Reddit reviews Post-Racial or Most-Racial?: Race and Politics in the Obama Era (Chicago Studies in American Politics)

How is surveying people who identity with the Republican Party not credible?

" New analysis by PRRI and The Atlantic, based on surveys conducted before and after the 2016 election, developed a model to test a variety of potential factors influencing support for Trump among white working-class voters. The model identifies five significant independent predictors of support for Trump among white working-class voters. No other factors were significant at conventional levels.

If you don't like that study, here's several more.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT RACISM AND SEXISM WERE KEY TO TRUMP'S VICTORY

Economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment. Racial resentment is driving economic anxiety.

The comparison between 2004 and 2012 is especially informative. Both George W. Bush and Obama saw the unemployment rate rise by about two percentage points at various times during their first terms in office; both presidents then presided over drops in the unemployment rate during the year leading up to their reelections (about half a point for Bush and one point for Obama).

Graph Analysis limited to whites only. Predicted values calculated by setting party identification and ideological self-placement to the average white respondent. (Graphic by Michael Tesler)

This suggests that the national economy’s association with Obama has made racial resentment a stronger determinant of gloomy economic perceptions than it was before his presidency. However, comparisons between 2012 and earlier years cannot conclusively resolve the chicken or egg question.

To do so, it’s important to have surveys of the exact same individuals before and after Obama became president. The 2007-2008-2012 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project can do this by testing whether racial attitudes — measured before Obama became president — increasingly shaped economic perceptions during his presidency.

The results below show that this is precisely what happened.  Racial resentment was not related to whites’ perceptions of the economy in December 2007 after accounting for partisanship and ideology. When these same people were re-interviewed in July 2012, racial resentment was a powerful predictor of economic perceptions. Again, the greater someone’s level of racial resentment, the worse they believed the economy was doing.

Graph Analysis limited to white panelists interviewed in both the December 2007 and July 2012 wave of the CCAP Re-Interviews. Predicted values calculated by setting party identification and ideological self-placement to the average white respondent. (Graphic by Michael Tesler)

Furthermore, additional analyses indicate that economic perceptions, whether measured in 2008 or even in 2012, did not cause people to change their underlying levels of racial resentment.

In fact, multiple studies, using several different surveys, have shown that overall levels of racial resentment were virtually unchanged by the economic crash of 2008. Some data even suggests that racial prejudice slightly declined during the height of economic collapse in the fall of 2008. The evidence is pretty clear, then, that economic concerns are not driving racial resentment in the Obama Era.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that economic anxiety has no influence on support for Trump. John Sides and I presented some preliminary evidence that economic insecurity was a factor in Trump’s rise.

Nor does it mean that racial resentment is the prime determinant of economic anxiety. It isn’t.

Nevertheless, in an era where racial attitudes have become increasingly associated with so many of the president’s positions, Obama’s race is largely responsible for the association between racial resentment and economic anxiety. And this racialized political environment undoubtedly aided Donald Trump’s rise to the top of the Republican Party.