Does racism affect how you vote Nate Silver

[Music]

I want to talk about the election for

the first time the United States a

predominantly white group of voters

voted for an african-american candidate

for president and in fact brock obama

did quite well he went 375 electoral

votes and he won about 70 million

popular votes more than any other

presidential candidate of any race of

any party in history if you compare how

Obama did against how John Kerry had

done four years earlier Democrats really

liked seeing this transition here where

almost every state becomes bluer becomes

more democratic even states upon the

loss like out west those states became

more blue in the South in the Northeast

almost everywhere but with a couple of

exceptions here and there one exception

is in Massachusetts that was John

Kerry’s home state no big surprise mama

couldn’t do better than Kerry there or

in Arizona which is John McCain’s home

Obama didn’t have much improvement but

there’s also this part of the country

kind of in the middle region here this

kind of Arkansas Tennessee Oklahoma West

Virginia region now if you look at 96

Bill Clinton the last Democrat to

actually win how he did in 96 you see

real big differences in this part of the

country right here the kind of

Appalachians Ozarks Highlands region as

I call it 20 or 30 points swings from

how Bill Clinton did in 96 to how Obama

did in 2008 yes Bill Clinton was from

Arkansas these are very very profound

differences so when we think about parts

of the country like Arkansas you know

and there’s a book written called what’s

the matter with Kansas but really the

question here Obama did relatively well

in Kansas he lost badly but every

Democrat does he lost no worse and most

people do

but yeah what’s the matter with Arkansas

and when we think of Arkansas we tend to

have pretty negative connotations we

think of a bunch of rednecks

quote/unquote with guns and we think

people like this probably don’t want to

vote first people who look like this and

are named Barack Obama we think it’s a

matter of race and is this fair are we

kind of stigmatizing people from

Arkansas in this part of the country and

the answer is it is at least partially

fair and we know that race was a factor

and the reason why we know that is

because we asked those people

I’m rectally we didn’t ask him but when

they conducted exit polls in every state

and 37 states out of the

they ask the question that was pretty

direct about race they asked this

question in deciding your vote for

president today was the race of the

candidate a factor we’re looking people

that said yes race was a factor moreover

it was an important factor in my

decision and people who voted for John

McCain as a result of that factor maybe

in combination with other factors maybe

alone and we’re looking for this

behavior among white voters are really

non black voters so you see big

differences in different parts of the

country on this question in Louisiana

about one in five white voters said yes

one of the big reasons why I vote

against Barack Obama is because he was

an African American if those people had

voted for Obama even half of them Obama

would have won Louisiana safely same is

true with I think all of these states

you see on the top of the list meanwhile

California New York we can say oh we’re

enlightened but you know certainly much

lower incidence of this admitted I

suppose manifestation of racially based

voting here’s the same data on a map and

you kind of see the relationship between

the redder states and where more people

responded and said yes Barack Obama’s

race was a problem for me and you see

comparing the map to 96 you see an

overlap here this really seems to

explain why Barack Obama did worse in

this one part of the country so we have

to ask why is racism predictable in some

way is there something driving this is

it just about some weird stuff that goes

on in Arkansas that we don’t understand

in Kentucky or are there more systemic

factors at work and so we can look at a

bunch of different variables these are

the things that economists and political

scientists look at all the time things

like income and religion education which

of these seem to drive this

manifestation of racism in this big

natural experiment we had on November

4th and there are a couple of these that

that have strong predictive

relationships one of which is education

where you see the states with the fewest

years of schooling per adult are in red

and you see this part of the country the

kind of Appalachians region is less

educated it’s just a fact and you see

the relationship there with the racially

based voting patterns the other variable

that’s important is the type of

neighborhood that you live in states

that are more rural even to some extent

states like New

charmagne they exhibited a little bit of

this kind of racially based voting

against Barack Obama so it’s the

combination of these two things it’s

education and the type of neighbors that

you have to talk about more in a moment

and the thing about states like Arkansas

and Tennessee is that they’re both very

rural and they’re educationally

impoverished

so yes racism is predictable these

things among maybe other variables but

these things seem to predict it we’re

going to like drill down a little bit

more now into something called the

General Social Survey this is conducted

by the University of Chicago every other

year and they ask a series of really

interesting questions in 2000 they had

particularly interesting questions about

racial attitudes and one simple question

they asked is does any one of the

opposite race live in your neighborhood

and we can see in different types of

communities that the results are quite

different in cities about 80 percent of

people have someone whom they consider a

neighbor of another race but in rural

communities only about 30 percent

probably because if you live on a farm

you might not have a lot of neighbors

period but nevertheless you’re not

having a lot of interaction with people

who are unlike you so what we’re going

to do now is take the white people in

the survey and split them between those

who have black neighbors a really some

neighbor of another race people who have

only white neighbors and we see in some

variables in terms of political

attitudes not a lot of difference this

was eight years ago people were more

Republican back then but you see

Democrats first Republican not a big

difference based on who your neighbors

are and even some questions about race

for example affirmative action which is

kind of a political question a policy

question about race if you will not much

difference here furtive actions not very

popular frankly with white voters period

but people with black neighbors and

people in mana racial neighborhoods feel

no differently about it really but if

you Probab it deeper and get a bit more

kind of personal if you will do you

favor a law banning interracial marriage

there’s a big difference people who

don’t have neighbors of a different race

or about twice as likely to oppose

interracial marriage as people who do

just based on who lives in your

immediate neighborhood around you and

likewise they ask 9 mm but in the same

survey 1996 would you not vote for a

qualified black president and you see

people without neighbors who are

african-american were

much more likely to say that would give

me a problem so it’s really not even

about urban versus rural it’s about kind

of who you live with and racism is

predictable it’s predicted by an

interaction or lack thereof with people

unlike you people of other races so if

we want to address that the goal is to

facilitate interaction with people of

other races and I have a couple of very

obvious I suppose ideas for maybe how to

do that I’m a big fan of cities

especially if we have cities that are

diverse and sustainable and can support

people of different ethnicities and

different income groups I think cities

facilitate more of the kind of

networking and kind of casual

interaction that you might have on a

daily basis but also not everyone wants

to live in a city certainly not a city

like New York so we can think more about

things like straight grids this is the

neighborhood where I grew up in East

Lansing Michigan

it’s a traditional Midwestern community

which means you have a real grid you

have real neighborhoods and real trees

and real streets you can walk on and you

interact a lot with your neighbors

people you like people you might not

know and as a result a very tolerant

community which is different I think

than something like this which is in

Schaumburg Illinois where kind of every

little set of house has their own

cul-de-sac and kind of drive through

Starbucks and stuff like that I think

that actually this type of urban design

which became more prevalent in the 1970s

and 1980s I think there’s a relationship

between that and the country becoming

more conservative under Ronald Reagan

but also here’s another idea we have is

an intercollegiate exchange program

where you have students going from New

York abroad but frankly there are enough

differences within the country now or

maybe you can take a bunch of kids from

my you have them go study for a semester

the University of Arkansas and vice

versa are do we have the high school

level literally there are people who

might be in school in Arkansas or

Tennessee it might never interact in a

positive affirmative way with someone

from another part of the country or of

another racial group and I think part of

the education vary but we talked about

before is the networking experience you

get when you go to college where you do

kind of get a mix of people that you

might not interact with otherwise but

the point is this is all good news

because when something is predictable

it’s what I call design a book we can

start thinking about solutions to

solving that problem even a problem is

pernicious and as intractable as racism

if we understand the root causes of the

behavior and where manifests itself and

where it doesn’t we can start to design

solutions to

so that’s all I have to say thank you

very much