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

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

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 presidential 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 generally and determine the eventual Democratic nominee specifically. 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 example, 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, motivates 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 across gender and age cohorts in relation to nonvoting participation—proselytizing and donating money, attending a political meeting or registering voters, as well as wearing a campaign button. At the same time, and, no less importantly, the present study compels us to think about the lasting impact of barrier-breaking presidential candidates—Jackson and Obama—insofar as they influenced nonvoting participation among African Americans across gender and age cohorts. In theory, African American candidates increase the likelihood for voters of the same race to become more interested, actively engaged in electoral politics on the local, state, and national level (Bobo & Gilliam, 1990; Simien, 2015; Tate, 1993, 2003; Walters, 1988). Whether Black candidates achieve group solidarity on this basis, as presidential candidates, is a hugely important and timely question, given African Americans’ higher rate of voter turnout (with African American women voting at higher rates than African American men, and recent polls indicating that African Americans are split along generational lines in their support for Democratic presidential candidates), not to mention the historic nature of the 1984 and 2008 American presidential campaigns.

While Jackson never secured the Democratic nomination, he (like Barack Obama) mobilized new segments of the American polity—specifically, voters who analysts would describe as being on the periphery. In this sense, Jackson and Obama are change agents who on account of their visibility as “historic firsts” raise the salience of identities shared with certain segments of the mass public and produce a new found enthusiasm for the campaign. And so, we ask: Can historic firsts bring formerly inactive people once denied the franchise into the presidential selection process and stoke the desire to participate in other ways beyond voting, from proselytizing and donating money to attending a political meeting or registering voters as well as wearing a campaign button?

Literature Review

Over the course of the past few decades, political scientists have relied heavily on data from successive large-scale opinion polls—the 1984, 1988, and 1996 NBES as well as the 1993 National Black Politics Studies (NBPS)—involving all-Black samples of the adult African American population. Several scholars reached consensus on the following points: African Americans outperformed Whites when differences in socioeconomic status were taken into account (Guterbock & London, 1983; Leighley & Vedlitz, 1999; Olsen, 1972; Verba et al., 1993), membership in Black civic and religious organizations involving political discussions heightened participation (Calhoun-Brown, 1996; Harris, 1999; McDaniel, 2008; McKenzie, 2004), group consciousness or a sense of linked fate took precedence over class interests in determining the solidarity that typifies African Americans’s vote choice and presidential approval (Dawson, 1993; Shingles, 1981; Tate, 1993), and the context of elections whereby Black office seekers increased political interest while contributing to a more trusting and efficacious orientation toward politics contributed to increased turnout (Bobo & Gilliam, 1990; Tate, 1991, 1993). This latter work suggests that empowerment works through such psychological factors of orientation as trust and efficacy by offsetting resource-based deficits (Bobo & Gilliam, 1990).

Hypothesizing Difference for African American Political Behavior, Beyond Votes

Concentrating as they do on voter turnout, the above research has overlooked other forms of political behavior—proselytizing and donating money, attending a political meeting or campaign rally, as well as wearing a campaign button—and other sources of variation (Bobo & Gilliam, 1990; Brunell et al., 2008; Gay, 2001; Griffin & Keane, 2006; Tate, 1991; Whitby, 2007). The role of gender and age cohorts is conspicuously absent from the robust literature and raises the following questions: Which African Americans are most likely to actively participate in the presidential selection process? What are the implications for and theoretical interpretations of when and why behavior differs for African American men and women across age cohorts? It is the case that the level and type of behavior may vary according to gender, whereby men are more likely than women to donate money and proselytize due to the pay gap in salaries and gender-role socialization (Verba et al., 1997). Prior research, however, suggests that empowerment should change the nature of gender differences in political behavior and underwrite the costs, create a sense of civic obligation, and normalize political behavior by virtue of its ability to enhance basic orientations toward government (Simien, 2015). Rather than treat the adult African American population as homogeneous, we employ a different approach than that which has been advanced thus far in the scholarly literature and recognize the plurality of differences between and among African Americans. All too often, political scientists have failed to consider gender differences and age cohorts among African American eligible voters (notable exceptions being Cohen, 2010; Franklin, 2014; Simien, 2006; Simpson, 1998).

Significance of Gender and Age Cohorts

If we are to develop a complete understanding of what factors generally and who specifically mobilize the African American electorate, we must consider such differentiating characteristics as gender and age cohorts. African American women account for the majority of Black voters, as evidenced by a gender gap that has been consistently present since 1996 and exists more than a decade later. African American women voted at higher rates than African American men by a range of 7 or 8 percentage points in 2008, and at even higher rates, about 9 percentage points in 2012, which is 6 percentage points higher than other demographic groups (File, 2013). Similarly, there has been a growing generational divide among African American voters, as evidenced by a gradual but significant shift away from the Democratic Party by a younger age cohort who do not feel adequately represented by either the Democratic or Republican parties. They have made an explicitly political choice by accepting nonpartisanship and identifying as Independents. This trend began in the late 1960s, increasing in proportion over time from 8% in 1968 to roughly 20% in 2004 (Hajnal & Lee, 2011; Tate, 1993). Past studies and the latest polls have shown that this younger age cohort is more open to third-party candidates, and almost uniformly commit themselves to far-left progressives like 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Now, we turn to a more detailed discussion of gender and age cohorts in advance of our hypotheses that follow.

Gender

African American women have long been socialized to change societal conditions that create and maintain oppressive power hierarchies via the vote and other forms of political behavior (Berger, 2006; Giddings, 1984; Levenstein, 2009; Robnett, 1997; Terborg-Penn, 1998; White, 1999). Both during the civil rights era of the 1960s and even decades before, African American women were heavily invested in various modes of institutional change designed to remedy the effects of inequalities produced by a matrix of domination that upheld deplorable housing conditions, overcrowded and segregated schools, voter suppression, and other illegal activities used to prevent African Americans from building a sense of entitlement, exercising social citizenship, and casting a ballot in local, state, and national elections. Research outside of political science provides evidence for expecting higher levels of nonvoting participation from African American women, as compared with African American men. Several historians from Charles Payne (1990) and Christina Greene (2005), as well as Lee Sartain (2007) and Lisa Levenstein (2009), suggest that African American women outperformed their male counterparts during the protest phase of the civil rights movement (and even decades before the welfare rights movement). Emphasizing their abilities to canvass vast neighborhoods and combine fundraising skills with community networks and family ties, they all show how African American women who qualified as leaders and followers as well as foot soldiers and grassroots organizers worked collaboratively to support voter registration, equal job opportunities, and school desegregation as well as demand their due from local hospitals and municipal courts. African American women worked tirelessly behind the scenes of community-based, grassroots organizations that were fate-linking, principally race-based, and labor oriented to recruit volunteers, raise funds, and register voters. Said authors identify a cultural tradition whereby African American women emerge as change agents who pressured the government to provide basic resources and performed specific leadership tasks behind the scenes of local movements, having honed the skills necessary to participate in electoral politics today.

Age Cohort

The civil rights generation came of age during the protest phase of the civil rights and Black power movements. As a cohort of individuals, they were socialized during the same historical era of Jim Crow and either witnessed or participated in mass protest demonstrations from lunch counter sit-ins and economic bus boycotts to freedom rides. As a result, they developed a distinctive political outlook on their experiences with racial discrimination, segregated schools, voter disenfranchisement, and economic hardships (as a result of being relegated to working-class occupations). Media images of African Americans were also scarce, except for those that reinforced negative stereotypes. African Americans held few political offices on the local, state, and national level. Such an era of civil rights struggle has been shown to facilitate the process by which this age cohort developed a strong racial group identity and an obliged sense of civic duty upon passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (Franklin, 2014; Gillespie, 2010). Wary of monolithic claims, we believe that there are theoretical reasons to expect that a younger age cohort will be less likely to possess the same heightened sense of awareness on account of their more privileged social location in the United States.

In fact, Karl Mannheim (1969) argued against associating youth with political radicalism because of limited evidence that post-civil rights youth are more progressive in their orientations—for example, social movement organizations have long been shaped by veteran activists and organizers like Ella Baker who helped to politicize youth members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Considering that the post-civil rights generation was socialized during the height of integration and the rise of the Black middle class, they did not experience the most extreme conditions of racial segregation and poverty. This generation was better positioned than their predecessors to leverage institutional resources that were previously denied them, having benefited from changes to the social, economic, and political context born out of liberation struggle (Franklin, 2014). The emerging postracial, color-blind society afforded this younger age cohort elite access, given the more diverse and extensive social networks now available to them. Thus, the expectation is that symbolic empowerment will have differential effects on an older, civil rights generation with their matured racial belief system versus a younger, post-civil rights generation who currently face unique constraints when attempting to pursue movement activism today (Franklin, 2014). Such an investigation provides an important, and rarely explored, analysis of age cohorts among Black voters. Here, we think an approach attentive to distinct age cohorts—that is, one civil rights generation and another post-civil rights generation warrant scholarly merit. The idea is that civil rights norms and racial policies developed gradually over time, making a comparative approach attentive to differences in nonvoting participation between and among Black voters across age cohorts possible.

At the same time, and, no less importantly, we feel it necessary to acknowledge the empirical and conceptual shortcomings of situating youth who were particularly energized by Obama’s campaign, or what some called the Joshua Generation, within this age cohort. Such an approach assumes that these activists who belong to the same age category share a uniform or fixed identity that has meaning in relation to the specific circumstances involving the social, economic, and political context of the times in which they lived post-civil rights and that the magnitude of influence on their outlooks and nonvoting participation is the same.

Hypotheses

Here we advance our theory of symbolic empowerment, regarding the role of Jackson and Obama in determining African American political behavior. As stated earlier, the goal is to make this a more comprehensive study of behavior with support for Obama and Jackson serving as critical explanatory variables for Black voters. Our main hypothesis is that symbolic empowerment will spur African American political behavior, thus:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): African American voters who preferred Jackson in the 1984 and Obama in the 2008 Democratic nominating contests will be more likely to engage in political behavior that exceeds voting—for example, proselytizing, donating money, attending a political meeting, or volunteering to register voters, and wearing a campaign button.

Along the way, we consider whether Jackson’s 1988 campaign had weaker effects. No prior study has considered the impact of either presidential campaign in such an expansive way—that is, to include proselytizing, donating money, attending a political meeting, or volunteering to register voters, as well as wearing a campaign button—and comparatively so across election cycles. In both cases, we consider intragroup differences by examining African American women and men separately, as well as different age cohorts to account for intragroup differences. Our expectation is that African American women will be equally and, in some cases, more likely than African American men to participate in said behaviors. Assuming that their interest and engagement is related to a distinct sense of social responsibility and culture of collective uplift affirmed by their experience of race, class, and gender discrimination as well as their membership in civic organizations as described previously, we wish to stress the importance of such a truncated lived experience and organizational involvement on the grassroots level—that is, in its ability to normalize political behavior through a generative process over time and across age cohorts. Thus, we expect that being socialized as a member of the “civil rights” generation will increase the likelihood that they respond to symbolic empowerment’s mobilizing effect.

Hypothesis 2 (H2): We expect African American women—and in particular women of the “civil rights” generation—to participate in various forms of political behavior at higher rates in response to symbolic empowerment than other gender/age cohorts.

Data

Given our focus on African American political behavior, we rely on data sets that are optimal for studying this subset of the population. The 1984–1988 NBES is the best source of data for the hypothesis posed here—that is, whether a historic first who mirrors a marginalized group can motivate members of that group to participate in other ways beyond voting. Modeled after the ANES, its sample size included 1,150 African American adults. Similarly, the 2008 ANES time series is the most recent and appropriate source of data in light of its stratified random oversample of African Americans (N = 583, male = 238; female = 345) to run essentially the same, parallel analysis except with a focus on Obama. The 2008 ANES study, which contains respondents from all racial and ethnic groups, allows for comparative analysis that showcase behavioral patterns unique to African Americans in these “historic first” elections. While these data sets are the most optimal for studying African American political behavior for their respective time periods, they are not exactly the same, which means that the models will differ slightly, as will the data analysis that follows. For example, we utilize pre- and postsurvey data from the 1984 and 1988 NBES and rely solely on preelection survey data from the 2008 ANES because its postelection survey does not contain questions that measure nonvoting participation. Per reviewer suggestion, we reference the 2012 ANES time series study (albeit not an ideal comparison on account of Obama’s incumbency status) to juxtapose our results from the 1984 and 1988 NBES as well as the 2008 ANES to infer that a similarity in patterns of African American nonvoting participation exists while acknowledging the limitations of said comparison.¹

Measures

In the 1984 and 1988 analysis, Favored Jackson indicates if individuals answered “Jackson” to the question: “Who did you favor for president in this election? 1) Reagan 2) Mondale 3) Jackson 4) Other (specify).²” Reagan approval indicates if respondents approved or disapproved of the way U.S. President Ronald Reagan handled his job. In the analysis of 2008, Primary Vote for Obama is used as a substitute for Favored Jackson. We consider other factors like Bush approval and habitual voter as well as frequency of religious service attendance acceptable surrogate measures for Reagan approval, first time registered, and member of a Black political church. We also created three distinct age cohorts of African Americans with time frames or periods that matched the “cut-offs” established by extant literature (Cohen, 2010; Simpson, 1998): Civil Rights Generation (those born before 1959),³ Post-Civil Rights Generation (those born between 1959 and 1979), and Millennials (those born from 1980 on).

Other standard control measures are gender, linked fate, age, region, income, internal and external efficacy, as well as education. The linked fate measure asks, “Do you think that what happens to Black people in this country will have something to do with your own life?” Internal efficacy is measured on an ascending scale, as respondents answer whether they agree strongly, agree somewhat, neither agree or disagree, disagree somewhat, or strongly disagree with the question: “people like me don’t have any say about what government does.” External efficacy is measured along the same scale; however, respondents are asked whether “public officials don’t care much about what people like me think.” We chose ideology over a measure for party identification, since this measure provided greater variation among respondents. Dependent variables were dichotomously coded (yes–no) participatory acts: donating money, volunteering to register voters, attending a political meeting (or a campaign rally), having engaged in political talk (or proselytized), or having worn a campaign button, put a bumper sticker on your car, and posted a sign in your lawn.

Control Variables for Rival Explanation

Are symbolic campaigns driving political behavior, if respondents are already inclined to participate? Using data from the NBES and ANES, Philpot et al. (2009) model Black voter turnout across three election cycles: 1984, 1996, and 2008. They stress the importance of using two key variables—namely, a measure for party contact and a measure for past voting history. Philpot and colleagues (2009) argue that said variables are critical for determining voter turnout in 2008 and we believe control for a rival explanation that would seemingly suggests that African Americans are already inclined to participate in the American presidential election. Per their suggestion, we control for both party contact and habitual voter using the 2008 and 2012 ANES.⁴ The standard measure for party contact asks the following question: “As you know, the political parties try to talk to as many people as they can to get them to vote for their candidate. Did anyone from one of the political parties call you up or come around and talk to you about the campaign this year? Were you contacted by the [DEMOCRATIC PARTY, REPUBLICAN PARTY], or both?” The Habitual Voter measure is a simple binary variable, asking whether the respondent had voted in the previous presidential election and controls for whether or not the respondent was eligible to vote in that election. The measure helps determine whether casting a ballot in the 2004 presidential election increased the likelihood of participating—that is, whether the respondent was already inclined to participate based on their past performance. Both measures—party contact and habitual voter—give us leverage on understanding whether the respondent was already inclined to participate based on outreach efforts and past performance.

Models were run separately using Stata 13 for each participatory act and only among those African Americans who had not been contacted by the Democratic Party. See, for example, Table 6 relating to the 2008 presidential election. This lowered our number of observations to between 125 and 151 per model (rather than N = 200 plus), but our results remained fairly consistent—that is, a primary vote for Obama predicted donating money, attending a rally, and increased likelihood of proselytizing among African American voters. And, we also controlled for whether respondents reported having voted in the previous presidential election.

Analysis Strategy

Our analyses proceed chronologically. We begin by using multivariate logistic regression and predicted probabilities to analyze data from the 1984 NBES, comparing African American women with men, specifically. Here, we test support for H1, examining the extent to which support for Jesse Jackson in his initial candidacy for president was associated with greater political involvement and empowerment. Examining the validity of H2 in the case of Jackson, we then compare the analyses of 1984 with those from 1988, in which Jackson again ran, but which was in this latter context, not a “historic first.” Finally, we use binary logit and predicted probabilities to determine the extent to which these same hypotheses hold true for Barack Obama’s historic bid with data from the 2008 and 2012 ANES. In our analysis of the 2008 presidential election, we are able to provide a comparative cohort analysis for looking at the intersections of age and gender for H2 in particular, using dummy variables for age cohort and sex interactions, with African American males of the post-civil rights cohort as the baseline. We present predicted probabilities for important variables in our logistic regressions for ease of interpretation. We also briefly examine African American behavior for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, whereby he was no longer a “historic first.”

Results

Evidence From the 1984 NBES

Logistic regression was performed separately for each participatory act.⁵ As shown in Table 1, African American respondents who said they favored Jackson’s candidacy in 1984 engaged in various forms of political behavior from participating in political talk and donating money to attending a political meeting at significantly higher levels than those who did not favor his candidacy over Reagan, Mondale, or another candidate. At the same time, and, no less intuitively, those who disapproved of Reagan’s performance as president were more likely to proselytize. Predicted probabilities in Table 2 offer a clearer picture of his influence on three activities. Consistent with our first hypothesis, those who favored Jackson’s historic candidacy were 9% more likely than others to donate money to a campaign. They were also 9% more likely to attend a political meeting, and 12% more likely to try to persuade someone to vote for their chosen candidate.

Table 1.

Effect of Jackson’s 1984 Presidential Campaign on African American Political Behavior—Logit Regression.

Variables	Donated money	Vol. voter registration	Attended meeting	Proselytized
Favored Jackson	0.551** (0.255)	0.189 (0.242)	0.482** (0.242)	0.477** (0.213)
Reagan approval	−0.043 (0.141)	−0.116 (0.130)	0.064 (0.124)	−0.234** (0.109)
Black linked fate	0.282** (0.116)	0.113 (0.104)	0.026 (0.102)	0.108 (0.085)
Registered to vote for the first time	0.030 (0.443)	−0.412 (0.378)	−0.340 (0.414)	−0.062 (0.306)
Black organization (member)	0.840*** (0.253)	0.371 (0.257)	0.866*** (0.242)	0.585*** (0.224)
Political church (member)	1.396*** (0.249)	0.901*** (0.232)	1.391*** (0.230)	0.646*** (0.214)
Female	−0.117 (0.247)	−0.239 (0.229)	−0.267 (0.228)	−0.367* (0.195)
Age	0.018** (0.009)	−0.018** (0.008)	0.005 (0.008)	0.006 (0.007)
Ideology	−0.033 (0.056)	0.048 (0.052)	−0.006 (0.052)	−0.068 (0.044)
Income	0.081** (0.040)	0.038 (0.038)	0.036 (0.037)	0.002 (0.032)
Education	0.290*** (0.094)	−0.141 (0.096)	0.095 (0.089)	0.070 (0.076)
Internal efficacy	0.247 (0.253)	0.327 (0.232)	0.440* (0.231)	0.114 (0.198)
South	0.087 (0.238)	0.071 (0.220)	−0.228 (0.220)	−0.228 (0.187)
Constant	−4.660*** (0.703)	−1.120* (0.594)	−2.524*** (0.600)	−0.594 (0.495)
N	536	538	537	537
Log likelihood	−232.013	−267.207	−265.340	−341.210
Pseudo R²	0.222	0.060	0.158	0.081

Source. 1984 National Black Election Study.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Table 2.

Predicted Probabilities for the Political Behavior of African Americans Favoring Jesse Jackson during the 1984 Presidential Election.

Predicted probabilities	All African Americansfavored Jackson:Minimum → Maximum	African American Womenfavored Jackson:Minimum → Maximum	African American Menfavored Jackson:Minimum → Maximum
Donated money	0.09 **	0.11 *	0.06
Vol. voter registration	0.03	0.07	0.01
Attended political meeting	0.09 **	0.06	0.16 *
Proselytized	0.12 **	0.19 ***	−0.03

Source. 1984 National Black Election Study. Full results in Table 1, Supplemental Appendices A and B, respectively.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Given that relatively little is known about African American voters as campaign contributors and conventional wisdom suggests that they donate few dollars to candidates, it is noteworthy that those who were older, better educated, strongly race identified, and higher income earners were more likely to donate money even when their preferred candidate had no chance of securing the Democratic nomination and the contributions happened during a recessionary election cycle (King, 2009). Membership in Black organizations working to improve the status of African Americans was predictive of three activities: having donated money, attended a political meeting in support of a candidate, and proselytizing. As shown in Table 1, those who belonged to churches active in politics were more likely to donate money, volunteer to register voters, attend a political meeting, and proselytize than those who belonged to churches not involved in politics. Another race-relevant consideration—linked fate—was related to having donated money.

Interestingly, with regard to our second hypothesis, few significant differences can be seen between African American men and women in terms of their likelihood of participating in various forms of political behavior (see Table 1). One notable exception, however, is that African American men were more likely to proselytize. Even though African American men appear to outperform African American women in terms of proselytizing when studied together, subsequent models, whereby African American men and women, were studied apart advance our limited knowledge of campaign finance and proselytizing insofar as race and gender intersect with resource-based models of political behavior. Especially striking are the areas in which African American women were found to be active because the type of behavior does not conform to gendered expectations and resource based models. Whereas African American women were 11% more likely to donate money, and 19% more likely to proselytize, if they had supported Jackson in the 1984 primaries, African American men were 16% more likely to attend a political meeting. See Table 2 for predicted probabilities. (Note: Full results and all predicted probabilities can be found in Supplemental Appendices A through E.) It is worth noting that these effects are also comparatively strong in relation to other major significant predictors of political behavior for African Americans. For instance, African American women’s support for Jackson made them 19% more likely to proselytize in 1984, whereas membership in a Black organization or political church each only increased their likelihood to proselytize by 15% (see Supplemental Appendices C and E for more magnitude comparisons). Jackson’s candidacy had an empowering effect on African American women that trumped any resource deficit and allowed them to perform activities for which a masculine advantage has been presumed because women typically earn less than men and are less likely to contribute to campaigns (Hansen, 1997; Schlozman et al., 1994). They are also less likely to influence the votes of others through verbal persuasion (Hansen, 1997).

Consistent with Hypothesis 2, the above findings suggest that symbolic empowerment had a differential effect on gender cohorts during the 1984 Democratic nominating contest. Subsequent analysis might profitably explore if a sense of social responsibility or collective uplift is an important factor for African American women’s political participation and whether the special racial and gender-based socializations they experience in civic or religious organizations might shape their understanding of citizenship in a way that is consequential for the type of political behavior cited here (Brown, 1994). Whereas the political activism of African American women may be experienced as service to others and a “labor of love” propelled by their friendships and social acceptance, it could also be experienced in a different, nuanced way by African American men as a vehicle for reputational enhancement and career advancement.⁶

Another factor that we expected to be significantly related to various forms of participation (H2) was the respondent’s age cohort—specifically, the civil rights generation. When we tested various models related to political behavior using this particular age-related variable as a control, we discovered that it did significantly predict one form of behavior—donating money. However, we believe that this result may be related to the fact that older participants are simply more likely to donate money, given that they presumably have more disposal income or wealth. Overall, our results with regard to H2 for this model were mixed. We found some evidence for women being more mobilized than men by Jackson’s campaign to donate money and to proselytize, whereas men were more mobilized by Jackson’s candidacy to attend a political rally. Considering a unique feature of the Jackson campaign was its link to Black students and youth who participated in local grassroots organizations and anti-apartheid movements (Franklin, 2014), the fact that age differences on the whole did not seem to be a major factor does not surprise because as previously reported membership in Black organizations working to improve the status of African Americans predicted three political behaviors: having donated money, attended a political meeting, and proselytizing.

Evidence From the 1988 NBES

Jackson’s candidacy in 1988 lacked the mobilizing effect it had on the African American electorate in 1984. See Supplemental Appendix F for full results. Readers can infer that being a “historic first” is critical for mobilizing the group for which Jackson represents both symbolically and descriptively, as we predicted in our first hypothesis. As in the model for 1984, membership in Black organizations working to improve the status of African Americans and belonging to a politically active church are consistent influences on the following activities: having donated money, attending a political meeting, and proselytizing. Those who disapproved of Reagan’s performance were also more likely to donate money in 1988 (rather than proselytize as they did in 1984).

Evidence From the 2008 ANES

Using binary logit, our analysis of the 2008 ANES yielded consistent findings for H1, which examines the relationship between support for Obama’s candidacy in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary and political behavior. When we compare African American men and women to other racial, ethnic, and gender groups, African American women stand out as being particularly mobilized by Obama’s primary campaign. African American women who voted for Obama in the primary, for instance, were 14% more likely to donate money, 18% more likely to post a lawn sign or a bumper sticker, 18% more likely to attend a rally and 20% more likely to engage in political talk than other Democrats. African American men were also 10% more likely to attend a rally during the 2008 presidential election if they had voted for Obama in the primary when compared with other Democrats. See Tables 3 and 4 and Supplemental Appendix G.

Table 3.

Effect of Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign on African American Political Behavior—Logit Regression.

Variables	Donated money	Vol. voter registration	Attended meeting	Proselytized
Primary vote for Obama	1.476 ** (0.601)	0.872 ** (0.341)	1.473 ** (0.606)	0.707 ** (0.331)
Bush approval	−0.164 (0.697)	0.176 (0.298)	[omitted]	0.211 (0.275)
Black linked fate	0.667 (0.318)	0.029 (0.129)	0.780 ** (0.329)	0.308 ** (0.126)
Female	0.271 (0.554)	0.204 (0.311)	0.690** (0.598)	0.216 (0.302)
Age	0.015 (0.020)	0.001 (0.010)	0.046 (0.022)	0.003 (0.010)
Ideology	−0.057 (0.288)	0.024 (0.163)	−0.268 (0.297)	0.010 (0.158)
Income	0.095* (0.051)	0.038 (0.028)	−0.043 (0.050)	0.028 (0.027)
Education	0.374* (0.226)	−0.080 (0.134)	0.579** (0.242)	0.127 (0.129)
Internal efficacy	0.561* (0.329)	−0.004 (0.155)	0.523 (0.364)	−0.021 (0.151)
South	−0.928 (0.577)	−0.649* (0.319)	−1.504** (0.620)	0.022 (0.314)
Constant	−8.271** (3.302)	−1.873 (1.432)	−8.478*** (2.391)	−2.654* (1.358)
N	215	215	180	215
Log likelihood	−48.721	−127.311	−44.168	−133.625
Pseudo R²	0.268	0.056	0.340	0.081

Source. 2008 ANES Time Series Study. Results are for African Americans only.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p <.01.

Table 4.

Predicted Probabilities for the Behavior of African Americans Voting for Obama in the 2008 Presidential Primary.

Predicted probabilities	All African Americans primary vote for Obama:Minimum → Maximum	African American women primary vote for Obama:Minimum → Maximum	African American men primary vote for Obama:Minimum → Maximum
Donated money	0.08 **	0.14 **	0.08
Sign/Button/Sticker	0.19 **	0.18 **	0.05
Attended rally	0.07 **	0.11 **	0.07
Political talk	0.17 **	0.23 **	0.11

Source. 2008 ANES Time Series Study. Results for All African Americans derived from Table 3 above and are derived using just African American voters. Results for African American men and women are compared with Democrats of all other racial and ethnic groups. See Supplemental Appendix G for full results.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

African American women have long been socialized to perform specific leadership tasks for local movements that were organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the SNCC. Even prior to the development of these organizations, African American women performed the role of change agents who overcame low wages, poor health, joblessness, inadequate housing, and domestic violence by navigating local bureaucracies and municipal courts while assertively demanding that the state provide basic resources and social services for their families (Levenstein, 2009). The importance of determining whether or not gender is a mediator of this relationship cannot be stressed enough especially when several historians have suggested African American women participated at higher rates than African American men in local, grassroots movements (Brown, 1994; Greene, 2005; Payne, 1990; Sartain, 2007) and that the condition of poverty combined with racial discrimination and active organizational membership instilled a sense of civic duty and normalized political behavior through a generative process that provided leadership experience, fundraising skills, public-speaking opportunities, and information networks (Greene, 2005; Levenstein, 2009; Nasstrom, 1999; Robnett, 1997; Sartain, 2007).

We have additional evidence to support our second hypothesis that symbolic empowerment would mobilize African American women specifically—and particularly those of the “civil rights” generation. Analysis of the 2008 ANES time series shows that African American women emerged as the strongest supporters of Obama’s candidacy. Refer to Table 6 for predicted probabilities. African American women were significantly more likely than African American men and other demographic groups to participate in all types of political behavior—including wearing a campaign button, posting a lawn sign or bumper sticker, engaging in political talk for or against a candidate, donating money to the Democratic party, or attending a campaign rally—if they had cast a vote for Obama in the 2008 Democratic nominating contest. Bush disapproval was also a consistently powerful predictor (see Supplemental Appendix G for full results). As with Jackson, this pattern of behavior on the part of African American women does not conform to gendered expectations and resource-based models. These results are based on models run separately for each participatory act, using only the African American sample from the 2008 ANES time series data.⁷

When we examine African Americans alone and not comparatively, we see that a primary vote for Obama is significant for three of the four types of nonvoting participation —donating money, attending a rally, and engaging in political talk (see Table 6). We also have evidence to support our second hypothesis that symbolic empowerment would vary by gender and age cohorts, specifically. In Table 5, we include interactions for sex and age cohorts, comparing them with a baseline of African American men of the civil rights and post-civil rights cohorts.⁸ African American women of the civil rights generation stood out among African Americans generally and were 1% more likely to donate money and 8% more likely to attend a rally (see Table 6). We believe this finding, given their intersectional group identity and the very type of behavior (donating money and attending a rally), to be consistent with prior research that has attributed high levels of racial group identification to a civil rights generation (Simpson, 1998), and has affirmed a documented history of social movement activism on the part of African American women (Brown, 1994; Greene, 2005; Levenstein, 2009; Nasstrom, 1999; Payne, 1990; Robnett, 1997; Sartain, 2007; White, 1999).

Table 5.

Gender and Cohort Analysis—African American Political Behavior in the 2008 American Presidential Election.

Variables	Donated money	Attended rally	Political talk

South	1.164 (1.888)	−1.467 (0.904)	0.248 (0.456)
Income	0.345* (0.178)	−0.013 (0.069)	0.050 (0.041)
Education	1.962** (0.807)	0.382 (0.321)	0.024 (0.185)
Religious service (attendance)	−0.171 (0.473)	0.057 (0.228)	0.259** (0.116)
Ideology	−1.194 (0.951)	−0.655* (0.388)	−0.105 (0.215)
Internal efficacy	2.195** (1.056)	0.052 (0.411)	−0.091 (0.218)
External efficacy	−0.083 (0.591)	0.174 (0.357)	−0.008 (0.174)
Bush disapproval	−4.598** (2.200)		0.622 (0.471)
Habitual voter	3.351 (3.183)	1.231 (1.285)	−0.773 (0.520)
Constant	−13.804** (5.984)	−5.483** (2.706)	−4.648** (2.068)
N =	151	125	151
Pseudo R²	0.649	0.332	0.211
Log likelihood	−13.845	−27.861	−78.552

Source. 2008 ANES Time Series Study. These models are run using only African Americans sampled who were not contacted by the Democratic Party. The model testing for likelihood of posting a sign/button/bumper sticker is not included as a primary vote for Obama did not significantly predict this action, nor did any specific age/gender cohort.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p <.01.

Note. These models include interactions for sex and age cohorts, and we compare them with a baseline of African American men of the civil rights and post-civil rights cohorts. Variables marked as “omitted” in some models were also included in the baseline in these models due to lack of variation.

Table 6.

Predicted Probabilities for Racial Group Identification and African American Political Behavior in the 2008 American Presidential Election.

Predicted probabilities	Female civil rights cohort:Minimum → Maximum	Female millennials:Minimum → Maximum	Male millennialsMinimum → Maximum
Donated money	0.01 *	0.13 **	N/A
Rally	0.08 *	N/A	N/A
Political talk	N/A	N/A	0.35 *

Source. 2008 ANES Time Series Study. Full results in Table 6 (above).

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Our findings with regard to increased mobilization among millennials’ and their political behavior in 2008 were initially surprising; however, this may be due to the Obama campaign’s targeted strategy of garnering small, online donations (see, for example, Holahan, 2008).⁹ As reported elsewhere, the campaign used digital outreach to target and mobilize voters in a way that Jackson never could via the Internet (Philpot et al., 2009). African American female millennials were 13% more likely to donate money, and male millennials were 35% more likely to engage in political talk than other African American age cohorts during the 2008 presidential election. While there is some research on the impact of Obama’s candidacy on millennials generally (e.g., Boys, 2010), we think these findings warrant further investigation of this millennial generation among African American voters, especially as some of this behavior may be gender-specific.

Although not a significant predictor of all forms of political behavior, in the 2008 presidential primary, racial group identification increased the likelihood of respondents participating in two kinds of behavior—attending a rally and engaging in political talk (refer back to Table 5). The measure for Habitual Voter is also largely an insignificant predictor of participation. The insignificance of this measure and the significance of both a vote for Obama and racial group identification suggest that the level of activity exhibited by African Americans in 2008 had nothing to do with whether or not they had voted in 2004. Newcomer or not, African Americans got a boost from supporting Obama in the 2008 primaries.¹⁰

Evidence From the 2012 ANES

Like Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign for the Democratic nomination, Obama’s 2012 reelection bid lacked the mobilizing effect of his 2008 presidential campaign as a “historic first” on African American voters. Neither a vote for Obama nor a sense of linked fate significantly predicted an increased likelihood of political behavior for African Americans in 2012. The only significant variable worth noting in 2012 was that older African Americans were more likely to donate money, post a lawn sign, bumper sticker or button, and to engage in political talk. When further examined by age/gender cohort, it appears that women and men of the civil rights era were still significantly more likely to give money than other African Americans during the 2012 campaign. Results seemingly suggest that a pattern consistent with the 1988 Jackson campaign manifested once Obama had taken the oath of office and emerged as an incumbent during the second campaign. Once the empowering effect of being a “historic first” had worn off, African American voters were not nearly as inspired or effectively mobilized by this second time around (see Supplemental Appendix H for 2012 results).

Conclusion

Now more than ever, research on the mobilization of African American voters is relevant to discussions about electoral outcomes, given the most recent midterm elections and select gubernatorial races. Considering the recent unexpected performance of such game-changing gubernatorial candidates as Stacy Abrams in Georgia, and Andrew Gillum in Florida, we as political scientists as well as the American public should have a sense that their historic candidacies still matter despite their losses and recognize the potential to build upon this symbolic empowerment framework so as to provide important insights into their campaigns (amid the Democratic takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives as the majority party as a result of the midterm elections). While neither Abrams nor Gillum became governor, the election results indicate the closest of contests and these two cases provide an opportunity to examine whether the concept of symbolic empowerment applies to the highest state-level executive office and in a parallel manner among African American voters across age and gender cohorts or whether it is a process unique to Democratic nominating contests. Both gubernatorial races mobilized African American voters, including thousands of whom were newly registered during the campaigns.

By comparison, we show the power of symbolic empowerment across two American presidential election cycles whereby historic firsts Jackson and Obama mobilize African Americans to not only vote, but also to participate in other meaningful ways. Using data from the 1984 and 1988 NBES, we show that African Americans were more likely to participate in various types of political behavior—for example, engaging in political talk for or against a candidate, donating money, and attending a political meeting—if they had favored Jackson. African American women in particular were more likely to donate money and engage in political talk during the 1984 election cycle, if they favored Jackson’s campaign. Another, perhaps more fundamental, finding is that Jackson’s candidacy in 1988 had no such mobilizing effect on the African American electorate. Given that 2016 was no longer a historic first but represented Hillary Clinton’s second bid for the Democratic nomination, future research might consider whether, similar to Jackson’s second run in 1988, empowerment effects on women were absent or less in 2016 than in 2008. Using data from the 2008 ANES, we show that African American women were significantly more likely than African American men and other demographic groups to participate in all types of political behavior—including wearing a campaign button, posting a lawn sign or bumper sticker, engaging in political talk for or against a candidate, donating money to the Democratic party, or attending a campaign rally—if they had favored Obama. Bush disapproval in 2008 like Reagan disapproval in 1984 was also a predictor. In addition, the habitual voter measure did not reach statistical significance among those African Americans who had not been mobilized through direct party contact. Such a result suggests that Obama supporters in 2008 were not already inclined to participate in the process—at least, not based on their past performance records or party efforts. Excitement for Obama’s 2012 campaign among African Americans dwindled somewhat, similar to that of Jackson’s 1988 campaign, in that a vote for Obama in 2012 did not significantly predict political behavior among African Americans. Though, as we mentioned earlier, the fact that we are analyzing primary support for candidates in 1984, 1988, and 2008 makes the 2012 analysis less reliable for testing our theory.

Our analysis of age cohorts by gender and type of behavior serves to further broaden our knowledge of various types of political behavior for African Americans. The Civil Rights age cohort—and in the case of Obama’s candidacy, women of the Civil Rights era particularly—stood out as being especially mobilized during the 2008 presidential campaign, while male and female millennials also stood out in terms of political talk and donating money, respectively. In the case of Jackson’s candidacy, the Civil Rights generation’s higher propensity to donate money is perhaps explained away by the likelihood that they have more disposable income for which to donate than younger generations. However, in the case of Obama’s candidacy, the increased response from women of the Civil Rights generation seems suggestive of H2, that social cues from this generation may make them more receptive to the significance of a “historic first” candidacy, at least when it comes to their likelihood to donate money or attend a rally. As suggested earlier, millennial men and women were empowered by Obama’s candidacy in 2008 (and at levels that warrant further exploration).

Both candidates effectively mobilized African American voters in general and African American female voters in particular. Our results are consistent with literature on “the new Black voter” for these election cycles; however, we add depth to this research by demonstrating that mobilization effects went beyond voting to include nonvoting participation across age and gender cohorts. Obama’s candidacy in 2008 like that of Jackson’s in 1984 had an empowering effect on African American women that trumped any resource deficit. Racial group identification also aided Obama’s victory among African American men and women—henceforth, it puts to rest the notion that African American women were torn over their decision to support Obama over Clinton in the 2008 Democratic nominating contest (see, for example, Simien, 2009, for consistent findings). The expectation that a resource-based model inclusive of education and income ought to positively influence behavior loses traction when African Americans in general and African American women in particular report higher levels of political activity and outperform other groups despite their low socioeconomic status. All things considered, the present study offers a more expansive model of political behaviors for African Americans who participated in the 1984, 1988, and 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. Such a theory of symbolic empowerment is adaptable and can be applied to subsequent American presidential elections—2016 and 2020—as well as other lower-level candidate races previously mentioned—Stacy Abrams and Andrew Gillum—whereby increasingly more historic firsts are running for statewide public office and bringing formerly inactive people into the electoral process.

Supplemental Material

Appendix-A-to-H-for-online-Revised-11.11.19 – Supplemental material for Black Votes Count, But Do They Matter? Symbolic Empowerment and the Jackson-Obama Mobilizing Effect on Gender and Age Cohorts

Supplemental material, Appendix-A-to-H-for-online-Revised-11.11.19 for Black Votes Count, But Do They Matter? Symbolic Empowerment and the Jackson-Obama Mobilizing Effect on Gender and Age Cohorts by Evelyn M. Simien and Sarah Cote Hampson in American Politics Research

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Evelyn M. Simien

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Evelyn M. Simien is a professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. She is the author of two books, Black Feminist Voices in Politics (SUNY Press, 2006) and Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes US Politics (Oxford UP, 2015).

Sarah Cote Hampson is an assistant professor of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of Washington Tacoma. She is the author of The Balance Gap: Working Mothers and the Limits of the Law (Stanford UP, 2017).

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