The Impact of Economic Conditions on the Voting Behavior of Blacks.” Western Political Quarterly 45:221

NOTE: The authors wish to acknowledge the useful insights of John Hibbing. uring the past quarter century, the increase in the size of the black middle class and the declining economic status of the black lower class have led analysts to explore again the impact of economic status on black political behavior and attitudes. There is little evidence, however, about the impact of income and other indica-tors of economic well-being on partisan choice, that is, on the likeli-hood of Republican party identification and voting among members of the black middle class. Most voting analysts largely ignore variations in the partisan preferences of blacks, viewing them, for all practical purposes, as homogeneous. Yet, once in a while journalists and others will raise the question of whether the Republican party can begin to lure blacks back to their traditional (post Civil War, pre-New Deal) home. This speculation was stimulated by the 1990 U.S. House elec-tions when Gary Franks, a black Republican, won one of Connecticut’s House seats and when exit polls indicated a larger than usual black Republican vote nationally (Dionne and Morin 1990).2 Researchers have been much more interested in blacks ’ views of Jesse Jackson (Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson 1989) or the possibility of a black third party (Gurin et al. 1989; Pinderhughes 1986; Marable 1985; Walters 1988) than in the seemingly remote possibility of signif-icant black Republican vote. And other recent academic research on 1 The literature on the impact of socioeconomic status differences on opinions toward public issues is now fairly extensive (Welch and Combs 1985; Gilliam and Whitb