Research

Publications

“Racial Cues from Unfamiliar Sources and Their Effects on Americans’ Policy Preferences,” forthcoming in Journal of Experimental Political Science.

Americans increasingly confront policy messages not from high-profile political figures, but from everyday citizens. While much is known about the effects of racial source cues from well-known political figures, less is known about how subtle racial cues from non-recognizable sources affect Americans’ support for policies that are race-targeted and those that are not. In this paper, I conduct a randomized experiment that varies a cue of the source’s racial identity and the type of policy for which the source advocates. I uncover little evidence for the hypothesis that subtle racial source cues lead Americans to racialize putatively race-neutral policies. I find instead that subtle cues of a Black vs. White source decrease support for only race-targeted policies. I unpack two distinct mechanisms that may be driving this finding. Both point to the importance of who advocates for race-targeted policies in garnering the support they need to come to fruition.

“Audit Experiments of Racial Discrimination and the Importance of Symmetry in Exposure to Cues” (with Thomas Leavitt), in Political Analysis.

Researchers are often interested in whether discrimination on the basis of racial cues persists above and beyond discrimination on the basis of non-racial attributes that decision-makers infer from such cues. We show that existing audit experiments may be unable to parse these explanations because of an asymmetry in when decision-makers—e.g., employers, legislators, etc.—are exposed to racial cues and additional signals intended to rule out discrimination due to other inferred attributes. For example, an email audit experiment of legislators may provide a common signal of party in emails with different race signals in order to rule out discrimination due to legislators’ strategic incentives to appeal to co-partisans. In these designs, race is signaled by the name in the email address (at which point legislators can choose whether to open the email), but party is signaled only upon opening the email. We derive the bias that results from this asymmetry and then propose two distinct solutions. The first uses both the name and subject line to expose legislators to cues before the decision to open. The second crafts the email to ensure no discrimination in opening and then exposes legislators to cues in the body of the email after the decision to open. This second solution works when researchers do not measure opening, but can be improved when researchers do measure opening, even if with error.

"Responsiveness to Co-Ethnics and Co-Minorities: Evidence from an Audit Experiment of State Legislators" (with Julia M. Rubio), in Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, October 2023.

How do legislators respond to coethnic and cominority constituents? We conduct an audit study of all state legislators to explore white legislators’ responsiveness to different minority groups and minority group legislators’ responsiveness to each other. Black and Latino Americans currently make up about one-third of the overall U.S. population and an even larger share of some state populations. In light of this growing diversification of the American electorate, legislators may have incentives to appeal to a broad racial constituency. In our experiment, state legislators are randomly assigned to receive an email from a white, Black, or Latino constituent. Our findings suggest a lack of legislators’ discrimination, on average, against Black relative to white constituents. Instead, we find that all legislators, on average, respond more to both white and Black constituents relative to Latinos. The evidence suggests that Black legislators do not exhibit coethnic solidarity toward their Black constituents or cominority solidarity toward their Latino constituents; however, Latinos do exhibit coethnic and cominority solidarity (though there are too few Latino legislators to definitively establish this claim). We also estimate effects among white legislators by party and racial composition of districts in order to provide suggestive evidence for white legislators’ intrinsic vs. strategic motivations.

"Language, Skin Tone, and Attitudes toward Puerto Rico in the Aftermath of Hurricane Maria," in American Political Science Review, October 2022.

Understanding the factors that lead Americans to racialize putatively race-neutral policies is increasingly important in a diversifying society. This paper focuses on the case of disaster relief for Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. I draw on a framework of racial and ethnic subordination with two dimensions: inferiority–superiority, operationalized by skin color, and foreignness–Americanness, operationalized by language. I conduct a nationally representative survey experiment that varies the skin tone (light or dark) and language (English or Spanish) of otherwise similar actors who portray hurricane victims. The results suggest that two stigmatized attributes, dark skin and foreign language, do not always render an individual “doubly stigmatized.” Instead, for an already racialized group like Puerto Ricans, perceived foreignness may offset Americans’ stereotypes about the cultural pathologies of a racial underclass. Therefore, this paper underscores the importance of a multidimensional and intersectional approach to the study of racial and ethnic politics.

"The Continuing Dilemma of Race and Class in the Study of American Political Behavior" (with Fredrick C. Harris), in Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 24, May 2021.

This article traces the development of the study of race and class in American political behavior. It starts by challenging the American Exceptionalism thesis, namely, its premises regarding the diminutive role of social class and the absence of serious discussions about race. It then critically reviews the conventional scholarship on American political behavior and its reliance on objective indicators of social class as predictors of political preferences and participation. The article also highlights a number of studies that have conceived of class as an important social identity and have thus measured it subjectively. It then follows with a discussion on the surge of identity studies in the field of race, ethnicity, and politics (REP) and the turn towards an intersectional approach that rarely includes social class. The article ends with a discussion of the handful of studies that do consider the intersections of race and class, and underscores the need for more research of this type to advance our understanding of contemporary American political behavior.

"Turnout and Weather Disruptions: Survey Evidence from the 2012 Presidential Election in the Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy" (with Robert Shapiro and M. Narayani Lasala-Blanco), in Electoral Studies, Vol. 45, February 2017.

This paper examines the rational choice reasoning that is used to explain the correlation between low voter turnout and the disruptions caused by weather-related phenomena in the United States. Using in-person as well as phone survey data collected in New York City where the damage and disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy varied by district and even by city blocks, we explore, more directly than one can with aggregate data, whether individuals who were more affected by the disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy were more or less likely to vote in the 2012 Presidential Election that took place while voters still struggled with the devastation of the hurricane and unusually low temperatures. Contrary to the findings of other scholars who use aggregate data to examine similar questions, we find that there is no difference in the likelihood to vote between citizens who experienced greater discomfort and those who experienced no discomfort even in non-competitive districts. We theorize that this is in part due to the resilience to costs and higher levels of political engagement that vulnerable groups develop under certain institutional conditions.

Under Review

"Navigating the Mismeasurement of Intermediary Variables in Message-based Experiments" (with Thomas Leavitt). Minor revisions.

Message-based experiments, such as audit and voter mobilization studies, often involve intermediary variables -- actions subjects must take to actually receive treatment. In the vast number of message-based experiments conducted via email, opening the email is a crucial intermediary step, which researchers measure via tracking pixels. Researchers rely on email opens both as an outcome of interest in its own right and as a condition for estimating treatment effects on subsequent behaviors. However, email opening is often measured with error due to software that blocks open tracking, leading to misclassification of some openers as non-openers. This paper derives the bias in causal effect estimation introduced by this overlooked form of measurement error. Despite this bias, we show that existing methods still provide insight into average effects among meaningful subgroups. When researchers seek to estimate an average effect beyond that of a specific subgroup, we show how they can employ sensitivity analyses to varying degrees of measurement error. By clarifying the causal conclusions justified by current message-based experiments and introducing practical methodological improvements, this paper helps researchers address the challenges of mismeasuring intermediary variables in the broad class of message-based experiments conducted via email.

"Do Legislators Represent Racial Minority Opinions? Evidence on Disparities at the Congressional District Level." Revise & resubmit.

The expectation in a representative democracy is that the preferences of the public should influence the voting behavior of elected officials in Congress. Most scholars agree that this is indeed the case, but they have recently begun to ask whose opinions are most influential. Members of Congress seem to disproportionately represent the interests of copartisans and affluent Americans. The literature speaks less to the nature of the relationship between the political preferences of ethnoracial minorities and the voting behavior of members of Congress. Is there also a racial disparity in representation, even after accounting for partisanship? Are White Americans better represented in government decisions than are African Americans and Latinos? This paper explores the relationship between congressional district-level public opinion on proposed bills, broken down by racial, partisan, and income group, and the roll call votes of House members on those same bills. I find evidence of overresponsiveness by members of Congress to copartisan and high-income constituents, and underresponsiveness to Blacks. In some cases, minorities' preferences are underrepresented even by representatives of their own parties, on race-targeted policies, and in majority-minority districts.

"‘¿Tu lucha es mi lucha?’ Latinos’ Attitudes toward Black Lives Matter." Revise & resubmit.

There is evidence of growing Latino-Black solidarity amidst the national conversation on racial inequality that reached its zenith in the summer of 2020. Latinos were part of the multiracial coalition that took to the streets to protest the death of George Floyd, for example, and a majority of Latinos have expressed support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement more broadly. Yet, one can also point to instances of anti-Black attitudes among Latinos. Political scientists have found that white anti-Blackness in general, and anti-BLM sentiment in particular, are largely explained by racial animus, symbolic racism, and Republican partisanship. Latinos’ attitudes toward BLM, on the other hand, are best understood in the context of inter-minority relations in the US. I conduct an online survey experiment among Latino respondents to understand their support for BLM, and find that the predictive role of perceived discrimination and Black-Latino commonality might be overstated, or unevenly distributed, among the Latino population. Despite the importance of a sense of commonality in predicting Latinos’ support for Black issues and BLM, emphasizing the experiences that the two groups share with the criminal justice system can actually backfire among some subgroups (i.e., lead to decreased support for the movement) and have minimal to no effect in others. This finding has important implications for political messaging and partisan strategy, as well as for community organizing.

In Progress

"Puerto Rico Public Opinion Laboratory / Laboratorio Puertorriqueño de Opinión Pública."

"More than the 'Usual Third?' Understanding Latino Support for the Republican Party."

"The Role of Women's Recruiting Groups in New York Politics."

Public Writing

“Survey of the Puerto Rican Electorate” / “Encuesta sobre el electorado puertorriqueño” in 9 Millones, 2020.

"Poor Weather Doesn't Dissuade Voting in Noncompetitive Elections--Not Even Hurricane Sandy Did in 2012" (with Robert Shapiro and M. Narayani Lasala-Blanco) in United States Politics and Policy, London School of Economics, 2017.