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AbstractThis study evaluates the emergence and persistence of the racial divide on health reform in public opinion using survey data from 2008 through 2017. The findings support existing work showing a consistent relationship between racial resentment and attitudes on the Affordable Care Act among White adults. However, the study also builds on existing work by evaluating the relationship between strength of racial identity among Black adults and health care opinion during President Barack Obama's Administration. The paper investigates the implications of the findings for future health policy in the post-Obama era using survey data on the Republicans' attempt to pass the American Health Care Act in 2017. The results underscore the conditions that make the "spillover" of racial attitudes into seemingly non-racial policy areas more or less likely to occur. The findings also provide suggestive evidence for how future health reforms may receive different levels of support from both White and Black adults.

This study assesses how social category labels influence public opinion toward gay and lesbian attitude objects. The results provide some support for the existence of person-positivity bias whereby people express more positive attitudes toward attitude objects that are personalized. In a survey experiment, respondents rated attitude objects where the question wording was manipulated to include either person descriptors or sexuality construct descriptors and either colloquial or clinical terminology. In particular, the findings show that respondents express significantly colder feeling thermometer scores toward the clinical construct "homosexuality" than the person descriptor "gays and lesbians." The results suggest, first, that survey researchers should be mindful of these terminology effects in question wording, and that the strategic choice of using more or less personalized terminology in elite rhetoric has the potential to marginally influence public opinion. However, the effects of terminology should not be overstated. The effects of using person descriptors or sexuality construct descriptors are not significant in all cases and are generally smaller than differences in attitudes between respondents of different social and political backgrounds.

Most online media consumption is not driven by a desire to seek out news and politics. However, the public may still encounter politics because it arises organically in communities devoted to non-political subjects. This study examines the potential of popular reality television online discussion forums to serve as online third spaces and stimulate political discussion due to the natural connections that audiences make between the cast members and "real life" in reality-based programming. Based on a quantitative analysis of political comments made to reality television subreddits and a survey of visitors to a popular subreddit focused on The Bachelor television show, the findings not only demonstrate the ability of entertainment-focused online communities to expose a broad segment of the public to political talk, but also point to the obstacles in promoting political discussion that is simultaneously enjoyable, informative, and tolerant of diverse viewpoints.

In June 2020, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the deployment of federal law enforcement agents to protests against police brutality. Several mayors across the country objected to this unilateral deployment of federal force as unconstitutional. In an online survey experiment, we test whether the public stands against this type of federal power aggrandizement by evaluating how approval of federal intervention in protests changes depending on whether it is requested by local mayors or directed by the presidential administration. The results show that the public is responsive to the level of government directing the action. Respondents are significantly less approving of the use of federal forces when it is directed by the federal executive branch. However, not all subgroups respond equally to the manipulation. The treatment effects vary significantly by respondent partisanship, trust in government, and perceptions of the importance of federalism.