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Although dramatic partisan change among the electorate is infrequent, the issue agendas of parties may produce large shifts. A major cause of such change is the politics of race. In a political environment charged with racially oriented issues, racial groups often align themselves with different parties (as witnessed most recently in the American South). Yet, if racial appeals violate norms of equality, these appeals may rebound on the party using them. Consequently, members of the (white) racial majority and racially targeted minority may both move away from the offending party. Using data from the California Field Poll, we find that racially charged ballot propositions sponsored by the Republican party during the 1990s in California reversed the trend among Latinos and Anglos toward identifying as Republican, ceteris paribus, by shifting party attachments toward the Democratic party. Our results raise serious questions about the long‐term efficacy of racially divisive strategies for electoral gain.

Contends that California's Latino voters had a major impact on the 2000 elections in at least three striking ways. First, the swift & significant mobilization of California's Latino voters has effectively secured the state for the Democrats for the foreseeable future. Second, Latinos were a key factor in the Democrats' resumption of control of the state house of representatives. Last, the Democratic gains in 2000 produced an overwhelming advantage for the party in both branches of the state legislature & a notable increase in Latino legislators, offering unique opportunities for party & Latino influence in California's legislation, particularly that which pertains to redistricting. Tables, Figures. K. Coddon

We inquire whether residence in majority–minority districts raises or lowers turnout among Latinos. We argue that the logic suggesting that majority–minority districts suppress turnout is flawed and hypothesize that the net effect is empowering. Further, we suggest that residing in multiple overlapping majority–minority districts—for state assemblies, senates, and the U.S. House—further enhances turnout. We test our hypotheses using individual-level turnout data for voters in five Southern California counties. Examining three general elections from 1996 to 2000, we demonstrate that residing in a majority-Latino district ultimately has a positive effect on the propensity of Latino voters to turn out, an effect that increases with the number of Latino districts in which the voter resides and is consistent across the individual offices in which a voter might be descriptively represented. In contrast, the probability that non-Hispanic voters turn out decreases as they are subject to increasing layers of majority-Latino districting.

Inquiries into the domestic determinants of international behavior, including democratic peace arguments, build on the pioneering work of Mueller by presupposing that individuals in a democracy are extremely sensitive to casualties. The authors hypothesize that this relationship is, in part, dependent on the rate at which casualties accumulate and the local variation in these costs. Employing, for the first time, spatially disaggregated "killed in action" data, the authors offer a multivariate logit model of individual opinion on the administration's policies in Vietnam as a function of both local- and national-level casualties. The authors find that recent county-level losses and partisanship are important predictors of individual opinion on the president's policies early in the war as marginal casualties increased but are less helpful in understanding opinion in the war's later years when marginal casualties declined. Conversely, a number of individual-level variables that had minimal explanatory power at the beginning of the conflict become more important.

While evidence from California suggests that group threat mobilizes Latinos, nationally, there has never been a test case for this theory. In 2016, the Trump campaign provided a clear case of group threat through his divisive rhetoric and policy proposals targeting Mexican Americans and immigrants. Using the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) data, we find evidence that Latino voters were politically motivated by Trump's anti-Latino rhetoric. We hypothesize that Latino voters who perceive Latinos as a racialized group and feel a sense of immigrant-linked fate are more likely to hold negative views toward the Republican candidate, and feel angry during the 2016 election. We further find that Latino voters who were angry were more likely to engage in political activities such as donating to campaigns, contacting government officials, and protesting during and shortly after the 2016 election. The findings hold for U.S. born Latinos as well as among non-Mexican Latinos who felt similarly targeted by Trump's rhetoric and proposals.