Voters and parties in the Rainbow Nation: Race and elections in the new South Africa

This dissertation develops a theoretical framework for thinking about how ethnic divisions in the voting population affect election outcomes, namely the emergence of bloc voting by ethnic groups, or "ethnic census" style elections. More specifically, it argues that, in ethnically divided countries, ethnicity becomes the primary informational shortcut used by voters to evaluate political options in the face of uncertainty. This induces parties to compete on the basis of ethnic reputation or ethnic credentials rather than policy proposals, ideology, or general competency. The use of ethnic cues on their own does not result in the convergence of voting behavior within groups, however. Multiple parties can acquire the credentials to compete for a particular group's vote, leading to a failure by voters in the group to coordinate their voting behavior. Ethnic census outcomes therefore reflect in large part the give and take of competition between parties---how parties acquire credentials, prevent competitors from acquiring credentials, and fight off competitors that share credentials. The dissertation tests implications of the framework by looking at patterns of party behavior and voting in recent South African elections. It shows that South African voters indeed evaluate parties in terms of their ethnic (i.e. racial) credentials, and that these evaluations affect patterns of party support. As a result, persuasion campaigns by South African parties have relied heavily on the use and manipulation of "racial profiles," or evaluations of which groups a party is likely to favor in the future based on its behavior in the past. Furthermore, the distribution of racial profiles is more useful than patterns of partisanship for explaining when parties choose persuasion versus mobilization strategies. Finally, although South African voters use racial information in evaluating parties, this does not mean that South African electoral outcomes are set in stone. Current patterns of bloc voting depend as much on how parties (particularly the ANC) have defended their turf, preventing competitors from gaining new credentials and eliminating rivals that share credentials. South Africa's ethnic census elections are thus explained both by the dominance of race as an informational shortcut and the competitive behavior of political parties.