The Psychological Impact Of The 2008 Elections

Beginning with a contextualization of America surrounding the 2004 presidential election. This was the first election since the 9-11 attacks and the beginning of the war on terror. Many Americans uneasy, and the state of the nation was unstable. With this fear and instability,

Even after the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, African Americans were “disenfranchised in the South by intimidation and electoral trickery, including whites-only primaries, rigged literacy tests, and poll taxes” (Patterson 2011, p. 180). The Freedom Riders rode through the South, enduring harassment and imprisonment to encourage other African Americans to vote. Voter turnout in African American communities is greatly encouraged. Personally, coming from an African American family, I was strongly encouraged by my parents and grandparents to vote when I was of legal age. My family instilled the importance of voting in me at a very young age. Although voter turnout among African Americans is still fairly low, in the 2008 presidential election African Americans had the second highest voter turnout, behind non-Hispanic Caucasians (African Americans, n.d.). Race can influence voter turnout because with African Americans specifically, although rates are getting better, they are still not high.

When George Washington was elected President in 1789 by members of the fledgling United States of America, he was setting into motion a tradition that has stood the test of over 225 years - the presidential election. Even as the United States has seen dozens of wars, made hundreds of scientific advances, and selected thousands of politicians to seats everywhere from small town councils to Congress, the principles of the election have remained the same; the people band together to determine who will best protect their interests at home and assure that the US will always remain on top in foreign policy. Oftentimes, this is found to be a difficult decision, as public opinion is constantly wavering. One sees this in action particularly during the 1992 election - a battle of wills between Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ross Perot; complete with lead changes, major vote swings, and Perot’s unprecedented initial success - ultimately a false alarm to the bipartisan establishment.

Author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and an associate professor here at Ohio State, wrote an article “Why Hilary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.” This article not only touches on how Hilary Clinton is only using black people as her “winning card (Alexander, 2)” in the 2016 Election, but also her past decisions she made as the wife of the 42nd President of the United States that should be taken into consideration by black voters. Mrs. Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the two Democratic Party presidential candidates. Although Bernie Sanders promises “a political revolution that will bring universal healthcare, a living wage, an end to rampant Wall Street greed, and the dismantling of the vast prison state...(Alexander, 5),” Hilary Clinton seems to be receiving all of the black votes, according to recent polls. Alexander explains that because many African Americans believed (and still believe) that Bill Clinton was the first “black president,” Ms. Clinton will receive several black votes.

Matsubayashi and Ueda (2010) analyzed whether white voters used candidate race as a voting cues in an election between a white and Black candidate. The data were gathered from local precinct level

Devinatz focuses the article on the similarities between the new president elect, Donald J. Trump and the 1968 election of George Wallace. Devinatz informs the reader that while Donald Trump’ presidency was an event that took the nation by surprise, mostly white union members voted for Trump just like they voted for Wallace because their campaign strategy was similar. Devinatz exclaims that Wallace used comparable rhetoric to Trump’s to get the crowd on his side at rallies, the rhetoric they both used was racial rhetoric. Wallace and Trump used the racial fears that immigrants and people of color would take the white Americans jobs to get the votes and gain political power. The overall argument Devinatz is making is that presidential canidates

The 2008 presidential election saw a significant increase in voter turnout among young people, Blacks and Hispanics. This helped with Obama’s political campaign, for he had a strong connection with minority groups and young voters. With the increase in voting for the Democratic party in 2008 by Blacks, Hispanics and young people, Barak Obama became the 44th president of the

We first talked about whether or not voters should vote, but now let’s look on the other hand of the candidates. Another issue that faces the candidates is

The Journal Article, Fear in the Voting Booth: The 2004 Presidential Election, was chosen because it offers an analysis of the role that fear played in the first election following the 9/11 attacks. This source focuses on how the fear, anxiety and uncertainty of these attacks influenced voters’ behavior during the election between Republican nominee, George W. Bush and Democratic nominee, John Kerry. This article was chosen because of its specificity which compliments the rest of the sources. The next source comes from the Encyclopedia of U.S. Campaigns, Elections, and Electoral Behavior and is called “Issue Salience and Voting Behavior”. This encyclopedia article compliments the rest of the sources well because it allows one to understand

Many women have faced difficult paths to get elected into office whether they are Hispanic, African American, or White. Even if they had all the qualities or they were overqualified they failed based on their gender, race, or lack of confidence in themselves.

If I were to travel in time to 1950 and share the news that there would be a black president within the next century, chaos would arise. People then did not seem to realize that there is no white and black, no race: only humans. According to an New York Times article, “Poll Finds Most in U.S. Hold Dim View of Race Relations” by Kevin Sack and Megan Thee-Brenan, the election of a black president has bettered the idea of race relation. An increase of people are beginning realize that capability is not directly affected by the color of skin.

However, Secretary Clinton must find ways to preserve this level of support. African American voter turnout had record highs of 65% and 66% in ’08 and ’12 respectively (Walter,1). While this turnout was a piece of a larger trend, the chance to vote for the first black President could have overinflated these numbers. Obama pulled down 95% and 93% of the black vote in the general elections, and Sec. Clinton must find a way to replicate those results. She will not have the support based on shared demographics that the president benefitted from. The secretary is a rich white woman and that demographic difference from her predecessor will require her to find different ways to connect to this voting bloc. Specifically, she will need to run a color conscious campaign, in contrast to the relatively color blind campaigns that the President ran.

Instead of Clinton only appealing her politics for the race to the Black-Americans, she has begun to use her second strategy. Clinton’s second tactic allows her to attract the votes of conservative and moderate White-Americans. Additionally, since a large amount of support for Hillary Clinton’s campaign is solidified by Black-Americans, Hillary will continue to increases her winning percentage for presidency by obtaining White votes. In another excerpt from the column, Key Bloc of Black Mayors to Back Hillary Clinton, Perry Bacon Jr. illustrates the overwhelming Black support of Hillary Clinton. He states: “Clinton's strong support among African-Americans, favor the former secretary of state over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by over 50 points in many polls” (NBC News). As a result of this, Clinton has realized that she earned the admiration, support, and trust of Blacks-Americans to an extent of not being fearful of losing their votes. Although her racial moderate remarks will naturally cause her to lose a small fraction of Black voters, it is crucial to understand that many other Blacks will remain loyal and continue to support her. Additionally, this is because the Clinton campaign has done an excellent job in appealing to the socioeconomic empathy of African-Americans. Evidence of the Clinton campaign becoming more

The three primary issues that I identified in this block’s readings are how racial attitudes drive policy preferences for white voters (particularly for welfare policy), how the 2008 election failed to usher in a new post-racial era in American politics as hoped, and how political science polling is struggling to accurately measure racial attitudes. In this essay I will highlight some of the findings in this unit’s readings that I found to be most profound and how they apply to my personal experiences and opinions.

Some voters cast their ballots based on the emotions such as trust rather than on the candidate's experience or policy. These voters lean toward those candidates who appear to share the voter's concerns on the political issues at the time. They vote for a candidate that appears to be honest and have integrity (Schmidt, Shelley, Bardes, 2011, p.196)