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