• DOI:10.1086/696619
• Corpus ID: 148940141

Clear as Black and White: The Effects of Ambiguous Rhetoric Depend on Candidate Race

@article{Piston2018ClearAB,
  title={Clear as Black and White: The Effects of Ambiguous Rhetoric Depend on Candidate Race},
  author={Spencer Piston and Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan and Kerri Milita},
  journal={The Journal of Politics},
  year={2018},
  volume={80},
  pages={662 - 674}
}

• Spencer Piston, Yanna Krupnikov, +1 author Kerri Milita
• Published 1 March 2018
• Economics
• The Journal of Politics

Campaign advisors and political scientists have long acknowledged the benefits of ambiguous position taking. We argue, however, that these benefits do not extend to black candidates facing nonblack voters. When a white candidate makes vague statements, many of these voters project their own policy positions onto the candidate, increasing support for the candidate. But they are less likely to extend black candidates the same courtesy. We test these claims with an original two-wave survey experiment varying the race of male candidates on a national sample of nonblack voters. We find that ambiguity boosts support for white male candidates but not for black male candidates. In fact, black male candidates who make ambiguous statements are actually punished for doing so by racially prejudiced voters. These results clarify limits on the utility of the electoral strategy of ambiguity and identify a key condition under which prejudice shapes voter behavior.