REGINA P. BRANTON
Rice University
Voting in Initiative Elections: Does the Context
of Racial and Ethnic Diversity Matter?

Does the racial and ethnic diversity of the area in which a voter lives affect his or her political behavior? Scholars have suggested a range of such effects, but these conclusions have questionable generalizability because the behavior they typically examine is racially charged. In this article, I test more general affects of racial and ethnic context by examining political behavior on a range of issues, both racially relevant and racially neutral. Specifically, I examine the impact of the racial and ethnic context on individual-level voting by whites in initiative elections. Merging 1996 and 1998 Voter News Service state exit poll survey data and United States Census Bureau contextual data, I find that there is a distinct relationship between racial and ethnic diversity and white voting behavior on racially relevant ballot initiatives, but that racial diversity does not have a consistent impact on voting on race-neutral initiatives.