During his campaign, Barack Obama inspired record numbers of Americans to donate their time and money to his electoral efforts. Now that the campaign is over, can Obama sustain this civic engagement as he begins to govern? This paper examines the possibilities for sustaining Obama's electoral mobilization, introducing new data from fieldwork conducted from September 2008 to Election Day 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; and Charlotte, North Carolina. The data include staff interviews and observations of canvassing, rallies, and other get-out-the-vote efforts of the local Obama and McCain campaigns, the local Democratic and Republican Parties, and various nonprofit groups in each city. Based on these data it is clear that each city was characterized by excitement and heightened activity; however, the number of activities and the strength of the grassroots organization varied across the cities according to national electoral imperatives in ways that should affect the potential for future mobilization. As such, sustaining the mobilization of Obama's supporters faces several hurdles: campaign staff and volunteers in many cities were drawn from outside the community, tensions arose between local grassroots organizations and the campaign over resources and issue focus, and the extremely large amounts of money needed to finance the mobilization were not distributed evenly across cities and states.

An editorial error was made in the article, “A Black Man in the White House?: The Role of Racism and Patriotism in the 2008 Presidential Election” (Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 193–217).

This paper explores how race/ethnicity and perceptions of racial discrimination and inequality shape beliefs about the implications of an Obama presidency for U.S. race relations. Specifically, using data from a June/July 2008 Gallup/USA Today survey, we examine how African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites differ in their perceptions of the importance of an Obama victory and in beliefs about the implications of such for race relations, racial progress, and opportunities for Blacks in their careers and in national politics. We also examine how perceptions of the extent and nature of racial discrimination and inequality shape these outcomes (overall and by race/ethnicity). Results show that African Americans, relative to Whites and Hispanics, are especially likely to see an Obama victory as important and meaningful in terms of relatively abstract notions of racial change. In contrast, Hispanics are more likely than African Americans and Whites to believe that an Obama win will translate into concrete societal changes, such as expanded opportunities for Blacks in work and politics. In addition, perceived discrimination and inequality positively shape all of the outcomes under study (more perceived discrimination equals more importance and optimism attached to an Obama win), though this association is especially strong among Whites—a pattern possibly rooted in divergent meanings attached to perceived discrimination and inequality by race/ethnicity. Overall, our findings suggest that African Americans view an Obama victory as meaningful primarily because of its symbolic significance, rather than because they believe it will result in substantive racial progress. We conclude by offering some speculation and selected questions for future research on race and U.S. politics.

Race and patriotism were recurring themes during the 2008 presidential campaign that were used to highlight differences between Barack Obama and his opponents. Yet we know little about how racism and patriotism ultimately affected support for Obama among Whites. Appeals to working-class Whites, a lot of which were thinly veiled allusions to Obama's race and perceived lack of patriotism, also figured prominently in the campaign. Accordingly, this paper explores how racism and patriotism shaped support for Obama, as well as the extent to which the effect of each is moderated by class. We find that rising symbolic racism dampened his support among Whites, as did patriotism. Moreover, we find the effects of patriotism on support for Obama were contingent upon class.

In the 2008 presidential primaries, Barack Obama seemed to have a problem connecting with Asian American voters, as he lost heavily to Hillary Clinton in states such as California and New Jersey. Many speculated that race-based considerations played a significant role in Asian Americans' overwhelming support for Clinton over Obama, with conjectures built on a limited set of aggregate exit poll data from three states. Race may also have accounted for the high proportion of Asian Americans who in polls said they were undecided heading into the November election. In this article, we analyze the importance of race-based considerations in the Asian American vote, after controlling for other factors such as partisanship, issue preferences, age, and gender. We rely on the National Asian American Survey, a large-scale telephone survey of Asian American voters conducted mostly in the fall of 2008, with interviews in eight languages and with sizable numbers of respondents from the six largest national-origin groups. We find that race-based considerations do indeed help explain the Asian American vote in 2008. Respondents who failed to see political commonality between Asian Americans and Blacks were less likely to vote for Obama in the primary, although other factors, such as age and gender, played a more significant role. Finally, the role of race-based considerations paled in comparison to party identification and issue preferences in the general election, suggesting that election contexts can play an important role in shaping whether or not race is relevant to vote choice.