The Political Consequences of Ethnic Tension: Theory and Evidence

By counting the number of articles published in major US newspapers containing
carefully selected keywords, we construct a time varying measure of ethnic tension.
Then, we empirically test the predictions of a theoretical model by using the
aforementioned measure, and investigate how ethnic tension affects presidential
approval ratings by different ethnic groups. Our results show that while ethnic tension
decreases the approval by white voters, the opposite is true for the approval by African
American voters. Further scrutiny reveals that this may be explained by the fact that
government transfers to African Americans increase as a result of higher ethnic tension.