Racial attitudes toward African American candidates are partially explained by symbolic racism, which has replaced overt racism in responses to these candidates. However, as typically operationalized, symbolic racism as applied to candidate assessments fails to account for the emotions generated by a political campaign. Symbolic racism’s effects are moderated when emotional responses to Barack Obama are included in a candidate evaluation model, while emotions remain an important predictor. While symbolic racism and negative emotions lower evaluations, the presence of the positive emotions generated by the 2012 campaign counteracted both. Inclusion of both symbolic racism and emotion is necessary to understand perceptions of Obama as a black presidential candidate.
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