Behavioral Characteristics And Influence Of Ethnic Minorities In The United States Presidential Election In The Post-Cold War Research

Since the Cold War, for the rapid enlargement of population scale and the rising socioeconomic status, ethnic minority has been playing an increasingly important role in the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, their behavioral characteristic in the presidential election presents some new features.In terms of behavioral characteristic, Hispanic Americans, African Americans and Asian Americans have quite a lot in common as well as plenty of differences in interest demand, which lead to behavioral diversities in the election. As for partisanship, ethnic minority's general characteristic is the unity of certainty and uncertainty, in which African Americans have the strongest partisan loyalty, followed by Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans are the weakest. As for participation enthusiasm, ethnic minority has changed from the former passive participants into active participants today, from the previous voters into the presidential candidates. At the same time, ethnic minority has a constantly rising influence on the presidential election, which mainly comes from five reasons:the first reason is the enlargement of ethnic minority voters and their rising political participation enthusiasm; the second reason is the presidential campaign system based on electoral vote model is increasingly dependent on the role of ethnic minority; the third reason is the large number of ethnic minority who appear as swing electors in swing states are able to affect the entire election result; the fourth reason is ethnic minority has become an important source of campaign fund for the presidential candidates; the fifth reason is minority-related issues are becoming increasingly important in the presidential election. However, Hispanics' low participation rate, Africans' suffering of partisan prejudice, and Asians' political apathy have made ethnic minority fail to fulfill their potential influence in the election.Generally speaking, the study of ethnic minority's behavioral characteristic and influence in the U.S. presidential election can not only help understand and prospect the changes of ethnic minority's role and status in the U.S. electoral politics, explore ethnic minority's impact on American society, but also can help enrich American electoral politics research and American ethnic minority research.