Denial of racial discrimination [2016 ANES]

The 2018 CCES (Cooperative Congressional Election Survey) included an item asking for attitudes about the item: "White people in the U.S. have certain advantages because of the color of their skin". Schaffner 2020 ("The Heightened Importance of Racism and Sexism in the 2018 U.S. Midterm Elections") used this item in a "denial of racism" measure, which Schaffner 2020 in the title and elsewhere reduced to "racism". The included items permitted Schaffner 2020 to note that higher values of the "denial of racism" measure associate with voting for Republican candidates for president and the House (e.g., in Figure 2).

The 2018 CCES did not include a parallel item about whether White people in the United States have certain disadvantages, but the 2016 American National Election Studies Time Series Study has a set of items that permits comparison of denial of discrimination against certain groups. Here are results for the racial groups asked about, from the web sample with weights applied. Non-responses are included in the percentages, and error bars indicate ends of 95% confidence intervals:

Here are the above data, disaggregated by racial groups:

Here are data for Whites, with point estimates indicating responses by partisanship:

So these data indicate that a higher percentage of White Republicans than of White Democrats deny that there is discrimination against Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. But these data also indicate that a higher percentage of White Democrats than of White Republicans deny that there is discrimination against Whites.

Let's check the ANES 2016 Time Series Study data to see how well each "denial of discrimination" measure predicts two-party vote choice in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, using the full sample (not only Whites):

So these data indicate that denial of discrimination against Whites was at least as good of a predictor of 2016 U.S. presidential election two-party vote choice as denial of discrimination against Blacks was, and was a better predictor than discrimination against Hispanics and discrimination against Asians.

For results below, the sample is limited to Whites:

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I think that results are more informative measuring denial of discrimination against more than one racial group, especially given evidence that Republicans and Democrats advantage different racial groups. I think it's worth considering why the persons who decide which items to include on the CCES didn't include a parallel item about whether White people in the United States have certain disadvantages.

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NOTES

1. The other 2018 CCES item that Schaffner 2020 used for the "denial of racism" measure is: "Racial problems in the U.S. are rare, isolated situations". DeSante and Smith 2017 referred to this item as a measure of "acknowledgment of institutional racism", but this item does not refer to institutions and uses "racial problems" instead of "racism". These seem like suboptimal choices for trying to measure "acknowledgment of institutional racism".

2. ANES 2016 citations:

The American National Election Studies (ANES). 2016. ANES 2012 Time Series Study. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-05-17. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR35157.v1.

ANES. 2017. "User's Guide and Codebook for the ANES 2016 Time Series Study". Ann Arbor, MI, and Palo Alto, CA: The University of Michigan and Stanford University.

3. CCES 2018 citation:

Stephen Ansolabehere, Brian F. Schaffner, and Sam Luks. Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 2018: Common Content. [Computer File] Release 2: August 28, 2019. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University [producer] http://cces.gov.harvard.edu.

4. Code for the denial of discrimination analyses.