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Racism, Sexism, and Candidate Evaluations in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
Author(s) -
Dwyer Caitlin E.,
Stevens Daniel,
Sullivan John L.,
Allen Barbara
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2009.01187.x
Subject(s) - racism , presidential election , affect (linguistics) , presidential system , social psychology , psychology , identification (biology) , national election , political science , sociology , gender studies , law , politics , botany , communication , biology
In an attempt to understand the extent to which racism and sexism influenced affect toward Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, we analyze data from a national survey conducted in October 2008. Situating our investigation in previous examinations of modern racism and modern sexism, we test competing hypotheses about the role of these attitudes in the 2008 presidential election. Our results suggest that racism had a significant impact on candidate evaluations while sexism did not. We find that respondents who hold racist attitudes expressed negative attitudes toward Obama and positive attitudes toward Palin. When interacted with party identification, racism continued to exert a strong effect, indicating findings that are robust across partisan affiliations. Sexism, on the other hand, did not significantly influence evaluations of either Palin or Obama .