Race, Religion and Politics: A Look at the Election Impacts

Racially insensitive attitudes toward blacks cost Barack Obama some votes, and to a lesser extent negative views on Mormonism hurt Mitt Romney politically. But those are countered by a favorable tilt toward the candidates among Americans who express more awareness of racial discrimination or who hold favorable views of Mormons.

The racial effect is the larger one, showing strongly in views of whether blacks are discriminated against. Sixty-two percent of non-blacks in this ABC News/Washington Post poll think blacks in their communities don’t experience racial discrimination (a view at odds with what most blacks themselves report). Among non-black registered voters who see no such discrimination, Romney leads Obama by 25 percentage points, 59-34 percent. Among non-blacks who do see discrimination, by contrast, Obama leads, 56-37 percent. (Blacks themselves support Obama nearly unanimously.)

Effects on vote preference also appear among non-blacks based on their views of whether blacks in their community try as hard as people of other races to get ahead – 19 percent think not. In that group 34 percent of registered voters support Obama; among those who do think blacks try as hard, he gets 44 percent support.

In a third example, 81 percent of non-blacks in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, say they’d be comfortable with a close relative of theirs marrying a person who is black; fewer, 65 percent, would be “entirely” comfortable with this. Registered voters who are uncomfortable with this idea are more apt to support Romney by a wide margin – 69 percent, vs. 48 percent for him among those who are comfortable with it.
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