Special Issue: Election Reflections, Fall 2020
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Fall 2020 • Volume 48 • Number 5 Inside Special Issue: How Will Black Women Election Reflections 2 Shape the 2020 Election? What Will the Outcome Mean for Them? If the Polls Are So Wrong, How Come You’re Paying So Much Attention? 3 Are We Ready for a Woman of Color as President of the Andrew J. Perrin, Ruel W. Tyson activities for a different day, bring an sage, web, and other survey styles United States? Distinguished Professor of the umbrella, and similar. Essentially, I alongside traditional telephone), Humanities, Professor of Sociology, and am interested in a binary outcome aggressive recruitment, and statisti- Politics and Inequality in Director of the Institute for the Arts and (rain or no rain) but the weather cal weighting. 5 Humanities, University of North Carolina Washington predictors offer me only a probabilis- The weighting process in at Chapel Hill tic estimate. particular can be quite subjective; 6 Racial Capitalism and hortly before So it is with polls. Just as yester- pollsters make educated guesses as the 2020 Election: Selection day day at 4:00 it was either raining or to how different their respondents On the Presentism in 2016, poll not (it couldn’t be 80% raining), the are from the population they’re and Methodological aggregator Nate result of an election is categorical. trying to understand, and they Individualism of American Silver famously As citizens we are interested in who increase and decrease the amount Sociology pegged the wins and who loses; nobody can of attention they pay to each of likelihood of a win 70% of an election (leaving their respondents based on those White Racial Projects in Hillary Clinton aside proportional representa- guesses. With sample sizes often Andrew J. Perrin 8 the 2020 Election and The victory at 70%. tion systems). Just as an 80% rain around 1,000 total, response rates American Indian Origins It was the more forecast can never be wrong, neither frequently below 10%, and a rapidly Controversy likely outcome of the election, but can a 70% election prediction; we changing electorate, those guesses certainly not guaranteed based on only have one actual observation by end up accounting for a lot of his model and interpretation of the which to evaluate the prediction. variation in the results—results that Where the Sleeping Giant polls he was gathering. Observers, Technically, it’s true that the can’t be evaluated until election day. 10 Lies? Latinos, Puerto Ricans, critics, and Clinton partisans polls were pretty accurate. Most Aggregators like Silver, 538, and and the 2020 Election ridiculed the call; competing poll predicted the national popular vote RealClearPolitics add an additional interpreter Sam Wang vowed to “eat quite closely, and in the few states layer by trying to adjust for these 11 Immigration and the 2020 a bug” if Trump won—a promise that tipped the election (Wisconsin, “house effects” in their averages. Election he followed through on shortly Michigan, and Pennsylvania), the While the weather doesn’t listen thereafter. predictions were off only by a few to the weather report, voters do Why Voters Don’t Get the In the public mind, the polls were percentage points. What made us pay attention to polls, probably far 13 Policies They Want wrong in 2016. Any pollster will view the polls as “wrong” is that more than they should. In 2016, it’s be happy to explain that, in fact, those errors resulted in a change possible some ambivalent voters ASA News, including: they weren’t wrong, or at least not to the statewide result and that the were so convinced by the polls that 15 Introducing 2021 ASA by much. That’s true in a technical same thing happened in each of Clinton would win that they chose President Aldon Morris sense, and actually quite impressive. those states and more (a problem not to vote, to vote for a third-party But it misses the way most people known as correlated errors). So small or write-in candidate, or even to interpret and, potentially, even act errors in key places resulted in the cast a protest vote for Trump. If upon polls. Why are so many people glaring mistake of predicting the the outcome is so clear as to make still so focused on polls even as they wrong outcome. a polling expert offer to eat a bug claim to mistrust the results and Getting that close was at least if he’s wrong, why not use the dismiss the whole practice? as much art as science, though. opportunity to express ambivalence Poll predictions are a little like Response rates to polls have plum- or dissent? weather reports. Meteorologists have meted with the advent of Caller ID, People pay such close attention to a sense of what an 80% chance of rain the increasing number of homes polls because they seem objec- Announcements means, and pollsters (the good ones without landline telephones, and tive: a theory-free window into 22 at least) grasp what a 70% chance of a the general suspicion of auto- what’s happening out there in the Clinton victory means. When I check mated and scripted callers. Each world. Public opinion research was my weather app, though, what I actu- polling organization—known as invented and adopted by the news ally want to know is whether it will a “house”—tries to address those media for precisely that purpose. rain this afternoon. If it will, I may problems with some mix of chang- But in fact, like any other research, adjust my behavior: plan outdoor ing modes (automated, text-mes- Continued on Page 2 footnotes 1 American Sociological Association footnotes.asanet.org Special Issue: Election Reflections How Will Black Women Shape the 2020 Election? What Will the Outcome Mean for Them? Adia Harvey Wingfield, Professor of to less than 50% of white women). one that presents an opportunity a spotlight on the fact that the Sociology, Washington University in St. During the midterm elections of to consider particular intersections dangers Black women face giving Louis 2018, Black women also made the of how race and gender matter. A birth cross economic lines. Beyonce o say 2020 difference in contests in Alabama, Black woman is on the ticket, Black coped with preeclampsia, while Thas been Virginia, and New Jersey, with high women are the Democratic Party’s Serena Williams writes that she unprecedented levels of turnout that affected out- most reliable voting bloc, and Black nearly died after giving birth when might be the comes in each state. And they were people are responsible for throwing a nurse dismissed her assertion biggest possible integral to Joe Biden getting the their weight behind Joe Biden, who that she was developing blood clots understatement Democratic nomination in the first has promised to put the first Black and needed a CT scan. (Williams about this year. place, as Black voters’ turnout in woman on a Supreme Court that ultimately received the treatment, It’s a safe bet southern states, particularly South currently has a conservative major- which helped save her life.) that no one Adia Harvey Wingfield Carolina, enabled him to clinch the ity and has only had one woman of Health care is only one area had global race decisively. color in its long history. where Black women suffer from pandemic, international protests Kamala Harris’s candidacy for From a purely representational structural and institutional biases. for racial equity, and presiden- Vice President means that this is standpoint, these are clear exam- They are also overrepresented tial impeachment on their Bingo also the first election to feature a ples of advancement and signs of in “bad jobs” that provide fewer card. In keeping with the theme woman of color on a major-party progress from an earlier age where benefits, less autonomy, and lower of this being an unusual year, this ticket. (Shirley Chisholm holds the including or committing to includ- wages. Across occupational catego- presidential election is of enormous distinction of being the first Black ing Black women in these roles ries and industries, Black women significance for many reasons. It is candidate to seek a major party tick- would have been unthinkable. And face a wage gap, earning 65 cents the first with one of the candidates et’s nomination for President when it is possible to make the argument for every dollar earned by white seeking re-election after impeach- she ran for the office in 1972.) Joe that this upcoming election features men. Interestingly, this gap is widest ment, it features the oldest two Biden, the Democratic Party’s nomi- Black women more prominently for Black women with college and candidates for President in U.S. nee for President, has also commit- and significantly than any other postgraduate degrees, wider than history, and it marks a politically ted to naming a Black woman to the one before it. But as sociologists, for Black women with high school unthinkable comeback, after one Supreme Court should he be elected we know that representation is diplomas or less. This creates a nominee lost the first two primary and have the opportunity to do so. one thing, but the structural and situation where Black women’s high contests in resounding fashion. Yet Of course, it’s also worth noting that institutional factors that inhibit levels of educational attainment it is also an election that will, in back in 1993, Biden was involved in that representation in the first place serve to result in greater wage ways large and small, highlight the shepherding Anita Hill’s testimony are another. And the institutional disparities relative to comparably significant and important roles that before a panel of white men as she factors that create barriers for educated white men.