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ObjectiveIs the opinion of white Americans regarding the continued use of the Washington Redskins' team name influenced by their exposure to elite rhetoric that supports a team name change and views the team's name as offensive?MethodsIn order to explore the potential for elite opinion leadership on white opinion, this article employs a survey experiment embedded in the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study in which respondents were randomly exposed to a message attributed to either Senator Harry Reid (a Democrat), Senator John McCain (a Republican), or NBC Sports broadcaster Bob Costas that details their opposition to the team's name.ResultsTesting hypotheses derived from the scholarship on elite opinion theory, this article finds that exposure only to a message from Costas on this issue leads respondents to more strongly support a team name change and to more clearly view the term "Redskins" as offensive. Our results (1) further the scholarship on public opinion concerning Native American mascots, (2) suggest the conditions under which the barriers to change in sporting institutions may continue to evolve, and (3) speak to the limits of political elite influence.

In The Race Card (2001), Tali Mendelberg claims that once the racial content of an implicit racial appeal has been exposed the appeal loses its ability to mobilize voters. In this paper, we investigate this claim by employing a survey experiment embedded in Amazon's Mechanical Turk in which respondents view Mitt Romney's "Right Choice" television ad on welfare and then read a short op-ed. The op-ed, written by a fictitious member of Congress whose partisanship was systematically varied, argues that the Romney ad (1) is racist or (2) has no racial undertones. In line with Mendelberg's predictions, we find that – regardless of the partisanship of the elite in question – exposure to an op-ed that denounces the Romney welfare advertisement as racist leads white Democrats and Republicans to more strongly perceive the advertisement as racist and express greater opposition to Romney's campaign. Our findings contribute to the literatures on racial priming and partisan motivated reasoning, and also make a strong case for further evaluating the influence of political leadership on racial attitudes.

AbstractConventional theories of presidential representation suggest that presidents avoid courting African Americans for fear of alienating white voters, leading to the underrepresentation of "black interests." We argue that presidential representation of black interests is conditional: when (1) African Americans prioritize issues other than economic redistribution and civil rights and (2) when these priorities overlap with those of whites, presidents should provide considerable representation of those interests. We test our theory using two new sources of data: a dataset of black and white perceptions of the US's most important problem between 1968 and 2012; and a quantitative content analysis of over 200 major presidential speeches from 1969-2012. We find that presidents provide substantial representation of black interests, but only when these interests center on non-racialized concerns and overlap with the priorities of whites. We also find that presidential priorities are often independent of the chief concerns of both African Americans and whites.

Despite its widespread use in studies of race and ethnic politics, there exists a long-standing debate about whether racial resentment primarily measures antiblack prejudice or ideological conservatism. In this paper, we attempt to resolve this debate by examining racial resentment's role in shaping white opinion on a "racialized" policy issue that involves no federal action and no government redistribution of resources: "pay for play" in college athletics. Using cross-sectional and experimental data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and Amazon's Mechanical Turk, we find evidence not only that racial resentment items tap racial predispositions but also that whites rely on these predispositions when forming and expressing their views on paying college athletes. More specifically, we demonstrate that racially resentful whites who were subtly primed to think about African Americans are more likely to express opposition to paying college athletes when compared with similarly resentful whites who were primed to think about whites. Because free-market conservatism, resistance to changes in the status quo, opposition to expanding federal power, and reluctance to endorse government redistributive policies cannot possibly explain these results, we conclude that racial resentment is a valid measure of antiblack prejudice.

Despite its widespread use in studies of race and ethnic politics, there exists a long-standing debate about whether racial resentment primarily measures antiblack prejudice or ideological conservatism. In this paper, we attempt to resolve this debate by examining racial resentment's role in shaping white opinion on a "racialized" policy issue that involves no federal action and no government redistribution of resources: "pay for play" in college athletics. Using cross-sectional and experimental data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and Amazon's Mechanical Turk, we find evidence not only that racial resentment items tap racial predispositions but also that whites rely on these predispositions when forming and expressing their views on paying college athletes. More specifically, we demonstrate that racially resentful whites who were subtly primed to think about African Americans are more likely to express opposition to paying college athletes when compared with similarly resentful whites who were primed to think about whites. Because free-market conservatism, resistance to changes in the status quo, opposition to expanding federal power, and reluctance to endorse government redistributive policies cannot possibly explain these results, we conclude that racial resentment is a valid measure of antiblack prejudice.

Does the presence of a Latino congressional candidate increase Latino turnout? An ongoing debate exists regarding the mobilizing effect of Latino candidates on Latino turnout. However, scholars on both sides of this divide have, as of yet, failed to detect the critical role that a Latino candidate's partisanship may have on Latino turnout. Using national turnout data and leveraging the exogenous shock of redistricting between 2010 and 2012, we find evidence that while the presence of a Latino congressional candidate increases turnout among Latino co-partisans, the presence of Latino congressional candidates who do not share the partisan identity of Latino voters depresses turnout. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of the reinforcing power of shared partisan and pan-ethnic identities in empowering Latinos to vote.

In recent years, a number of prominent elected officials on both sides of the partisan divide have weighed in on the possibility of making Washington, D.C., the nation's fifty-first state. While Democratic supporters of statehood for D.C. emphasize issues of equal representation, some Republican opponents have stressed the partisan and ideological consequences of D.C. statehood. Other Republican opponents, in justifying their position, have made the claim that Washington, D.C., lacks the necessary and sufficient characteristics associated with statehood, and these claims have been widely interpreted as implicitly racist appeals. In this paper, using three nationally representative surveys, we explore whether mass opinion on this issue is primarily shaped by partisanship, ideology, racial status threat, or racial prejudice. We find clear and consistent evidence that while partisan and ideological attachments, as well as perceptions of racial status threat, influence opinion on statehood for Washington, D.C., the strongest determinant of opposition to statehood are negative racial attitudes. We take these results as further evidence of the debate over D.C. statehood, like debates over public policies that are purported to benefit African Americans, is intimately intertwined with negative racial views expressed by the mass public.