Take One for the Team? Limits of Shared Ethnicity and Candidate Preferences

This study tests the theory of politicized ethnic identity’s shaping Latino political behavior. The authors consider whether candidate quality moderates the effects of political ethnic attachments on co-ethnic candidate preferences. Ordered logistic regression models are developed to predict Latino voter preferences for co-ethnic candidates with varied degrees of qualification. Candidate quality significantly mitigates collective ethnic political behavior, yet the authors find Latinos with strong ethnic attachments remain inclined to prefer a co-ethnic even when less qualified than a non-Latino candidate. Political ethnic identity theory is useful in explaining minority political behavior, but there are boundaries to collective identity’s shaping political preferences.