Notes on Donald Sterling and Partisan Divide

Initial polling on the Donald Sterling incident revealed a significant partisan divide in public support for the NBA's decision to force him to sell the Los Angeles Clippers.
A HuffPost/YouGov poll indicated that 68% of Democrats supported the forced sale, compared to only 26% of Republicans.
This partisan divide reflects a broader trend of Democrats and Republicans holding increasingly separate views on race-related issues.

Earlier polls showed similar partisan differences in reactions to the George Zimmerman verdict and the Academy Award for Best Picture win for "12 Years a Slave."
Historically, Democrats and Republicans did not always differ so sharply on racial controversies.
There was relatively little partisan division in public responses to the 1984 Bernhard Goetz subway shooting, the O.J. Simpson verdict, and the Don Imus racial comments incident.
In the Imus case, Democrats were only 16 percentage points more likely than Republicans to support his firing.

Several factors could explain the varying levels of partisan polarization in these racial controversies.
A significant explanation involves the closer alignment of racial attitudes and partisan attachments during the Obama era.

The correlation between Republican Party identification and opposition to both affirmative action and interracial dating notably increased during Obama's presidency, as shown in Pew Polls.
This increased polarization of partisan attachments by racial attitudes persists even after controlling for non-racial factors.
Analyses of post-Obama surveys from the General Social Survey and the American National Election Study confirm this trend.

Party identification is not the only political attitude that has become more polarized by racial attitudes.
Mass policy preferences, congressional vote choices, and even perceptions of Portuguese Water Dogs (the Obamas' dog breed) have been increasingly influenced by race-related considerations during Obama's presidency.
This increasing racialization of American politics leads to Democrats and Republicans viewing race-infused controversies, such as the Zimmerman Trial, the Sterling Incident, and the Cliven Bundy Standoff, through divergent lenses.