist message, but they became somewhat more likely to vote for a black Democrat who expressed a commitment to individualism. Less racially resentful voters from both parties embraced the black Democrat with an individualistic message, regardless of the respondent’s party attachments. Perhaps this is a testament to the power of the value of individualism in American culture, even among the racially liberal. Alternatively, the less racially resentful might have assumed that Williams would also be committed to confronting structural inequality, given the party cues

(Dawson 2001; Lewis 2013).

Discussion

Our analysis leads to three basic conclusions and a few implications that are drawn from those conclusions. All of it could be subsumed under the broad heading “context matters.” More speciﬁcally, our evidence shows how context matters for political campaigns, race, and the interaction of the two.

First, there is no reason to believe that racially resentful whites are mindlessly racist in the sense that they reject all black candidates on the basis of skin color alone. Their beliefs are clearly not an impediment to voting for black candidates, at least in the presence of campaign cues that send what such citizens regard as the proper set of signals. The implication of this is that racial resentment, as it is traditionally measured, does not imply that black candidates always suﬀer, or that racial resentment works inexorably against such candidates. This is not surprising in some ways since a careful review of the racial resentment literature shows that it is a complex and multi-faceted index that combines both racial animus and conservative, individualist values (Kinder and Mendelberg

2000; Huddy and Feldman 2009; Feldman and Huddy 2005).

Second, fairly innocuous cues lead to profoundly different assumptions by voters about the candidates’ attributes. While the common case—black Democrats—is less likely to be seen as worth the interest and vote of the racially resentful, a black candidate with a different set of signals will be regarded very differently in terms of stereotypes and leadership traits by the racially resentful.

This hardly means that the racially resentful are ignoring race; rather, the racial cue interacts with other elements of the campaign context to shape perceptions of the candidates. If messages about individualism are a form of “dog whistle politics,” racially resentful whites respond by dramatically

26 changing their views about the attributes of the black candidates who send such messages.

Third, the evidence we have presented makes clear that white citizens who have exceptionalized a black candidate have no trouble voting for that candidate. This shows the abiding power of interests in elections. The path to victory for black Republicans includes appealing to this class of voters by advertising a set of beliefs and policy positions that those votes ﬁnd appealing—speciﬁcally, by emphasizing messages about hard work and deservingness instead of government assistance or structural explanations for inequalities—a strategy that can succeed among a racially resentful electorate, even to the point of producing some winning campaigns.

The observational data demonstrate that these results are part of a generalizable though not yet widespread phenomenon (given that black Republicans are still relatively rare). The experiments suggest that both the campaign message and partisanship matter for the success of black Republicans— though in asymmetrical ways depending upon party aﬃliation. For Republican candidates, the power of the message certainly helps convince the racially resentful to support a black Republican candidate, but the partisanship cue is already powerful on its own. For Democrats, the message would help a black Democrat keep the racially resentful from defecting. Despite these asymmetries, it is clearly the case that the racially resentful will vote for a black candidate, at least under some conditions. They merely need the requisite information and cues to be persuaded that this particular candidate reﬂects their beliefs and interests.

Of course, whether or not black Republicans can produce winning campaigns likely also depends on other features of the electoral environment and the district constituency. In no small part this would be due to the fact that our experiments isolate how white voters react to black candidates offering certain messages. We have no doubt that black voters would react quite differently to the messages that appeal to racially resentful whites, and these differing reactions may be a fruitful avenue for future research. Additional next steps could also involve exploring how racially resentful voters distinguish between white and black candidates in a Republican primary setting. Decisions will always depend on how a specific group of citizens react to the partisan cues and a messages delivered by a particular candidate.

Though we do not anticipate a groundswell of black Republicans in the electorate, these results suggest a possible strategy for a political party that has struggled to recruit and persuade racial and ethnic minorities. Republicans can clearly nominate black candidates, and without much fear that

27 Republican voters cannot accept these candidates under any circumstances. In fact, it is precisely because of the black candidate’s campaign messages and partisan aﬃliations that racially resentful voters may rally to their cause. But how much space black Republicans have to depart from party orthodoxy remains to be studied. For example, we do not yet know whether the party cue gives black Republicans space to talk about systemic disadvantages with conservative white audiences in ways that would not be possible from a black Democrat.

Our findings also point to two important, broader political dynamics. First, all political values, beliefs, and predispositions are subject to the political context in which voters find themselves. This context shapes and influences the expression of those values, beliefs, and predispositions, just as the agenda in a legislature changes the political behavior of legislators. A citizen may be highly racially resentful, but given an agenda that matches the citizens’ beliefs about government and individual initiative, that person might prefer a black candidate over a white candidate. Racial attitudes (for most) are not so monolithic that the political context, including the attributes and campaign messages of the candidates, cannot affect the expression of racial biases. Politics, specifically representation, depends on defending the values and interests of the citizens being represented. A person’s values and interests are complex and multi-faceted, and our finding is not that the interests or values themselves change and shift (though, no doubt, that is possible), but rather that the expression of values and interests depends upon a context and a political agenda.

Finally, it is important to keep in mind that race—and the reaction of whites to racial issues—has always had powerful, unexpected and lasting consequences for American politics (Acharya, Blackwell and Sen 2016). Whether in the 1780s when white Southerners used the existence of slaves to justify making representation more equal in the constitution, or in the 1860s when both white and black

Americans died in an unexpectedly bloody war, or in the 1960s when the shifting allegiances of black and white Southerners helped realign American politics, race has always produced powerful results. We have shown here that those surprises extend to the individual level. While the values and interests of Americans, both black and white, many not necessarily shift easily or dramatically, the electoral eﬀects produced by those values and interests depend deeply on context and circumstance and are very likely to produce unanticipated results in any period of time.

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33 Supporting Information Appendix

Racial Resentment and Black Candidates: Observational and Experimental Results

Last Updated: December 5, 2017 A Appendix A

A.1 Measurement of Racial Resentment

In the 2010, 2012, and 2014 CCES Common Content, racial resentment was measured with two questions drawn from the traditional racial resentment index:

1. “The Irish, Italians, Jews and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way

up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors”; and

2. “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it diﬃcult for

Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.”

Respondents answered on a ﬁve-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”

In the three experimental studies, racial resentment was measured with the standard four-item index:

1. “Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way

up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.”

2. “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it diﬃcult for

blacks to work their way out of the lower class.”

3. “Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.”

4. “It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder

they could be just as well oﬀ as whites.”

As on the Common Content, respondents answered these Likert-style questions on a ﬁve-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”

1 A.2 Descriptive Statistics

Table A1: Descriptive Statistics for Key Variables 2010 2012 2014 2014 2014 2014 CCES CCES CCES MTurk CCES CCES Com- Com- Com- Experi- Experi- Experi- mon mon mon ment ment ment (with Photos) Racial Resentment 0.66 0.68 0.69 0.44 0.61 0.63 (0.29) (0.27) (0.30) (0.28) (0.28) (0.27) Age 56.33 56.74 55.32 32.93 51.68 52.71 (13.15) (14.47) (15.22) (10.93) (16.68) (15.70) Male 0.56 0.50 0.53 0.65 0.47 0.47 (0.50) (0.50) (0.50) (0.48) (0.50) (0.50) Education 4.13 3.78 3.94 3.48 3.59 3.56 (1.40) (1.48) (1.50) (0.83) (1.49) (1.48) Income 9.10 6.50 6.85 3.07 16.59 18.97 (3.20) (3.08) (3.06) (1.87) (28.63) (31.37) Party ID (7-point) 4.01 4.22 3.94 3.11 3.93 4.01 (2.30) (2.31) (2.30) (1.82) (2.07) (2.09) GOP (dummy) 0.49 0.51 0.45 0.21 0.40 0.43 (0.50) (0.50) (0.50) (0.41) (0.49) (0.50) Democrat (dummy) 0.43 0.39 0.44 0.58 0.41 0.39 (0.50) (0.49) (0.50) (0.49) (0.49) (0.49) Independent (dummy) 0.08 0.09 0.11 0.13 0.19 0.17 (0.27) (0.28) (0.31) (0.34) (0.40) (0.38) Ideology 3.23 3.28 3.12 3.29 3.34 3.35 (1.26) (1.19) (1.21) (1.69) (1.27) (1.23)

Note: white respondents only. Standard deviations in parentheses. In the MTurk study, ideology is measured on a 7-point scale instead of a 5-point scale. Income measured on a 17-point scale in CCES datasets and on an 8-point scale in the MTurk data.

2 A.3 Congressional Districts with Black Republicans Running Against White Democrats

Table A2: Congressional Districts with Black Republican vs. White Democrat District Democratic Cand. GOP Cand. Observations Margin 2014 Congressional Races California 6 Doris Matsui (I) Joseph McCray, Sr. 32 44% New Jersey 1 Bill Norcross Garry Cobb 61 17% New Jersey 6 Frank Pallone (I) Anthony Wilkinson 52 25% New Jersey 9 Bill Pascrell (I) Dierdre Paul 35 38% Tennessee 9 Steve Cohen (I) Charlotte Bergmann 26 52% Texas 23 Pete Gallego (I) Will Hurd 24 2% Utah 4 Doug Owens Mia Love 54 3% Virginia 8 Don Beyer Micah Edmond 66 31%

2012 Congressional Races Arizona 9 Kyrsten Sinema (I) Vernon Parker 88 4.1% Connecticut 3 Rosa DeLauro (I) Wayne Winsley 83 49.4% Florida 18 Patrick Murphy Allen West (I) 98 0.5% South Carolina 1 Bobbie Rose Timothy Scott (I) 94 26.3% Utah 4 Jim Matheson (I) Mia Love 76 0.3%

2010 Congressional Races Colorado 7 Ed Perlmutter (I) Ryan Frazier 77 11.6% Florida 22 Ron Klein (I) Allen West 85 8.8% Maryland 5 Steny Hoyer (I) Charles Lollar 45 29.7% North Carolina 13 Brad Miller (I) William Randall 64 11.0% Tennessee 9 Steve Cohen (I) Charlotte Bergman 19 48.9% Note: Bold names indicate election winners. (I) indicates incumbent. Observations include only white survey respondents who reported voting in the congressional election.

3 A.4 Distribution of Racial Resentment by Dataset

(d) 2014 Mechanical Turk (e) 2014 CCES Experiment (f) 2014 CCES Experiment (with Photos)

Figure A1: Distribution of Racial Resentment by Dataset A.5 Observational Results

5 Table A3: Determinants of Vote for Black Candidate, 2010-2014 CCES Common Content, All Years Combined with Controls for Incumbency and Candidate Quality (1) (2)

Racial Resentment -2.30*** -2.29*** (0.18) (0.18) Black Republican Candidate -4.38*** -4.38*** (0.19) (0.19) Racial Resent. x Black Republican 7.06*** 7.06*** (0.33) (0.33) Democrat 0.65*** 0.64*** (0.10) (0.10) Republican -0.52*** -0.53*** (0.10) (0.10) Ideology -0.23*** -0.23*** (0.05) (0.05) Age -0.00 -0.00 (0.00) (0.00) Male 0.02 0.02 (0.04) (0.04) Education 0.01 0.01 (0.02) (0.02) Family Income -0.01** -0.01** (0.01) (0.01) White Incumbent -0.16** -0.21** (0.08) (0.09) Black Incument 0.32*** 0.34*** (0.08) (0.09) White Quality Challenger -0.27** (0.11) Black Quality Challenger 0.20* (0.11) Constant 2.15*** 2.13*** (0.17) (0.17)

Observations 6,994 6,994 Control for Election Year Yes Yes Control for Congressional District No No Pseudo-R2 0.468 0.470 Log Likelihood -2563 -2556 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the Black candidate. Cell entries are probit coefficients; cluster robust standard errors in parentheses (cluster by congressional district). Measures of incumbency and candidate quality (defined as whether or not the challenger had previously held elective office) compiled by Gary Jacobson. Controls for election year (not shown) are included in the model. *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05,* p < 0.1

6 Table A4: Determinants of Vote for Black Candidate, 2010-2014 CCES Common Content 2010 2012 2014 Null Basic District Valid. Null Basic District Valid. Null Basic District Valid. Model Model Con- Vote Model Model Con- Vote Model Model Con- Vote trols trols trols (1) (2) (3) (4) (1) (2) (3) (4) (1) (2) (3) (4) Racial Resentment -0.63*** -2.67*** -2.72*** -2.63*** -0.70*** -2.22*** -2.30*** -2.33*** -0.83*** -2.20*** -2.28*** -2.08*** (0.22) (0.39) (0.22) (0.43) (0.25) (0.27) (0.16) (0.28) (0.16) (0.25) (0.16) (0.29) Black Republican Candidate -5.30*** -5.15*** -5.24*** -4.56*** -4.31*** -4.99*** -3.98*** -3.70*** -3.86*** (0.33) (0.58) (0.39) (0.31) (0.49) (0.28) (0.14) (0.38) (0.15) Racial Resent. x Black Republican 8.40*** 8.42*** 8.41*** 7.21*** 7.72*** 8.02*** 6.11*** 6.28*** 5.77*** (0.51) (0.52) (0.53) (0.64) (0.44) (0.60) (0.25) (0.37) (0.33) Democrat 0.82*** 0.94*** 0.90*** 1.06*** 0.59*** 0.62*** 0.61*** 0.63*** 0.58*** 0.58*** 0.58*** 0.66*** (0.21) (0.20) (0.17) (0.19) (0.18) (0.17) (0.11) (0.16) (0.15) (0.16) (0.11) (0.18) Republican -0.41** -0.28 -0.31** -0.18 -0.62*** -0.68*** -0.75*** -0.79*** -0.51*** -0.48*** -0.46*** -0.49*** (0.17) (0.22) (0.15) (0.26) (0.15) (0.15) (0.10) (0.14) (0.12) (0.14) (0.11) (0.18)

7 Ideology -0.10 -0.23*** -0.21*** -0.24*** -0.17*** -0.22*** -0.22*** -0.20*** -0.21*** -0.25*** -0.24*** -0.24*** (0.07) (0.08) (0.06) (0.09) (0.06) (0.07) (0.05) (0.08) (0.07) (0.07) (0.05) (0.08) Age -0.001 -0.0005 0.0001 0.001 -0.001 -0.001 -0.002 0.001 -0.0002 -0.0009 -0.0003 0.001 (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.004) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003) Male 0.05 0.17* 0.17** 0.19* 0.10 0.07 0.08 0.10* -0.03 -0.09 -0.10 -0.06 (0.08) (0.09) (0.09) (0.11) (0.07) (0.05) (0.07) (0.05) (0.05) (0.06) (0.07) (0.08) Education -0.00 -0.03 -0.04 -0.01 0.03 0.04 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05 (0.03) (0.03) (0.04) (0.03) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) Family Income 0.01 -0.02 -0.02 -0.02 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.01 0.00 -0.01 -0.01 -0.02* (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) Constant 0.50 2.31*** 2.30*** 2.05*** 0.97*** 2.11*** 1.54*** 1.97*** 0.97*** 2.10*** 1.64*** 1.78*** (0.39) (0.32) (0.51) (0.35) (0.34) (0.21) (0.40) (0.26) (0.34) (0.25) (0.31) (0.25)

Observations 1,693 1,693 1,671 1,394 2,924 2,924 2,825 2,372 2,377 2,377 2,377 1,679 Control for Congressional District No No Yes No No No Yes No No No Yes No Pseudo-R2 0.263 0.513 0.530 0.520 0.285 0.455 0.499 0.489 0.293 0.430 0.464 0.447 Log Likelihood -862.8 -570.2 -542.6 -462.2 -1437 -1095 -966.1 -831.8 -1156 -931.6 -876.9 -637.5 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the Black candidate. Cell entries are probit coeﬃcients; robust standard errors in parentheses (in models without control for district, standard errors are cluster robust, with cluster by congressional district). The excluded category of partisanship includes independents and other parties; leaners are counted as partisans. *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05,* p < 0.1 (a) 2010 CCES (b) 2012 CCES

Note: Predicted values from Model 4 in each sample of Table A4. Shaded areas represent 95% conﬁdence intervals.

Figure A2: Racial Resentment and Probability of Voting for Black Candidates, 2010–2014

8 Table A5: Determinants of Vote for Black Candidate by Respondent Party All Election Years Combined Republicans Democrats Independents Racial Resentment -1.34*** -1.75*** -2.04*** (0.22) (0.19) (0.26) Black Republican Candidate 1.01** -5.43*** -2.36*** (0.43) (0.39) (0.52) Racial Resentment x Black Republican 2.70*** 4.14*** 3.94*** (0.49) (0.51) (0.63) Age -0.002 0.001 0.004 (0.003) (0.002) (0.005) Male 0.04 -0.01 0.06 (0.08) (0.07) (0.10) Education 0.03 -0.04 0.03 (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) Family Income -0.02 0.001 -0.02 (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) Ideology -0.36*** -0.30*** -0.43*** (0.08) (0.06) (0.08) Constant 0.92** 3.32*** 2.12*** (0.39) (0.33) (0.46)

Observations 3,386 2,912 649 Control for Election Year Yes Yes Yes Pseudo-R2 0.604 0.551 0.170 Log Likelihood -625.9 -683.7 -365.9 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the black candidate. Cell entries are probit coeﬃcients; cluster robust standard errors in parentheses (cluster by congressional district). Controls for election year are not shown (available from authors). *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

9 Table A6: Determinants of Vote for Black Candidate by Respondent Party and Election Year Republicans Democrats Independents 2010 CCES Racial Resentment -1.21*** -2.22*** -2.17*** (0.35) (0.32) (0.55) Black Republican Candidate 6.73*** -8.09*** -2.52** (1.47) (0.48) (1.20) Racial Resentment x Black Republican Candidate -2.84** 7.10*** 4.38*** (1.41) (0.62) (1.67) Ideology -0.68*** -0.15 -0.52*** (0.15) (0.12) (0.20) Constant 2.31*** 3.38*** 2.54*** (0.87) (0.61) (0.91)

Observations 821 728 138 Pseudo-R2 0.747 0.657 0.211 Log Likelihood -104.8 -126.3 -72.86 2012 CCES Racial Resentment -1.19*** -1.89*** -2.04*** (0.35) (0.40) (0.44) Black Republican Candidate 0.93 -5.29*** -1.87* (0.62) (0.55) (0.97) Racial Resentment x Black Republican Candidate 2.65*** 4.04*** 3.18*** (0.78) (0.85) (1.09) Ideology -0.29*** -0.26** -0.38*** (0.10) (0.11) (0.12) Constant 0.60 3.38*** 1.71*** (0.57) (0.57) (0.64)

Observations 1,487 1,144 254 Pseudo-R2 0.566 0.541 0.158 Log Likelihood -302.1 -268.5 -147.0 2014 CCES Racial Resentment -1.48*** -1.52*** -2.11*** (0.34) (0.25) (0.42) Black Republican Candidate 0.45 -4.83*** -2.53*** (0.63) (0.41) (0.57) Racial Resentment x Black Republican Candidate 3.20*** 3.41*** 4.21*** (0.91) (0.58) (0.66) Ideology -0.35*** -0.39*** -0.45*** (0.12) (0.08) (0.12) Constant 0.66 3.03*** 2.88*** (0.53) (0.37) (0.66)

Observations 1,078 1,040 257 Pseudo-R2 0.565 0.507 0.180 Log Likelihood -203.5 -280.8 -142.2 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the black candidate. Demographic controls for age, gender, education, and income are not shown (available from authors). Cell entries are probit coeﬃcients; robust standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 10 (a) 2010 Republicans (b) 2010 Democrats (c) 2010 Independents 11

(d) 2012 Republicans (e) 2012 Democrats (f) 2012 Independents

(g) 2014 Republicans (h) 2014 Democrats (i) 2014 Independents

Note: Predicted values computed from results in Table A6. Shaded areas represent 95% conﬁdence intervals.

Figure A3: Racial Resentment and Probability of Voting for Black Candidates from 2010-2014 by Respondent Party A.6 Racial Resentment and Party ID

In all datasets, respondents’ levels of racial resentment are correlated with their party attachments.

As Table A7 shows, the relationship between the two variables is relatively stable across the diﬀerent datasets.

Table A7: Relationship between Racial Resentment and Respondent Partisanship 2010 2012 2014 2014 2014 2014 CCES CCES CCES MTurk CCES CCES Com- Com- Com- Experi- Experi- Experi- mon mon mon ment ment ment (with Photos) Mean Level of Racial Resentment by Party ID Democrats 0.50 0.50 0.50 0.34 0.46 0.47 (0.002) (0.002) (0.003) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) Independents 0.73 0.71 0.69 0.52 0.64 0.68 (0.003) (0.003) (0.002) (0.03) (0.02) (0.02) Republicans 0.82 0.81 0.80 0.66 0.75 0.75 (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01)

Pairwise Correlation 0.55 0.54 0.50 0.50 0.46 0.49 Note: white respondents only. The 2010-2014 CCES Common Content samples rely on a two-item measure of racial resentment; other datasets use a 4-item measure. Standard errors in parentheses. Partisan leaners are counted as partisans, not as independents. The pairwise correlation is between a 7-point measure of party identiﬁcation and racial resentment.

12 A.7 Experimental Results

A.7.1 Experimental Setup and Manipulation Checks

(a) Black Candidate (b) White Candidate

Figure A4: Candidate Photos

Table A8: Percentage of White Respondents Indicating Jamal Williams Was Black/African-American Condition MTurk CCES CCES (with Photos) GOP / No Message 90.32% 80.16% 87.38% (93) (126) (103) GOP / Message 94.44% 81.89% 88.39% (108) (127) (112) Democrat / No Message 96.08% 77.88% 88.57% (102) (113) (105) Democrat / Message 96.15% 76.27% 90.00% (104) (118) (120) No Party / No Message 96.15% 87.20% 95.33% (104) (125) (107) No Party / Message 91.35% 77.27% 93.10% (104) (110) (116)

Total 94.15% 80.25% 90.50% (615) (719) (663) Note: Cell entries are the proportion of respondents who correctly identiﬁed Jamal Williams as black. Number of observations in each condition shown in parentheses.

13 In the two CCES samples, high percentages of respondents correctly reported the race of the white candidate (Brad Anderson), though more respondents were correct when the experimental manipulation was accompanied by pictures (Table A9). In both CCES samples, among the small percentage of respondents who could not correctly report Anderson’s race, most thought he was black

(60.5% in the module without pictures and 56.8% of the module with pictures), suggesting that when respondents got it wrong, many of them may simply have confused the two candidates. Consistent with previous work that has shown them to be especially attentive (Berinsky, Margolis and Sances

2014), MTurk respondents appeared to be the most sensitive to the race of the candidates, even compared to CCES respondents who saw pictures of the two men.

Table A9: Percentage of White Respondents Indicating Brad Anderson Was White Condition MTurk CCES CCES (with Photos) GOP / No Message 93.92% 83.33% 93.20% GOP / Message 98.15% 85.04% 92.86% Democrat / No Message 98.04% 86.73% 95.24% Democrat / Message 100% 83.90% 93.33% No Party / No Message 100% 88.80% 95.33% No Party / Message 99.04% 87.27% 96.55% Total 99.02% 85.81% 94.42% Note: Number of observations for each condition is the same as those reported in Table A8.

14 A.7.2 Experimental Results: Vote Choice

Table A10: Main Effects of Experimental Treatments Party Affiliation of Black Candidate GOP Democrat No Party Overall 2014 MTurk Message 50.00 84.62 60.58 65.17 (4.82) (3.54) (4.80) (2.55) No Message 45.16 57.84 56.73 53.32 (5.16) (4.89) (4.86) (2.87) ———- ———- ———- ———- Effect of Message Treatment 4.83 26.77 3.85 11.85 (7.06) (6.04) (6.83) (3.84) [-9.00, 18.68] [14.93, 38.61] [-9.54, 17.23] [4.32, 19.38] 2014 CCES Message 65.87 62.61 59.63 62.78 (4.23) (4.52) (4.70) (2.58) No Message 53.33 52.73 44.63 50.28 (4.56) (4.76) (4.52) (2.66) ———- ———- ———- ———- Effect of Message Treatment 12.54 9.88 15.00 12.50 (6.22) (6.56) (6.52) (3.71) [0.36, 24.72] [-2.98, 22.75] [2.21, 27.80] [5.22, 19.77] 2014 CCES with Photos Message 64.29 71.67 76.72 70.97 (4.53) (4.12) (3.93) (2.42) No Message 57.28 46.67 48.60 50.76 (4.88) (4.87) (4.84) (2.81) ———- ———- ———- ———- Effect of Message Treatment 7.00 25.00 28.13 20.22 (6.66) (6.38) (6.23) (3.71) [-6.04, 20.05] [12.50, 37.50] [15.92, 40.33] [12.95, 27.48] Note: Cell entries are the percentage of respondents who voted for the black candidate, Jamal Williams. Standard errors in parentheses, 95% confidence intervals in brackets.

15 Table A11: Average Marginal Eﬀect of Racial Resentment by Condition and Study Condition MTurk CCES CCES (with Photos) GOP / No Message 0.41 0.41 0.38 [0.07, 0.75] [0.12, 0.70] [0.01, 0.75] GOP / Message 0.74 0.63 0.50 [0.49, 0.98] [0.42, 0.84] [0.22, 0.79] Democrat / No Message -0.84 -0.73 -0.96 [-1.02, -0.65] [-0.97, -0.55] [-1.13, 0.78] Democrat / Message -0.20 -0.28 -0.48 [-0.49, 0.10] [-0.60, 0.03] [-0.74, -0.21] No Party / No Message -0.61 -0.75 -0.30 [-0.88, -0.34] [-0.96, -0.55] [-0.64, 0.05] No Party / Message 0.36 0.11 0.38 [0.05, 0.67] [-0.18, 0.41] [0.12, 0.64]

Message (All) 0.30 0.16 0.13 [0.13, 0.46] [0.01, 0.32] [-0.03, 0.28] No Message (All) -0.35 -0.34 -0.30 [-0.50, -0.19] [-0.48, -0.20] [-0.48, -0.12]

Republican Candidate (All) 0.58 0.52 0.44 [0.36, 0.78] [0.34, 0.69] [0.21, 0.67] Democratic Candidate (All) -0.51 -0.51 -0.72 [-0.68, -0.34] [-0.71, -0.31] [-0.88, -0.55] No Party Candidate (All) -0.11 -0.33 0.06 [-0.32, 0.10] [-0.51, -0.14] [-0.16, 0.27] Note: Cell entries are average marginal effects of racial resentment on vote for Black candidate by experimental condition. 95% confidence intervals in brackets. Regressions used to compute these marginal effects available from the authors.

16 Table A12: Eﬀect of the Conditions and Racial Resentment on Vote for the Black Candidate by Study MTurk CCES CCES (with Photos)

GOP / No Message -1.54*** -1.88*** -0.89* (0.37) (0.43) (0.48) GOP / Message -2.00*** -2.05*** -0.99** (0.38) (0.43) (0.45) Democrat / No Message 0.66* 0.05 1.50*** (0.38) (0.46) (0.51) Democrat / Message 0.41 -0.48 1.15** (0.40) (0.46) (0.47) No Party / Message -1.07*** -1.23*** -0.51 (0.34) (0.42) (0.45) Racial Resentment -1.72*** -2.29*** -0.76 (0.48) (0.48) (0.47) Racial Resentment x GOP / No Message 2.79*** 3.37*** 1.76** (0.69) (0.64) (0.71) Racial Resentment x GOP / Message 3.90*** 4.29*** 2.19*** (0.72) (0.66) (0.66) Racial Resentment x Democrat / No Message -1.11 0.12 -2.56*** (0.72) (0.71) (0.79) Racial Resentment x Democrat / Message 0.91 1.53** -0.77 (0.77) (0.66) (0.66) Racial Resentment x No Party / Message 2.69*** 2.58*** 2.07*** (0.66) (0.62) (0.69) Constant 0.94*** 1.29*** 0.45 (0.25) (0.33) (0.32)

Observations 615 698 658 Pseudo-R2 0.140 0.0975 0.122 Log Likelihood -357.4 -431.6 -385.4 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the Black candidate, Jamal Williams. Robust standard errors in parentheses. Excluded category is the “No Party / No Message” condition. Model combining all three samples includes ﬁxed eﬀects for the sample. *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05,* p < 0.1

17 (a) MTurk Study

(b) CCES Study

Figure A5: Eﬀect of Racial Resentment by Experimental Condition and Study

18 Table A13: Experimental Results with Demographic Controls MTurk CCES CCES (with Photos)

GOP / No Message -1.73*** -1.95*** -0.79 (0.40) (0.43) (0.48) GOP / Message -1.97*** -2.08*** -1.03** (0.41) (0.43) (0.45) Democrat / No Message 0.59 -0.03 1.55*** (0.41) (0.46) (0.52) Democrat / Message 0.51 -0.46 1.18** (0.44) (0.45) (0.47) No Party / Message -1.13*** -1.27*** -0.52 (0.36) (0.42) (0.45) Racial Resentment -2.05*** -2.32*** -0.88* (0.56) (0.50) (0.48) Racial Resentment x GOP / No Message 3.28*** 3.46*** 1.65** (0.75) (0.64) (0.71) Racial Resentment x GOP / Message 3.85*** 4.37*** 2.25*** (0.78) (0.66) (0.66) Racial Resentment x Democrat / No Message -0.85 0.28 -2.65*** (0.79) (0.72) (0.81) Racial Resentment x Democrat / Message 0.91 1.51** -0.79 (0.85) (0.67) (0.67) Racial Resentment x No Party / Message 2.79*** 2.64*** 2.14*** (0.71) (0.62) (0.70) Strong Democrat -0.32 0.05 -0.29 (0.20) (0.18) (0.19) Weak Democrat -0.39** 0.14 -0.12 (0.19) (0.18) (0.21) Lean Democrat -0.32 0.22 -0.13 (0.21) (0.20) (0.22) Lean GOP -0.07 0.11 0.15 (0.26) (0.18) (0.19) Weak GOP -0.43* 0.21 -0.25 (0.23) (0.19) (0.20) Strong GOP 0.52 0.08 0.04 (0.34) (0.17) (0.19) Age -0.00 0.00 -0.00 (0.01) (0.00) (0.00) Male -0.06 0.20** -0.17 (0.13) (0.10) (0.11) Education 0.02 0.03 0.06 (0.07) (0.04) (0.04) Constant 1.31*** 0.95** 0.51 (0.47) (0.39) (0.42)

Observations 570 696 657 Pseudo-R2 0.162 0.105 0.133 Log Likelihood -324.0 -426.3 -380.2 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the black candidate, Jamal Williams. Robust standard errors in parentheses. Excluded category is the “No Party / No Message” condition. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

19 Table A14 presents two models: one in which we simply control for the respondents’ level of individualism and another in which we interact individualism with the experimental conditions in the same way we interact racial resentment with the conditions.

Figure A6 shows the predicted effects of racial resentment from Model 2 of Table A14. When both racial resentment and individualism are included in the same model and interacted with the experimental treatments, the marginal effects of individualism nearly always overlap 0, while the marginal effects of racial resentment remain, for the most part, robust, at least when the candidate is associated with a political party. The biggest difference is that the marginal effect of racial resentment when the black candidate is a Republican but does not send an individualist message is no longer statistically significant (though the slope of the line is still positive). Compare the results in Figure A6 with Figure A5c.

Figure A6: Eﬀect of Racial Resentment by Condition with Controls for Individualism (CCES Module with Pictures)

20 Table A14: Experimental Results with Controls for Individualism (CCES Module with Pictures) (1) (2)

GOP / No Message -0.92* -1.36** (0.48) (0.60) GOP / Message -1.00** -1.32** (0.45) (0.59) Democrat / No Message 1.49*** 2.13*** (0.51) (1.09) Democrat / Message 1.13** 1.26** (0.47) (0.57) No Party / Message -0.51 -0.85 (0.45) (0.54) Racial Resentment -0.79 -0.60 (0.49) (0.62) Racial Resentment x GOP / No Message 1.82** 0.96 (0.72) (0.91) Racial Resentment x GOP / Message 2.20*** 1.82** (0.67) (0.82) Racial Resentment x Democrat / No Message -2.54*** -2.44*** (0.79) (0.93) Racial Resentment x Democrat / Message -0.72 -0.72 (0.67) (0.80) Racial Resentment x No Party / Message 2.07*** 1.40 (0.69) (0.86) Individualism 0.07 -0.28 (0.31) (0.76) Individualism x GOP / No Message 1.66 (1.15) Individualism x GOP / Message 0.95 (1.11) Individualism x Democrat / No Message -1.23 (1.08) Individualism x Democrat / Message -0.23 (0.98) Individualism x No Party / Message 1.35 (1.11) Constant 0.43 0.52 (0.33) (0.37)

Observations 654 654 Pseudo-R2 0.123 0.134 Log Likelihood -382.4 -377.3 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the black candidate, Jamal Williams. Robust standard errors in parentheses. In the party treatment, the excluded category is the “No Party” condition. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 21 Table A15: Experimental Results by Respondent Partisanship (1) (2) (3) Republicans Democrats lndependents

GOP / No Message 0.39 -1.65*** -0.01 (0.74) (0.31) (0.67) GOP / Message -0.37 -1.67*** -0.87 (0.68) (0.29) (0.70) Democrat / No Message -1.67** 1.01*** -0.15 (0.74) (0.34) (0.72) Democrat / Message -0.13 0.44 0.23 (0.65) (0.31) (0.64) No Party / Message 0.18 -1.02*** -0.39 (0.63) (0.27) (0.69) Racial Resentment -1.88*** -1.13*** -1.77** (0.58) (0.37) (0.75) Resentment x GOP / No Message 1.26 1.18** 1.29 (0.97) (0.59) (1.04) Resentment x GOP / Message 2.56*** 1.86*** 3.02*** (0.91) (0.54) (1.12) Resentment x Democrat / No Message 1.29 -0.85 0.76 (0.99) (0.64) (1.12) Resentment x Democrat / Message 0.79 0.97* 0.85 (0.86) (0.58) (0.99) Resentment x No Party / Message 1.37* 1.78*** 2.11* (0.82) (0.53) (1.09) Constant 1.07** 0.88*** 0.86* (0.44) (0.22) (0.47)

Fixed Eﬀects for Sample Yes Yes Yes Observations 691 901 331 Pseudo-R2 0.258 0.220 0.0893 Log Likelihood -345.1 -477.5 -205.1 Note: Dependent variable is a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the respondent voted for the black candidate, Jamal Williams. Robust standard errors in parentheses. In the party treatment, the excluded category is the “No Party” condition. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1