Skin Tone and the Moderating Effect of Partisanship on Assessments of Elected Officials of Color

We explore whether the effects of colorism on evaluations of politicians is moderated by shared partisanship. We hypothesize that colorism will lead Whites to rate darker elected officials of color more poorly. Additionally, we hypothesize that partisanship will moderate this relationship with Whites being less likely to engage in colorism when evaluating co-partisans. We test our hypotheses using a crowd-sourced measure of skin tone based on the Massey-Martin index and the 2016, 2018, and 2020 Congressional Election Studies. We find that darker-skinned elected officials of color from a different party receive less support among Whites. In contrast, we find that skin tone does not influence support for co-partisan elected officials of color. Additional analysis demonstrates that the effect of colorism on evaluation of out-group partisans is strongest for Whites who score high on a racial conservatism measure.