Black Votes Count, But Do They Matter? Symbolic Empowerment and the Jackson-Obama Mobilizing Effect on Gender and Age Cohorts

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Sarah Cote Hampson,Evelyn M. Simien
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19898665
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X19898665

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(6) 725 –737

© The Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19898665

journals.sagepub.com/home/apr

Article

In 1988, Ronald Walters published his classic, Black

Presidential Politics in America: A Strategic Approach. In it,

he assessed whether Jesse Jackson’s entry into the presiden-

tial selection process resulted in independent leverage—that

is, the “balance of power” whereby Black votes could yield

the margin of victory between the two major parties gener-

ally and determine the eventual Democratic nominee specifi-

cally. He argued that Black votes were crucial in determining

the outcome of the presidential selection process, which also

resulted in dependent leverage—that is, behind-the-scenes

bargaining whereby the Black candidate imposed certain

policy demands on the party organization. Building upon this

seminal work (Walters, 1988) and that of others who have

pursued a similar line of research (Simien, 2015), we argue

that the historic entry of Black candidates changes the nature

of American presidential elections. Simien (2015), for exam-

ple, stressed the importance of independent leverage as it

relates to and reinforces symbolic empowerment whereby a

historic first—in this case, a Black office seeker—facilitates

the process by which Black voters support their candidacy on

account of a shared group identity and actively participate in

electoral politics. It is not simply a question of whether they

as candidates promote political behavior, but the larger

question is whether their office seeking as historic firsts

stimulates active participation in the presidential selection

process. The idea that the mere presence of a “historic first”

who mirrors a marginalized group pictorially signals greater

access to electoral opportunities and, at the same time, moti-

vates political behavior is described in terms of contextual

effects that are symbolically empowering. That said, we pick

up where past researchers have left off.

Given the Democratic presidential campaigns of Senators

Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, we see the potential for

symbolic empowerment to manifest itself once again during

the 2020 nominating contest, making it all the more relevant

today. Using data from the 1984–1988 National Black

Election Studies (NBES), and the 2008 and 2012 American

National Election Studies (ANES), the goal is to provide a

comprehensive study of African American political behavior

with support for Jackson and Obama serving as explanatory

variables alongside other sources of variation—gender and

age cohorts. Herein lies our innovation, as we advance a

theory of symbolic empowerment but by way of extension

898665APRXXX10.1177/1532673X19898665American Politics ResearchSimien and Hampson

research-article2020

1University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA

2University of Washington Tacoma, USA

Corresponding Author:

Evelyn M. Simien, University of Connecticut, 365 Fairfield Way, Unit

1024, Storrs, CT 06269-0001, USA.

Email: evelyn.simien@uconn.edu

Black Votes Count, But Do They Matter?

Symbolic Empowerment and the

Jackson-Obama Mobilizing Effect on

Gender and Age Cohorts

Evelyn M. Simien1 and Sarah Cote Hampson2

Abstract

Using data from the 1984–1988 National Black Election Studies as well as the 2008 and 2012 American National Election

Studies, we provide a comprehensive study of African American political behavior with support for Barack Obama and Jesse

Jackson serving as explanatory variables alongside other sources of variation—gender and age cohorts. Results show that

African American voters who preferred Jackson and Obama in the 1984 and 2008 Democratic nominating contests were

more likely to proselytize, attend a campaign rally or political meeting, donate money, and wear a campaign button. While

opposition to Ronald Reagan and George Bush, church membership, involvement in Black political organizations were also

linked to behavior, racial group identification (linked fate) had a less consistent effect. Both Obama’s candidacy like that of

Jackson’s had an empowering effect on African American women—particularly, those of the civil rights generation—as was

the case for Obama supporters of a younger cohort.

Keywords

symbolic empowerment, Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, mobilization, age, gender, American presidential elections, political

behavior