Poll says racial prejudice among voters increasing

Republicans and Democrats can agree on this one: President Obama’s hope of sweeping in a new era of “post racial” politics in America has been an utter failure.

A new Associated Press poll found that racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008. Relying upon testing methods created with the help of several top universities, responses to the online poll were measured through questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, and through an experimental test that measured “implicit views” toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51% of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48% in a similar 2008 survey when Obama was vying to become America's first black president. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56%, up from 49% during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.
AP reports that most Americans express anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52% of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57% in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.


The increasing polarization in the American electorate – and, I suspect, the increasingly prevalent “makers vs. takers” attitude that was elevated by the tea party movement – also influenced the survey.
According to AP, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express racial prejudice in the questions measuring explicit racism (79% among Republicans compared with 32% among Democrats). The implicit test found little difference between the two parties, with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans holding anti-black feelings (55% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans), as did about half of political independents (49%).

The survey found that, by virtue of racial prejudice, Obama could lose 5 percentage points off his share of the popular vote in the Nov. 6 contest against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. However, Obama also stands to benefit from a 3 percentage point gain due to pro-black sentiment, researchers said. Overall, that means an estimated net loss of 2 percentage points due to anti-black attitudes.

To learn more about the methods used in the survey, click here.