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are expected to be related inversely to identification with the Democratic Party and related
positively to identification with the Republican Party.
Based on previous research (Tate 1993; Dawson 1994), age is expected to have a direct
relationship with Democratic identification and an inverse relationship with Republican
identification. The effect of gender is more problematic. Dawson finds that Black women are
more likely to identify themselves with the Democratic Party, but Tate presents evidence to the
contrary. Nonetheless, since women are more likely than men to align themselves with the
Democratic Party, I expect Black women to identify themselves with the Democratic Party more
so than Black men. Additionally, I hypothesize that Blacks living in the South Blacks will be
more Democratic than Blacks outside the South. This would be consistent with what is found in
the literature (Dawson 1994). In terms of political ideology, Blacks support the liberal agenda
and liberalism has a direct relationship with Black identification with the Democratic Party
(Dawson 1994). Therefore, the hypothesis is that Black liberals will identify themselves as
Democrats and Black conservatives as Republicans. The Democratic Party and labor unions have
been political allies for decades (Walters 1988). While this relationship is not as strong today as it
was in the past, the bond between the Democratic Party and labor unions is still healthy.
Therefore, I hypothesize that Blacks who are members of a labor union or living with someone
who is a member are likely to be Democrats.
DATA AND METHODS
Using Ordinary Least Squares regression, I analyze data taken from the 1996 National
Black Election Study (NBES). Its sample size is 1,216 voting-age Black respondents in the pre-
election wave and 854 respondents in the post-election wave (the response rate in the pre-election
Convention