The Political Impacts of Address or Avoiding Issues of Race and Gender

Abstract

During the 2012 presidential campaign, both race and gender were at the center of political discourse. Progressive and mainstream media outlets as well as some African American political elites questioned the extent to which President Barack Obama was sufficiently addressing issues of race, even offering that he was intentionally avoiding such issues. There were similar media and elite claims that the Republican party’s congressional and Presidential — Mitt Romney — candidates were similarly avoiding issues of gender. Questions abound about whether the public agreed with these assertions, and more importantly whether or not such claims would actually have any substantive political implications. Using survey experimental data from the 2012 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post Election Survey (CMPS), this paper examines paper the extent to which voters’ perceptions of political targets as either address or avoiding issues of concern to their racial and gender group has any significant effect on vote choice for Obama vs. Romney or the Democrat vs. Republican Congress. The experiment randomized the political target to be President Obama or the United States Congress and we will assess these political information effects controlling for group interest (race and gender). The paper will also discuss perceived rationales for the political targets addressing or avoiding, race/gender issues, and the implications for future national elections.