Race, Republicans, and the Return of the Party of Lincoln

Appendix

Appendix This appendix provides detailed information on the multiple data sources and methodology used to obtain the ‹ndings discussed in the text. Chapter 3 To examine party images over time, I employ survey data collected over the past ‹fty years. Since 1952, the American National Election Study (ANES)1 has included open-ended questions that have solicited respondents’ perceptions of the two major parties. While the same questions have not been asked for every survey year, two comparable questions permit the examination of respondents’ images of the two major parties with respect to race over time. The ‹rst pair of questions, originally used by Matthews and Prothro (1964) and employed in subsequent studies of party image (see, e.g., Trilling 1976), asks respondents if there is anything in particular that they like/don’t like about the Democratic/Republican Party. The second question asks respondents whether they perceive any differences between the Democratic 171 1. The American National Election Study (ANES) is a series of national surveys ‹elded continuously since 1948. The ANES is designed to collect data on Americans’ social backgrounds , political predispositions, social and political attitudes, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and political participation. Carried out by the Survey Research Center (SRC) or the Center for Political Studies (CPS) of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the ANES is based on representative cross-section samples of between 1,000 and 2,000 voting-age citizens living in private households. Each study contains information from interviews conducted with 1,000–2,000 respondents interviewed before and after presidential elections and occasionally after congressional elections (ANES). and Republican Parties and, if so, what these differences are. Both questions are coded similarly, denoting when a respondent perceived either party as having a positive or negative position toward racially identi‹ed groups. By positive, I mean responses indicating that a party was problack or racially liberal. Similarly, negative responses denoted when a respondent indicated that a party was bad for blacks and other minorities or was racist. For each year, responses from the entire sample were aggregated, and the percentage of negative responses was subtracted from the percentage of positive responses to give a summary response. The frequency of these responses permits discussion of the clarity of popular perceptions of the parties’ racial symbolism. I also use responses to the following question: Some people feel that the government in Washington should make every possible effort to improve the social and economic position of blacks and other minority groups. Others feel that the government should not make any special effort to help minorities because they should help themselves. Where would you place the Democratic/ Republican Party on this scale? The scale runs from 1 to 7, where 1 is “Government should help minority groups” and 7 is “Minorities should help themselves.” This question has appeared repeatedly on the ANES since 1970. For each year, I compared the mean placement of each party on this scale for all respondents and then compared the mean placement for blacks and whites separately. I use responses to this question for a couple of reasons . First, it is the only question that asks respondents to evaluation the two parties on race in multiple years. Second, this item is not tied to any particular policy. Rather, it requires respondents to make a general assessment of the parties’ willingness to address social and economic inequalities. To examine contemporary party images, I conducted a series of focus groups and qualitative interviews. Focus groups and interviews seem particularly well suited given the task at hand. Because I am trying to allow people to de‹ne in their own words what the two major parties stand for, I need a format that facilitates unrestricted inquiry. I need to assess the full range of considerations people bring to bear when evaluating a party. Unlike survey questions, including openended questions, focus group and qualitative interview questions permit me to probe and follow up on responses to get at such issues. 172 Appendix Moreover, the incorporation of focus group data is essential because it facilitates the interaction among participants and encourages them to challenge and probe each other’s ideas and responses. Naturally, while the qualitative portion of this study cannot match the polling data in sample size (thereby sacri‹cing the ability to generalize), the depth of qualitative research allows a...