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This paper examines the role of racial attitudes in accounting for the decrease in Obama's vote percentage among whites from 43% in 2008 to 39% in 2012. Studies of voting in 2008 emphasized the impact of racial attitudes. Racial resentment is found not to have increased, and Romney's improved showing over McCain was concentrated among those with very low and neutral resentment levels. Racial attitudes are found to be significant for vote direction again in 2012, but with less of an impact than in 2008, though there was an additional effect of racial attitudes on turnout in 2012. The most important change was that Obama lost the vote boost he had received in 2008 from the economic issue, not benefiting as much as he had then from negative evaluations of Bush's economic performance. Thus, the decline of Obama's vote percentage among whites in 2012 was due more to economic evaluations than to racial attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party identification remained an important determinant of vote choice in the 2008 election. Indeed, the extent to which people voted according to their partisanship remained as exceptionally high as it had been in the 2004 election. The Democrats led in partisanship, with a greater lead than in 2004. The ANES four-wave panel survey shows that some change occurred in the Democratic direction during 2008. The Democrats gained among most population groups, with the exception of older citizens. Obama's victory margin was due to his carrying pure independents and the growth in strong Democrats as opposed to strong Republicans. Both candidates lost the votes of some partisans who disagreed with them ideologically. The rate of defection among major-party identifiers to the other major party hit post-1950 lows in 2004 and 2008, reflecting increased polarization in the electorate. The partisanship shifts of young people and Hispanics could portend realignment, although that depends on their satisfaction with the Obama administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

in this article, we consider the relationship between voter turnout and voter evaluations of the candidates. Using thermometer data and the 1976 voter validation study, we investigate the magnitude of indifference, alienation, and satisfaction effects. Overall, we find candidate-based abstention in 1976 to be minimal, suggesting that nonvoting in American presidential elections must be understood in terms of factors unrelated to panics' choices of nominees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Symposium on voting in the 2012 U.S. presidential election emphasizes the effects of racial attitudes. While voting was highly polarized along racial and ethnic lines in 2012, the Symposium articles agree that racial attitudes were not the dominant factor in the election. The articles show that racial attitudes had a wide range of effects on the election, affecting attitudes toward the Democratic Party, toward Barack Obama as a person, toward Mitt Romney, and toward the Tea Party, with heightened effects among Hispanic voters, but racial resentment does not explain the drop in Obama's support among whites from 2008 to 2012. As in 2008, race was only a subliminal issue in the 2012 election. Racial resentment still exists among some whites, but its effect was smaller than expected during a recession. Still, racial attitudes should be expected to continue to affect voting in the post-Obama era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]