Racist or Racial Voting in the 1981 Atlanta Municipal Elections

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Abstract
Some recent municipal elections have been interpreted as indicating that America's cities are becoming more polarized on the dimension of race. It has been hypothesized that the results observed in Atlanta in 1981 and Chicago in 1983 presage an era of voting along racial lines. This article advances an alternative hypothesis: Voters who support candidates of their own race often do so simply because they have no particular reason not to. Specifically, there may be no issue-based reason to cross racial lines. Using both precinct-level and survey data from the 1981 Atlanta municipal elections, the analysis estimates the levels of racial voting (the coincidence of a racial tie between voter and candidate), racist voting (the vote for a candidate of one's own race when an issue-based motive exists to support a candidate of the opposite race), and crossover voting.

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