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In-Group Love and Out-Group Hate: White Racial Attitudes in Contemporary U.S. Elections

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Ashley Jardina
Ashley Jardina
Ashley Jardina
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Over the past two decades, political scientists have demonstrated that racial animus among white Americans is increasingly associated with evaluations of presidential candidates. Like most work on white racial attitudes, these efforts have focused almost exclusively on the out-group attitudes whites possess toward racial and ethnic minorities. Work in social psychology, however, suggests that intergroup attitudes are usually comprised of both an out-group and an in-group component. Nevertheless, political scientists have tended to overlook or dismiss the possibility that whites’ in-group attitudes are associated with political evaluations. Changing demographic patterns, immigration, the historic election of Obama, and new candidate efforts to appeal to whites as a collective group suggest a need to reconsider the full nature and consequences of the racial attitudes that may influence whites’ electoral preferences. This study, therefore, examines the extent to which both white out-group racial resentment and white in-group racial identity matter in contemporary electoral politics. Comparing the factors associated with vote choice in 2012 and 2016, and candidate evaluations in 2018, this study finds that both attitudes were powerfully associated with candidate evaluations in 2012 and early 2016, although white out-group attitudes overshadowed the electoral impact of in-group racial attitudes by the 2016 general election. The results suggest that there are now two independent racial attitudes tied to whites’ political preferences in the contemporary U.S., and understanding the dynamics of white racial animus and white racial identity across electoral contexts continues to be an important avenue for future work.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Political Behavior (2021) 43:1535–1559
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-020-09600-x
1 3
ORIGINAL PAPER
In‑Group Love andOut‑Group Hate: White Racial Attitudes
inContemporary U.S. Elections
AshleyJardina1
Published online: 3 March 2020
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Over the past two decades, political scientists have demonstrated that racial ani-
mus among white Americans is increasingly associated with evaluations of presi-
dential candidates. Like most work on white racial attitudes, these efforts have
focused almost exclusively on the out-group attitudes whites possess toward racial
and ethnic minorities. Work in social psychology, however, suggests that intergroup
attitudes are usually comprised of both an out-group and an in-group component.
Nevertheless, political scientists have tended to overlook or dismiss the possibility
that whites’ in-group attitudes are associated with political evaluations. Changing
demographic patterns, immigration, the historic election of Obama, and new can-
didate efforts to appeal to whites as a collective group suggest a need to recon-
sider the full nature and consequences of the racial attitudes that may influence
whites’ electoral preferences. This study, therefore, examines the extent to which
both white out-group racial resentment and white in-group racial identity matter in
contemporary electoral politics. Comparing the factors associated with vote choice
in 2012 and 2016, and candidate evaluations in 2018, this study finds that both
attitudes were powerfully associated with candidate evaluations in 2012 and early
2016, although white out-group attitudes overshadowed the electoral impact of in-
group racial attitudes by the 2016 general election. The results suggest that there
are now two independent racial attitudes tied to whites’ political preferences in the
contemporary U.S., and understanding the dynamics of white racial animus and
white racial identity across electoral contexts continues to be an important avenue
for future work.
Keywords Intergroup dynamics· Racial resentment· White racial identity· U.S.
electoral politics
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1110
9-020-09600 -x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Ashley Jardina
ashley.jardina@duke.edu
1 Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... Here I build on this work by considering how White identity, defined as "a sentiment capturing a desire to protect the in-group and its collective interests" (Jardina, 2021(Jardina, , 1540, shapes American public opinion toward immigration. While existing work demonstrates a robust link between White identity and general support for immigration (Jardina, 2019, Chapter 6), we know little about whether this relationship varies based upon the immigrant group under consideration. ...
... My main independent variable of interest is White racial identity; this is measured in the 2017 wave of the VSG panel study. As previously mentioned, White identity is defined as "a sentiment capturing a desire to protect the in-group and its collective interests" (Jardina, 2021(Jardina, , 1540. 9 This was measured in the VSG survey via the following question (the text inside the square brackets is what varies, depending on a respondent's self-identified race) how important is being [race of the respondent] to your identity?. ...
... An alternative measure focuses on the concept of White racial consciousness. This refers to "both a psychological attachment to one's group coupled with the belief that Whites are losing out relative to racial and ethnic minorities" (Jardina, 2021(Jardina, , 1555. Unfortunately, the VSG does not have the necessary questions to construct such a scale (e.g., Jardina, 2019, Chapter 3). ...
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