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Using data from the 2011 Multi-State Survey on Race and Politics (Parker 2011), I ask if African American1opinion toward undocumented immigration mirrors African American opinion toward immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I find evidence that contemporary African American opinion does reflect the manner in which a previous generation of African Americans reacted to immigrant newcomers. More specifically, I find that factors associated with past reactions to new immigration, most notably political and economic competition, egalitarianism, the belief that new immigrants are distancing themselves from African Americans, and the belief that restrictive immigration policies were fueled by racism, continue to predict contemporary African American opinion on undocumented immigration. Taken together, I take my findings as evidence that the past may be prologue in accounting for black opinion toward the newest wave of immigration.

Recently, a number of prominent Republican elites have argued that the economic plight of African Americans is attributable to undocumented immigration to the United States. Have these arguments concerning the link between black economic well-being and undocumented immigration become commonplace in the rhetoric of Republican elites, and if so, does exposure to these appeals impact black vote choice? Employing data from over forty years of congressional speeches, the campaign speeches and public addresses of President Donald Trump, televised campaign advertisements from the Wisconsin/Wesleyan Advertising Projects, and a survey experiment embedded in the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that Republican elected officials have increasingly made substantive appeals to blacks on the issue of immigration reform, that exposure to this type of substantive appeal leads blacks to more strongly support a fictional Republican candidate, and that this support is moderated by a respondent's level of linked fate. These findings challenge existing scholarship that Republican elites ignore the concerns of the black community and suggest that Republicans may be using the issue of immigration to drive a wedge in the Democratic electoral coalition by targeting the Democratic Party's strongest constituency.

AbstractRecently, a number of influential clergy leaders have declared their support for liberal immigration reforms. Do the pronouncements of religious leaders influence public opinion on immigration? Using data from a survey experiment embedded in the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that exposure to the arguments from high profile religious leaders can compel some individuals to reconsider their views on the immigration. To be more precise, we find that Methodists, Southern Baptists, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America leaders successfully persuaded respondents who identify with these religious denominations to think differently about a path to citizenship and about the plight of undocumented immigrants. Interestingly, we also uncovered that religiosity matters in different ways for how parishioners from different religious faiths react to messages from their leaders. These findings force us to reconsider the impact that an increasingly strident clergy may be having on public opinion in general and on support for immigration reform in particular.

AbstractDoes elite rhetoric influence how Latinos view their relationship with African Americans? In this paper, we provide a systematic empirical assessment of the impact that elite messages have on Latino perceptions of economic and political commonality by drawing on two unique data sources: the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS) and a survey experiment embedded in the September 2010 Latino Decisions Tracking Poll (LDS). Our analysis reveals that the attitudinal effects of exposure to elite messages are strongly conditioned by one's political partisanship. To be more precise, we find that although exposure to elite messages leads Democrats to express more in common politically with African Americans, it fails to exert any significant influence among other groups and on different dependent variables. Specifically, the evidence presented here shows that reception of persuasive messages from like-minded political leaders contributes nothing to our understanding of how attitudes on economic commonality are formed and very little to our understanding of the source from which perceptions of political commonality arise among Republicans and Independents. In addition to making significant contributions to the literatures on commonality, multiracial coalitions and public opinion, these findings also make a strong case for further evaluating the role of political leadership in forging bonds of cooperation across racial lines.

Abstract
Since the violent January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, federal authorities have sought to hold participants and organizers accountable for their assault on American democracy. Troublingly, however, a substantial fraction of the public opposes the prosecution of participants in the assault on the Capitol and rejects charging former president Trump with crimes relating to the planning and execution of the attack. Why does a substantial fraction of the American public oppose accountability for perpetrators of the January 6 attack? In this article, we argue that racial attitudes play a central role in determining individuals' attitudes toward accountability for the Capitol attack. Elaborating on the theory of "racial spillover," we argue that former president Trump's frequent use of racial rhetoric—which established a racialized identity and cemented a close relationship between negative racial attitudes and support for his presidency among members of the mass public—created conditions in which these attitudes were likely to "spill over" into the ostensibly non-racialized domain of attitudes toward holding perpetrators, planners, and inciters accountable for the attack. Because attitudes toward accountability for the Capitol attack are inextricable from Trump's racialized persona, we hypothesize that negative racial attitudes should be associated with increased opposition to accountability for those responsible for the attack. Using data from four original, nationally representative surveys fielded between 2021 and 2023, we find strong evidence for our racial spillover hypothesis and show that individuals with more negative racial attitudes are more opposed to accountability for those responsible for the Capitol attack.

Surveys show that Latinos more strongly identify with their ethnic identities (i.e. national origin) than their pan-ethnic identity as "Latino/Hispanic." Given the primacy of ethnic identity among Latinos, what impact does shared ethnic versus pan-ethnic identity between candidates and voters have on Latino vote choice? Studies suggest that an "identity-to-politics link" exists among Latinos; however, we believe the measurement of "co-ethnicity" should be reexamined. Using a survey experiment embedded in a module of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we randomize the ethnic, pan-ethnic, and partisan identification of a fictional male congressional candidate in a contest against a white non-Hispanic candidate to examine the role of shared ethnic identity on Latino vote choice. We find that Latinos, regardless of candidate partisanship, more strongly support co-ethnic candidates relative to candidates with whom they share a pan-ethnic identity. We also find that Latinos are significantly more supportive of a cross-ethnic Latino candidate compared to a pan-ethnic Latino candidate; and that Latinos are more likely to cross partisan lines to support a co-ethnic candidate. These results not only suggest that there exists a Latino "identity to politics" link, but that the extant scholarship has underestimated the size and scope of this electoral connection.

Scholarship on racial attitudes has found that white veterans of World War II and the Korean War had more positive views of blacks than white civilians. However, more recent studies have argued that white veterans who have served in an all-volunteer force (AVF) now express more virulent views of blacks. Using data from the 2010–2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we explore whether military service continues to predict positive racial attitudes. We find that white veterans express more negative views of blacks relative to white civilians and that white veterans in the AVF generation exhibit the most negative views of blacks. Taken together, we believe that our results suggest a reassessment of the role of contemporary military experiences in liberalizing white racial attitudes and offer support for the self-selection perspective.

The election of PresidentBarackObama offers a unique opportunity to test the impressionable‐years hypothesis—the theory of political socialization that predicts that widely experienced political events can have a lasting impact on the political attitudes of individuals who experience that event in their youth, thereby creating a generational distinction. Using data from an original survey embedded in the 2010CooperativeCongressionalElectionStudy, we examine the racial attitudes of White youth who came of age duringBarackObama's presidential campaign and election to see if those individuals are significantly more liberal on racial attitudes than older generations of Whites. In other words, we look for early evidence that an "Obama generation" has emerged. We find there are indeed early signs of a generational distinction. Members of the "Obama generation" are more strongly opposed to racial resentment, but they exhibit similar levels of opposition to old‐fashioned racism as older cohorts. Additionally, we uncover that the factors that traditionally structure racial attitudes among Whites, most notably contact, education, and residential proximity, work quite differently for members of this generation. We take these findings as initial evidence thatBarackObama's presidency will have a lasting impact on the racial views of a generation of Americans.

ObjectiveDo the public declarations of religious leaders concerning immigration influence American public opinion on immigration reform?MethodsIn answering this question, we use the 2004 National Politics Study and employ ordered logistic regression techniques to test hypotheses derived from elite opinion theory.ResultsWe find that exposure to elite messages from religious leaders on immigration leads respondents to more strongly support increasing immigration to the United States, allowing immigrants to serve in the military, and allowing immigrants who serve in the military to gain citizenship.ConclusionTaken together, these results provide evidence that members of America's largest religious denominations are communicating support for liberal immigration reforms to their parishioners and, more importantly, that these signals subsequently influence the preferences of the parishioners exposed to these messages.

Abstract
The last decade has seen a series of high-profile battles over the rights of college athletes take place in the nation's courthouses and state legislatures, and on the floor of the U.S. Congress. How has the public responded to these changes and how do they formulate their views on policies that seek to provide additional financial compensation and employment protections to college athletes? Using six years of nationally representative polling data on NCAA reform, we find that public opinion on the financial rights of college athletes and the NCAA's treatment of its athletes follows the same trajectory as so much else in American social, political and cultural life—massive racial differences in how people understand the issue and a growing polarization among whites based on ideology and racial attitudes. More specifically, we find that while support for NCAA reform among African Americans and white conservatives inched incrementally upwards between 2014 and 2020, support among white liberals increased exponentially. As we explain, this asymmetrical increase in support has much to do with the rapidly evolving racial attitudes of white liberals. Indeed, we show that racial attitudes are the largest and most important determinant of support for the three most commonly discussed reforms to the NCAA: "pay for play," name, image and likeness rights (NIL), and unionization protections. In short, opinions about the future of college athletics have as much to do with race and racial attitudes as they do with sports and education.

Objective: Is the opinion of white Americans regarding the continued use of the Washington Redskins' team name influenced by their exposure to elite rhetoric that supports a team name change and views the team's name as offensive? Methods: In order to explore the potential for elite opinion leadership on white opinion, this article employs a survey experiment embedded in the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study in which respondents were randomly exposed to a message attributed to either Senator Harry Reid (a Democrat), Senator John McCain (a Republican), or NBC Sports broadcaster Bob Costas that details their opposition to the team's name. Results: Testing hypotheses derived from the scholarship on elite opinion theory, this article finds that exposure only to a message from Costas on this issue leads respondents to more strongly support a team name change and to more clearly view the term 'Redskins' as offensive. Our results (1) further the scholarship on public opinion concerning Native American mascots, (2) suggest the conditions under which the barriers to change in sporting institutions may continue to evolve, and (3) speak to the limits of political elite influence.