ABSTRACT
Black political candidates suffer from negative stereotypes and white bloc voting. Only efforts to alter the racial consciousness of the white working class in general are likely to mitigate poor-white opposition to black candidates. Some whites, of course, do vote for black candidates and figure prominently in determining their victories. Whites reported that 56 percent of blacks and 54 percent of whites would vote on the basis of race in an electoral contest between a white and a black candidate. A good starting place, however, is an examination of white perceptions of black political candidates. Despite the critical interaction between a black candidate’s chances for victory and white crossover voting, however, little is known about the latter aside from the observation that black candidates’ shares of the vote will be a product of the crossover of whites, minus the crossover of blacks, plus black turnout and registration.
