President Obama and the Emergence of Islamophobia in Mass Partisan Preferences

• Author: Michael Tesler
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211007211
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 75(2) 394 –408

Article

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211007211

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211007211

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Islamophobia has long been prevalent in American public

opinion and society. Even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks,

Western media primarily painted Islam in a negative light

(Ahmed and Matthes 2017; Esposito 1999; Poole 2002;

Said 1981), and Americans rated Muslims much less

favorably than other religious, racial, and ethnic groups

(Kalkan, Layman, and Uslaner 2009). In the years since

September 11, the media has continued to frame Islam

negatively (Ahmed and Matthes 2017; Lajevardi 2020),

and the public has consistently rated Muslims more unfa-

vorably than other religious groups (Kalkan 2017; Pew

Research Center 2017; Sides and Gross 2013).

Yet, up until recently, those negative attitudes about

Muslims were not strongly connected to partisan

preferences—preferences that include Americans’ vote

choice for president, voting for congress, and party iden-

tification. That changed with Barack Obama’s 2008 pres-

idential campaign and subsequent presidency. After being

only weakly correlated with partisan preferences through-

out George W. Bush’s presidency (Kalkan, Layman, and

Uslaner 2009; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck 2018; Tesler

and Sears 2010; see new results below), attitudes about

Muslims were one of the more powerful predictors of

vote choice in Obama’s two elections. In fact, attitudes

about Muslims were strongly linked to public opinion

about Obama even after controlling for the same racial

attitudes that also powerfully predicted public opinion

about the nation’s first black president (Tesler 2016).

The central argument of this article is that the unusu-

ally large and persistent link between anti-Muslim senti-

ments and opposition to President Obama helped those

attitudes emerge as a novel and independent predictor of

Americans’ partisan preferences. The analyses presented

from several datasets strongly support that claim. The

results show that attitudes about Muslims were a signifi-

cantly stronger independent predictor of voter prefer-

ences for congress in 2010–2014 elections than they were

in 2004–2008; that attitudes about Muslims were a sig-

nificantly stronger independent predictor of mass parti-

sanship during Obama’s presidency than they were

beforehand; and that experimentally connecting Obama

to Democratic congressional candidates significantly

increased the relationship between anti-Muslim senti-

ments and Americans’ preferences for Republican con-

gressional candidates. The article concludes by discussing

how those results are important for understanding

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PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211007211Political Research QuarterlyTesler

research-article2021

1University of California, Irvine, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael Tesler, Department of Political Science, University of

California, 3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92617, USA.

Email: mtesler@uci.edu

President Obama and the

Emergence of Islamophobia in

Mass Partisan Preferences

Michael Tesler1

Abstract

This article argues that the unusually large and persistent association between Islamophobia and opposition to President

Obama helped make attitudes about Muslims a significant, independent predictor of Americans’ broader partisan

preferences. After detailing the theoretical basis for this argument, the article marshals repeated cross-sectional

data, two panel surveys, and a nationally representative survey experiment, to test its hypotheses. The results from

those analyses show the following: (1) attitudes about Muslims were a significantly stronger independent predictor

of voter preferences for congress in 2010–2014 elections than they were in 2004–2008; (2) attitudes about Muslims

were a significantly stronger independent predictor of mass partisanship during Obama’s presidency than they were

beforehand; and (3) experimentally connecting Obama to Democratic congressional candidates significantly increased

the relationship between anti-Muslim sentiments and Americans’ preferences for Republican congressional candidates.

The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for American politics in the Trump era.

Keywords

Muslims, Islamophobia, partisanship, Obama