Replication Data for: African American Turnout and African American Candidates

Do minority voters respond to co-racial or co-ethnic candidates? That is does the increased chance of substantive representation translate into increased participation? Here, we focus on this question among African American voters. While much of the empirical literature on this question has produced conflicting answers, recent studies suggest that minority candidates can significantly increase minority turnout. We argue that past work on this topic does not adequately account for the fact that minority voters in places with minority candidates may systematically differ in their level of participation than minority voters in places without minority candidates. In this study we address the weakness of previous research designs and offer a new design that exploits the redistricting process to gain additional leverage over this question. The redistricting process allows us to correctly model the selection process and ensure that voters who were moved to districts with African American candidates through the redistricting process are comparable to voters that remained in existing districts with white candidates. We find little evidence that African American voter turnout increases when voters are moved to African America candidates. We find some evidence that white voters, however, tend to vote at lower rates when they are represented by African American candidates.

少数族裔选民是否会对同种族或同族裔的候选人作出回应？换言之，实质性代表权（substantive representation）的提升是否会转化为选民参与度的提高？
本研究聚焦于非裔美国人（African American）选民群体的这一议题。尽管此前围绕该问题的大量经验研究结论莫衷一是，但近期研究表明，少数族裔候选人可显著提升少数族裔的投票率。
我们认为，过往相关研究未能充分考量一项事实：相较于无少数族裔候选人的选区，设有少数族裔候选人的选区中的少数族裔选民，其投票参与水平可能存在系统性差异。
本研究针对既往研究设计的缺陷展开改进，并提出一种全新的研究框架——借助选区重划（redistricting）流程，为解答该问题提供更强的因果识别效力。
选区重划流程可令我们准确建模候选人选拔过程，并确保那些通过选区重划被划入设有非裔美国人候选人选区的选民，与留在原有白人候选人选区的选民具有可比性。
我们发现，几乎没有证据表明，当选民被划入设有非裔美国人候选人的选区时，非裔美国人的投票率会出现提升。
不过，我们找到了一定证据表明，若白人选民由非裔美国人候选人代表，其投票参与率往往会有所下降。