Recent voter turnout data has revealed a consistent and growing turnout gap between Black and White Americans since the 2012 Presidential election. Scholars have attributed this gap to an increase in restrictive voting laws. However, few have considered the decreased effectiveness of long-standing models of political behavior on Black voter turnout as the American political landscape has shifted. This note seeks to uncover patterns in recent Presidential elections that display a lack of effectiveness of prominent voter turnout models for Black Americans due to disparate socializing experiences in a post-Obama context like voter suppression and a global pandemic. It employs models previously used by Leighley and Vedlitz (1999) to evaluate and compare turnout models for Black and White individuals with mini-meta analysis. This paper utilizes the 2016 and 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey (CMPS) and the 2016 and 2020 American National Election Study to establish models and measure their impact on Black and White voter turnout. I find support that prominent turnout models behave differently in a post-Obama context like income, length of residence, group consciousness, and group threat while some models behave differently for Black and white voters like political interest and political efficacy. These findings assert that new turnout models need to be established to better understand the Black electorate in a post-Obama context.

Recent debates over how to address racial injustice in the United States often center on two types of policies: redistributive measures that redress material inequities between groups and symbolic reforms that challenge dominant racial narratives. How do citizens evaluate these differing approaches to advancing racial justice? How do recent removals of Confederate symbols shape support for each of these policy types? In a survey of American adults, we find that support for redistributive and symbolic policies is positively correlated across partisan, racial, and regional lines. However, when pressed, respondents express a stronger preference for redistributive measures, often viewing symbolic reforms as insufficient or distracting. In an experimental framework, we find that informing respondents about recent Confederate statue removals does not significantly alter support for either policy type. Looking at qualitative reactions to the treatment, we identify a plausible explanation for this null finding: most respondents see the removals as a fight over history and less directly relevant to a broader racial justice policy agenda.

This paper explores diversifying legislatures within a context of ethnonationalism, populism, and democratic erosion. Although diversity and inclusion are often viewed as symbols of democratization, research increasingly challenges this. In fact, diversity and inclusion can occur in tandem with democratic erosion—how so? How do minorities navigate hostile environments? To answer this question, I analyze how women politicians with intersecting identities strategically use their gendered and racialized identities. I conduct a qualitative study of four different women politicians in the Israeli Knesset—Miri Regev of Jewish Mizrahi [Moroccan] descent, Pnina Tamano-Shata of Jewish Ethiopian descent, Merav Michaeli of Jewish Ashkenazi [European] descent, and Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian-Israeli. I find that women will highlight the aspects of their identities that they believe will benefit them the most, resulting in their promotion of ethnonational divisions and reducing opportunities for solidarity among minority populations.

Central to the UK’s Referendum on EU membership, immigration concerns underpinned support for Leave. This article examines ethnic minority support for Brexit, comparing their immigration attitudes with white British voters. Why immigrants and ethnic minorities would support immigration controls through voting Leave presents a theoretical puzzle with existing research finding they generally hold positive attitudes to immigration. Drawing on focus groups and interviews, I find opposition to Eastern European immigration motivated ethnic minority Leave support, who bolstered their own position as “good” immigrants while denigrating Eastern Europeans as “bad” immigrants. This echoes emerging trends of minoritized groups opposing newer migrants, including increased Latino/x support for Trump in 2024. White British Leave voters, however, rarely distinguished between EU and non-EU migrants, often including British ethnic minorities in their “mental image” of immigrants. Thus, tighter borders may do little to quell qualms over immigration which (partly) reflect concerns over rising racial diversity.

Discriminatory encounters are commonplace for Muslims living in the West. How do these experiences impact the political behaviors of Muslims within these societies? Scholars have examined the effects of Islamophobia on Muslims’ civic engagement and found mixed results. Some researchers argue that discrimination triggers demobilizing psychological processes, while others contend that discriminatory experiences motivate active citizenship as a corrective to injustice. Still others suggest that distinct experiences with discrimination mobilize differently. This article engages with original survey data from Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US to explore whether and how individual experiences with societal and political discrimination, and perceptions of group discrimination, influence Muslims’ political activities. It reveals that societal, political, and group discrimination are associated with greater breadth of mainstream political activities, while experiences with political discrimination and perceptions of group discrimination correlate with protest activities. These results suggest that Muslims discern the specific nature of discriminatory experiences and respond accordingly through democratic means.

This article examines how the California Reparations Task Force (2021–23), a government advisory body, grappled with the question of which Black Americans should be eligible for reparations. Some Task Force members and activists advocated a lineage approach that restricts eligibility to people whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States. Others supported a Pan-African approach that includes all Black residents. The Task Force voted narrowly for the lineage approach. Surprisingly, however, and not acknowledged by most observers, most of the Task Force’s Final Report implicitly adopted a tiered approach, which follows the lineage approach for some policies and the Pan-African approach for others. It also includes universal policies for all, as long as they include a reparatory dimension. The Final Report thus challenged the assumption that all reparations policies would follow a single standard of eligibility. The tiered approach emerged in part because it complies with United Nations guidelines on reparations. It appears more likely than the other approaches to increase public support for reparations.

Much of the existing behavioral political science literature ignores Black motherhood as a salient factor of political identity and mobilization. However, Black mothers are often at the forefront of numerous political movements, including ones to end police violence against Black Americans. Due to the disproportionality of police contact in Black communities, Black mothers have a personal stake in ending police abuse that is twofold. First, Black mothers are often victims of sexist and racist policing practices, facing verbal, sexual, psychological, and economic abuse at the hands of law enforcement. Second, while dealing with their own oppressive relationship with the police, they must simultaneously take action to protect their loved ones from potential violence and harm at the hands of the state. The goal of this research is to examine how community-based politics serve as an opportunity for Black maternal status to be manifested as a form of resistance. I focus on what I refer to as community-based political activity because it is deeply rooted in the fabric of Black women’s political activism and produces more immediate benefits than other forms of political engagement. To examine the effects of direct and indirect police encounters on Black mothers, I pose several questions: How does negative police contact affect Black mothers’ community-based political activity? Does this difference apply to Black women who are not mothers? Using data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Elections Survey, my analysis demonstrates that maternal status has a significant impact on Black mothers’ community-oriented political engagement, particularly for those affected by indirect police contact.

The experiences of Latina women and girls with state surveillance, and their responses to unfair policies and practices, remain underexplored. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Latinas—primarily of Mexican descent—living in San Diego, we examine how encounters with local police and immigration enforcement shape their political practices. Participants described repeated negative encounters with police and immigration enforcement agencies over the life course. These cumulative experiences fostered distrust of police and critical views of surveillance practices designed to restrict the mobility of immigrants and other systematically minoritized groups. In response, many of the women engaged in community organizing and adopted counter-surveillance strategies. Our findings show how patterned experiences with state surveillance generate political critique and action.

Commemorations of the Confederacy remain pervasive throughout the Southern U.S. Historians have long established that many of these symbols were erected during the Jim Crow era to reinforce white political dominance in public spaces. Yet, little is known about how these enduring symbols shape perceptions among people of different racial identities today. This study examines Confederate monuments where they are most prominently placed: courthouse grounds. Using an original survey experiment of Black, white, and Latino Southerners, it investigates whether the presence of a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse influences feelings of personal safety and welcomeness, as well as perceptions of the fairness of the court system. Findings reveal that a Confederate monument made Black and Latino Southerners feel less safe and welcome at the courthouse and led Black Southerners to perceive the court system as less fair toward people like them. In contrast, Confederate monuments had no overall effect on white Southerners’ perceptions of courthouses or the judicial system. These results underscore the role of contentious symbols in reinforcing inequalities in public spaces.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by police in 2020, polls showed White Democrats as the most racially progressive group of Americans. In this paper, we examine this group’s racial progressiveness. Using the racial resentment scale deployed in the American National Election Studies, we show that the youngest generation of White Democrats has become more liberal on race when compared to older generations of Democrats and both younger and older generations of Republicans. We examine White Democrats’ racial attitudes further using four framing experiments that we embed in a nationally representative survey. The experiments demonstrate that younger generations of Democrats are often, but not always, the group most supportive of progressive racial rhetoric when compared to older Democrats, Republicans in their generation, and older Republicans. Older Democrats often mirror the attitudes of their younger counterpart. Thus, we find that racial attitudes are shaped not just by generation but also by partisan cues. Last, when it comes to reparations, young Democrats are merely less hostile to the policy than other groups in our sample but do not endorse reparations. Overall, our findings thus suggest that while younger generations of Democrats are sometimes more progressive in their racial attitudes than other groups, their racial attitudes are somewhat inconsistent. While they support racially egalitarian rhetoric, they do not express the same level of support for a policy designed to create equal material conditions.

Questions about race and representation often hinge on the public’s beliefs about which policies affect different communities, yet there is limited evidence on how these associations are actually perceived. Using a nationally representative survey experiment, we examine how the issue priorities of political candidates shape perceptions of who they represent. Most policy areas are perceived to benefit White Americans; only a few, especially criminal justice and poverty, are strongly associated with African Americans. We also show that perceptions of candidate ideology and race correlate with perceptions of Black representation, but mediation analysis reveals that criminal justice is associated with Black representation above and beyond ideological inferences. Finally, analyzing nearly 200,000 congressional newsletters and find that while race is rarely explicitly mentioned, Black Americans are most frequently referenced in the context of criminal justice and poverty. Together, these results underscore how race-policy associations operate through both public perception and elite messaging, shaping broader understandings of political representation.

Strategic messaging can be used to build support for racial equity policies, but most research has found that linking issues to race is ineffective. What if using strategic messages to increase support for racial equity policies is not simply a matter of whether racial appeals are present in a message, but how they are framed? Evidence from an original survey experiment conducted among a highly diverse group of 2,320 randomly sampled voters in Los Angeles County demonstrates that the most effective messages are those that discuss both race and class—with distinct outcomes on message favorability and anti-carceral policy support. In addition, we find the effect is moderated by ethnoracial identity, racial resentment, and personal contact with the criminal legal system. Our findings suggest that how racial appeals are framed—not simply whether racial frames are present—is important in shaping the impact of a message; they also highlight the need for more research innovation with a variety of ways to link issues to racial inequality with the aim of building support for racial equity policies.

Partisanship and feelings about racial groups are increasingly linked among whites in the United States. Does this pattern extend to other Americans? To answer this question, we begin by examining trends in what has been termed “affective differentiation”—a measure of racial affect that is, in our case, the difference in ratings between one’s own group and white Americans—and partisanship to demonstrate first that affective differentiation has increased. Further, this measure of racial affect has a growing relationship with partisanship among Black and Latine Americans such that Democratic identification is associated with higher levels of affective differentiation. Next, using panel data from the two most recent presidential elections we find that the direction of influence flows from partisanship to affective differentiation. Higher levels of attachment to the Democratic Party are associated with greater affective differentiation in which respondents rate their own group more favorably than whites. In recent elections, there has been a stark polarization among political parties regarding the utilization of explicit racial rhetoric. Members of the electorate have taken notice, leading partisans to update their racial attitudes.

This study examines the political participation of undocumented Mexican immigrants residing in the United States in Mexican external voting. As international mobility of people has increased globally, scholarly attention has grown concerning how overseas citizens engage in electoral processes in their countries of origin. However, previous studies based on traditional survey methods may have yielded biased results due to the underrepresentation of undocumented immigrants, who are less likely to enroll in survey company panels due to concerns about the potential compromise of their identities. To include this hard-to-reach population and conduct representative sampling, our research employs a method called respondent-driven sampling (RDS), which permits the surveying of a population devoid of a sampling frame. Our analysis of the Mexican case demonstrates that a lack of electoral information, lower levels of education, and heightened distrust of the Mexican government are associated with diminished electoral participation.

The insurrection and its aftermath remain salient to contemporary American Politics. Existing scholarship has shown the insurrection was fueled by an effort to return Donald Trump to power while also protesting the decline of the non-Hispanic white population. Scholars also discuss the impact of continuous division across partisan and ideological lines. We are interested in exploring if these divisions are visible across attitudes of non-Hispanic white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American/Pacific Islander respondents in a nationally representative survey. We explore the following research question. Does the impact of partisanship, ideology, and attitudes toward Trump’s responsibility affect the attitudes of respondents from various racial and ethnic groups? We use the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) to complete our analyses. We contribute to the existing literature by examining whether partisanship, ideology, and attitudes toward Trump lead to potential differences across race and ethnicity. We find that respondents across all racial and ethnic groups share similar evaluations of the insurrection, the president’s role, and the rioters, particularly when they hold identical partisan and ideological views and identify the president as the cause of the insurrection.