Elsevier

Electoral Studies

Volume 28, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages 595-605
Electoral Studies

The renewal and persistence of group identification in American politics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2009.05.017Get rights and content

Abstract

This article builds on analyses addressing social group identification found in The American Voter Revisited (chapter 11), by exploring the dynamics of social group identity and Latino partisanship using data from the 2006 Latino National Survey. We argue that group identification matters to Latinos, and that the ANES significantly underestimates the degree of ethnic identification among Latino registered voters. The evidence we bring to bear on the matter of Latino partisan unity shows important distinctions by national origin, generation, language and level of perceived discrimination—measures that are unreliable due to sampling error or wholly unavailable in the ANES. These distinctions are shown in our replications of descriptive tables in the American Voter Revisited, and further supported through multinomial logit models of Latino partisanship. As a result of a large immigration population, continued and widespread discrimination against Latinos, and new mobilization efforts that encourage ethnic appeals, the Latino electorate embodies the renewal and persistence of group identification in American politics.

Introduction

In 1965 Raymond Wolfinger made three important claims in his article, “The development and persistence of ethnic voting,” that have not been significantly revisited in 40 years. First, that national-origin identification remains salient for members of immigrant groups in America. Second, that ethnic group identity directly influences partisanship – “members of an ethnic group show an affinity for one party or the other which can not be explained solely as a result of other demographic characteristics,” (896). Third, that the straight line assimilationist theory that ethnic groups eventually shed their ethnic ties is contradicted by the actual evidence. A common finding in the 1960s was that ethnic identity persisted into the third and fourth generation, contrary to the expectations of sociologist and political scientists. What Wolfinger and others could not have seen coming in 1965 were the new waves of Latin American and Asian immigrants coming to America and creating vibrant new ethnic groups with strong levels of group attachment and identity (indeed, Wolfinger stated, “mass immigration ended fifty years ago”). Since 1965, more than 30 million immigrants have come to America –85% of whom are not European – reinvigorating the debate over ethnic group identification and political participation.

Hispanics or Latinos1 now represent the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, surpassing Blacks in total population in 2003. The Latino electorate also represents the fastest growing segment of the American vote, increasing by 54% from 1996 to 2004 and estimated to number 10 million registrants in 2008. Focusing on “old immigrant” groups, some scholars have stated that group identity and ethnic coalitions from the New Deal era are dead (Stanley and Niemi, 1995, Stanley and Niemi, 2006, Waters, 1990). In fact, in national elections there is no noticeable gap in the voting patterns of Americans of Italian or Irish descent, and Catholics are among the least cohesive of social groups today in their voting patterns (e.g. Table 11.1 in Lewis-Beck et al., 2008). Given the incredible diversity of the American electorate in 2008, an important question remains: does ethnic group identity influence partisanship, and if it does, how strong or weak is the effect?

Recently, The American Voter Revisited has taken up this precise question of social group identification (chapter 11) in a comparison of six groups in the American electorate. Lewis-Beck and his colleagues examine the group identity and partisan cohesion of African Americans, Women, Jews, Catholics, Union members and Hispanics. In short, they find evidence that social group identity is salient to presidential vote choice: “while different life situations may shape the vote in their own right, they essentially operate independently of group membership, which has an effect unique to itself,” (311). However the small sample size of subgroups in the American National Election Study (ANES) and limited questions on group identity prevent a comprehensive analysis or discussion of this topic in The American Voter Revisited, as the authors lament in many parenthetical notes.2 In particular, Latino or Hispanic Americans are an ideal ethnic group to examine in pursing this question given their size, growth rate, and large immigrant population. Further, the Latino vote has been hotly pursued by both Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates in 2000, 2004, and especially 2008. By many measures, Latinos are the ethnic group of interest in American politics today.

In this paper, we argue that group identification matters to Latinos, and that the ANES significantly underestimates the degree of ethnic identification among Latino registered voters. Despite the increase in interest in Latino voters by scholars and campaign managers, the ANES has provided irreconcilably bad data on the largest minority population in America. The data limitations of the ANES make it difficult at best, and impossible at worst, to say anything about Latino voters vis-à-vis other social groups of voters that scholars have analyzed over the years. In addressing the issue of ethnic group identity and voting among Latinos, it is important first to discuss the methodological issues surrounding the Latino sample in the ANES, and describe the various caution signs, that we think appear around every corner. Next, using the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS), developed by Fraga et al., 2006a, Fraga et al., 2006b), we explore in detail the degree and influence of ethnic group identity among Latinos. In short, we find that ethnic group identity is much stronger among Latinos than data from the ANES suggests, and that ethnic identification can often be a primary avenue of engaging the political system, often trumping even partisanship. As a result of a large immigrant population, continued and widespread discrimination against Latinos, and new mobilization efforts that encourage ethnic appeals, the Latino electorate embodies the renewal and persistence of group identification in American politics.

While there are several similarities between the immigrant experience at the turn of the century and that of the contemporary wave of Latino immigration, there is at least one important difference that portends major political implications – continued migration flows (Fraga et al., 2006b). It is true that Irish and Italians experienced discrimination in the first half of the twentieth century, and that ethnic voting pattern persisted for some time, as noted by Wolfinger (1965) and Parenti (1967). However, Italian and Irish American voters eventually shed their overt group identity in the decades following these observations and became white Americans. While race is certainly an important factor, a second potential reason is that the number of Irish and Italian immigrants to the United States dropped dramatically by the 1950s, and the flow from these countries became but a trickle of what they once were in the early twentieth century. In stark contrast, the flow of Latino immigrants picked up beginning in the late 1960s and shows little sign of slowing. Not only do racial differences distinguish Mexicans and Puerto Ricans from Irish and Italians, but the large and steady immigration flow of Latinos carries very distinct implications for ethnic group identity many decades into the future.

Thus, it is important to understand the immigrant experience of this new group, Latinos, and the process of political incorporation since the 1970s, when they replaced European ethnics, as the new “ethnic” group in American politics.

Section snippets

Ethnic group politics

In The American Voter, Cambell et al. (1960) explain that the fundamental argument behind groups as analytically useful to political analysts is that “[g]roups are real because they are psychologically real, and thereby affect the way in which we behave” (emphasis in the original, p 296). Importantly, Lewis-Beck et al. (2008) note in their replication chapter on social group identification, that not all group memberships drive political behavior. Individuals can be grouped into objective

The ANES Hispanic sample

As the number of Latino adult citizens has increased over the past three decades the number of Latino interviews in the ANES has increased from 4% of all interviews in 1980 to 8% of all interviews in 2004. This increase has tempted many scholars to examine and compare Latinos in the ANES with other racial and ethnic groups to better understand political incorporation and participation among Hispanics in the United States. However, there are significant problems with the ANES Hispanic sample

Descriptive results

Focusing on Latino eligible voters, we report several levels of partisan unity, similar to tables created by Lewis-Beck et al. (2008:chapter 11). Instead of calculating the difference between the presidential vote for the Democratic candidate minus the Republican candidate, we calculate the partisan divide between Democratic and Republican affiliation. Overall, we find much stronger levels of party unity and ethnic identification among Latinos using the LNS data than reported in the 2000–2004

Discussion

Overall, we find high levels of ethnic identity, and high levels of partisan unity among Latinos. Data from the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS) demonstrate that Latinos maintain a high degree of Democratic partisanship across generation because of the effect of ethnic identity. As Latinos move farther away from the immigrant experience, a strong sense of ethnic identity contributes to increasing group cohesiveness and Democratic partisanship. Among immigrants, both group identification and

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Latino National Survey team for access to the data, and for helpful feedback on the models presented here. We also greatly benefited from a discussion of this paper at the 2008 American Voter Revisited conference at the University of Iowa and incorporated many suggestions from Rene Rocha, Michael Lewis-Beck, and Caroline Tolbert. Finally, Gary Segura provided considerable ideas and feedback on the Latino sample in the National Election Study which we discuss here.

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