President Obama on the ballot: Referendum voting and racial spillover in the 2014 midterm elections |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Colgate University, United States;2. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, United States;1. Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 119 Major Williams Hall, 220 Stanger Street, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA;2. Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB #3625, 361 Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA;1. San Francisco Department of Public Health, 25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102, USA;2. University of California, San Francisco, 500 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA;1. Department of Research and Education, OLVG Hospital, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;2. Athena Institute, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, VU, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;3. Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Sant’Anna Hospital, University of Torino, Italy;4. Department of Reproductive Medicine and Gynaecology, University Medical Centre, Utrecht, The Netherlands;5. European Board & College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Executive Committee, Brussels, Belgium;6. European Board & College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Standing Committee of Training and Assessment, Brussels, Belgium;7. Institute for the Care of Mother and Child, Prague, Czech Republic;8. Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic;9. European Board & College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Standing Committee on Training Recognition, Brussels, Belgium;10. University Department of Surgical Science, University of Torino, Italy;11. European Board & College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Immediate Past-President, Brussels, Belgium;12. Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences, School of Health Professions Education (SHE), Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands;13. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
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| Abstract: | The 2014 elections were widely viewed as a referendum on the presidency of Barack Obama. Republicans ran against the incumbent president, and many view the Republican Party's victories in 2014 as a mass rejection of President Obama's policies. We argue that this account of the 2014 elections is incomplete. We advance the theory of racial spillover—that associating an attitude object with President Obama causes public opinion to polarize on the basis of racial attitudes—to explain both vote choice and referendum voting in the 2014 elections. In an analysis of the CCES and an original survey, we show that congressional vote choice was strongly racialized in 2014. We go on to show that perceptions of the election as a referendum on President Obama were also racialized, and that these perceptions mediated the link between racial animus and 2014 congressional vote choice. This represents the first study to show that racialized congressional evaluations continued into 2014 and we provide direct evidence that attitudes about President Obama mediated the effect of racial animus on congressional vote choice. We conclude by discussing the implications for referendum voting, racial spillover, and the 2014 midterm elections. |
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| Keywords: | Elections Voting behavior Congress Racial priming Barack Obama |
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