MEASURING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHITE VOTING AND POLLING ON INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE

Major questions remain about the extent and political significance of White racial attitudes. In this paper, we examine an alternative source of data on racial attitudes—actual voting on the purely symbolic repeal of antimiscegenation referenda. By applying cross-level (ecological) inference methods to this unique data, we find, surprisingly, that White voting behavior differs dramatically from what would be predicted based on previous survey research on public and private attitudes.