Southern Politics in State and Nation Revisited: The Hunt for Racial Threat in the Age of Obama
Posted: 4 Oct 2011
Date Written: October 3, 2011
Abstract
Does the relative size of the black population residing in a county influence white political behavior? Are southern white democrats more or less likely to vote for a black candidate in democratic primaries when there is a head to head match up between both a liberal African-American candidate and a White candidate? Adding to the extant literature concerning the racial threat hypothesis, I examine the relationship between white support for African-American candidates and the relative size of the African-American population residing in a county in three distinct state wide Democratic Primaries in Mississippi and Alabama. Using Gary King’s (1997) ecological inference (EI) methodology to obtain estimates of white support for the black candidates, this study hypothesize that an increase in the relative size of the African-American population residing in a county will lead to a decrease in white support for black candidates. The estimates obtained using Gary King’s (1997) Ecological Inference will be used to construct an Ordinary Least Squares regression model.
Keywords: racial threat, Ecological Inference
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