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Black Conservative/White Conservative: Prospects for Electoral Convergence
Author(s) -
Pride Richard A.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.259
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 1555-5623
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2001.tb00613.x
Subject(s) - conservatism , governor , white (mutation) , salience (neuroscience) , middle class , politics , political science , government (linguistics) , voting , political economy , sociology , law , psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , linguistics , philosophy , gene , cognitive psychology , thermodynamics
The recent rise of a prosperous Black middle class on the one hand and the continued salience of religious conservatism among many Black citizens on the other means that significant percentages of African Americans share both interests and values with White conservatives who vote Republican. In this study, using a decade's worth of survey data from Nashville, Tennessee, African Americans are found to have given only about ten percent of their votes to Republican candidates for president and governor. Those African Americans who did vote Republican were moved to do so by political values: they believed that individuals, not the government, should be responsible for solving social problems. Neither upper‐middle‐class standing nor religious conservatism, both prominent features of Southern Republicanism, moved Blacks to vote Republican.