TY - JOUR
T1 - Fired Up, Ready to Go
T2 - The Impact of Age, Campaign Enthusiasm, and Civic Duty on African American Voting
AU - Collins, Jonathan
AU - Block, Ray
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Matt Barreto, Horace Bartilow, Travis McClerking, the members of the Gender and Political Psychology Writing Group, Christina Haynes, Harwood McClerking, Francisco Pedraza, Mark Peffley, Melynda Price, Richard Waterman, and Justin Wedeking for their feedback and encouragement. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the summer of 2017 at the Mini-Conference on Race and Ethnic Politics and the 2016 Presidential Election that was hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles. Our paper is much stronger because of the assistance we received from colleagues, and any mistakes that remain are our fault alone.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2020/3/1
Y1 - 2020/3/1
N2 - Does the decision to vote signify that African Americans are “fired up” (i.e., that they are excited about the election), or is it a function of Blacks’ long-term commitment to activism (i.e., that their sense of social responsibility keeps them “ready to go” to the polls)? We argue that campaign enthusiasm and civic duty can work together, exerting an interactive influence in some contexts, and moving independently in others. Using survey data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we discover that both enthusiasm or civic duty matter in the sense that high levels of civic duty can substitute for a lack of enthusiasm, and that high levels of enthusiasm can substitute for the lack of a sense of civic duty. This pattern of enthusiasm and civic duty being “mutually-attenuating” conditions of Black turnout is clearest in 2016: the stronger the effect of one variable, the weaker the impact of the other, and this conditional effect is exists regardless of age. Our findings join the ongoing and spirited conversation about racial politics in the United States, and they contribute to the study of campaign enthusiasm and civic duty, two of the strongest and most reliable motivators of political behavior.
AB - Does the decision to vote signify that African Americans are “fired up” (i.e., that they are excited about the election), or is it a function of Blacks’ long-term commitment to activism (i.e., that their sense of social responsibility keeps them “ready to go” to the polls)? We argue that campaign enthusiasm and civic duty can work together, exerting an interactive influence in some contexts, and moving independently in others. Using survey data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we discover that both enthusiasm or civic duty matter in the sense that high levels of civic duty can substitute for a lack of enthusiasm, and that high levels of enthusiasm can substitute for the lack of a sense of civic duty. This pattern of enthusiasm and civic duty being “mutually-attenuating” conditions of Black turnout is clearest in 2016: the stronger the effect of one variable, the weaker the impact of the other, and this conditional effect is exists regardless of age. Our findings join the ongoing and spirited conversation about racial politics in the United States, and they contribute to the study of campaign enthusiasm and civic duty, two of the strongest and most reliable motivators of political behavior.
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U2 - 10.1007/s11109-018-9488-y
DO - 10.1007/s11109-018-9488-y
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051656887
SN - 0190-9320
VL - 42
SP - 107
EP - 142
JO - Political Behavior
JF - Political Behavior
IS - 1
ER -