Obama to Blame? African American Surge Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in Florida
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Stephanie Slade
Did African American voters—drawn to the polls by Barack Obama in 2008—cast their ballots for him and then vote to ban gay marriage in Florida, causing Amendment 2 to pass? Using original survey and county-level data, we find the linkage fails to hold. While they tend to be less supportive of marriage equality than whites, black surge voters in Florida were only slightly more likely to support a ban on gay marriage than other likely voters. In addition, we show that although counties that experienced large numbers of black surge voters did exhibit more support for Obama, they were no more supportive of Amendment 2 than other counties. Finally, we demonstrate that black voters were not responsible for carrying Florida’s gay marriage ban to passage, as it would have met and surpassed a 60-percent threshold even in their absence.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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- Historical Analogies, Military Surges, (and Economic Crises): Who Should be Consulted?
- It's the Financial Crisis, Stupid! How Framing and Competency Signals Altered the Economic Vote in the US and Germany
- Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train: The Causes and Consequences of Congressional Infamy
- Unhyphenated Americans in the 2010 U.S. House Election
- Candidate Obama and the Dilemmas of Political Time
- Obama to Blame? African American Surge Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in Florida
- The Behavioral Political Economy of Budget Deficits: How Starve the Beast Policies Feed the Machine
- Publius and Proofiness: Is Using Sampling with the Census for Apportioning Representatives Constitutional?
- Testing Obama's Withdrawal Timeline Hypothesis in Afghanistan
- The Practicing Politics Working Group of the American Political Science Association: Bridging the Policy-Research Divide from the Practitioner's Point of View
- Response to Quirk's "Polarized Populism: Masses, Elites, and Partisan Conflict"
- Review
- A House Dividing: Understanding Polarization
- Review of Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Historical Analogies, Military Surges, (and Economic Crises): Who Should be Consulted?
- It's the Financial Crisis, Stupid! How Framing and Competency Signals Altered the Economic Vote in the US and Germany
- Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train: The Causes and Consequences of Congressional Infamy
- Unhyphenated Americans in the 2010 U.S. House Election
- Candidate Obama and the Dilemmas of Political Time
- Obama to Blame? African American Surge Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in Florida
- The Behavioral Political Economy of Budget Deficits: How Starve the Beast Policies Feed the Machine
- Publius and Proofiness: Is Using Sampling with the Census for Apportioning Representatives Constitutional?
- Testing Obama's Withdrawal Timeline Hypothesis in Afghanistan
- The Practicing Politics Working Group of the American Political Science Association: Bridging the Policy-Research Divide from the Practitioner's Point of View
- Response to Quirk's "Polarized Populism: Masses, Elites, and Partisan Conflict"
- Review
- A House Dividing: Understanding Polarization
- Review of Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers
