Charting the Political Landscape
Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Tuesday, August 31 2010
Snapshot: Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto
Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto is an assistant professor of political science in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Her research focuses on race and ethnic politics, immigration, and campaigns and elections. She is interested in how cognition can shape the processing of political information within a dynamic political environment of changing racial and ethnic demographics.
Her ongoing research projects include campaign media effects, black-Latino intergroup relations, comparative race studies, and attitudes toward immigration. She is currently examining how the 2008 presidential campaign ads shaped public opinion and vote choice.
In 2008, DeFrancesco Soto was Northwestern University’s principal investigator for the Big Ten Battleground Poll, a public opinion survey of voters for the 2008 presidential election.
The 32-year-old DeFrancesco Soto, who lives in South Chicago, is on the board of Atlanta-based Alliance for Digital Equality.
Womenetics: Your work focuses on campaigns and elections underpinned by the intersection of political psychology and race and ethnic politics. What is political psychology?
Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto: Political psychology is about understanding how human thought and emotion shape political behavior. Politics refers to a collection of people and institutions, but when you break it down politics is made up of individual actors. As a result, to get an accurate analysis of politics we have to break it down to the individual level and even further we need to peek around what our individual thoughts and emotions are that shape how voters vote, how legislators legislate, and how all the moving pieces move together.
The field of political psychology basically takes psychology and uses it to explain political outcomes. For example, we know from social psychology that our brains navigate the world by categorizing: chairs, colors, humans, etc. We need to chunk up information because if we had to process each new stimulus from scratch our brain would overload. As a result our brain prefers to rely on informational shortcuts that are based on categorizations such as Republicans, Democrats. Categorization of people around us leads to the establishment of social group identities. At its most basic level, this categorization differentiates by in group/out group. Once this differentiation is in place, then more specific feelings and associations are added on. For example, Republicans are the party of smaller government, and Democrats provide for more social services.
Womenetics: How did you get interested in this subject?
DeFrancesco Soto: I came to political psychology when I was writing my dissertation in order to answer my main question of how Latinos incorporate ethnicity into their voting behavior. Under standard political science theories there was no explanation for why Latinos would vote against their economic interests to simply support a Latino candidate who was from a different party. This behavior was labeled as irrational, and that was the end of that. However, I was not satisfied with that answer and sought to look into how our hearts and minds were driving our decisions.
Womenetics: Why does ethnicity trump partisanship, and when does or doesn’t it happen?
DeFrancesco Soto: Both ethnicity and partisanship are social group identities. For many Americans partisanship is the most relevant and consistent summary measure of political opinions. However, for others, alternative social group identities (ethnicity, race, gender, religion) may be more important in influencing political opinions and/or behavior. When ethnicity outweighs partisanship within the context of a political choice, then we will see ethnicity trumping the influence of the more traditional partisanship predictor.
However, it is important to note that the relevance of one identity over the other (ethnicity or partisanship) varies. In one election my ethnicity may become a more salient issue, and I will vote based on my Latino background but in other instances my identity as a Democrat/Republican will be more relevant.
Womenetics: How does ethnicity impact one’s perspective on the volatile issue of immigration? Does it matter how long ago the person (or parents or grandparents) immigrated to the United States?
DeFrancesco Soto: Ethnicity absolutely shapes our views on the issue of immigration. The closer one is to the immigration experience – either by being an immigrant, by being the son/daughter/grandson/granddaughter of an immigrant, or by simply being a close friend of an immigrant -- the stronger one’s classification as an immigrant “in-group” identifier. This identification then serves as a guide to shaping how one reacts to the issue of immigration itself and the larger surrounding political context.
How far removed one is from the immigration experience does matter for how closely one identifies with immigrants. However, that being said there are first-generation immigrants who are staunchly opposed to immigration and people who have been here for 15 generations who are strong advocates of immigration. Another factor in addition to time is nationality. While immigrants (past and present) are from all over the world, the recent face of immigration is from Latin America, Mexico in particular. As a result, issues of negative racial/ethnic sensitivities can get mixed into the larger issue of immigration.
Womenetics: Your research looks at campaign media effects. On TV, we have a choice on cable of Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. It seems to me that Americans watch the news that best reflects their opinions, rather than view something that might change or broaden their perspective. What do you think?
DeFrancesco Soto: Today we have hundreds of channels to choose from. Not too long ago, there were three choices, ABC, CBS, and NBC, none of which differed much in their framing of political ideologies. That was then, this is now.
We seek out news that makes us feel good, which means news that validates how we think. News in this age has also become about entertainment. We don’t just want to get the facts anymore; we also want the delivery of our news through passionate and engaging personalities. My two cents on the issue is there is no better news source than PBS’s The News Hour. It’s not the most entertaining show in the world, but it does its job.
Womenetics: Did you grow up as a political junkie?
DeFrancesco Soto: I did not grow up in a political family, but I can trace catching the political bug to when I got involved in student council in the 7th grade. Then in high school, still on student council, I started writing a weekly column for my hometown paper where I would cover the trials and tribulations of Buena High School politics – whether we would be allowed to play certain songs at the dance, how much money we would get for the homecoming floats. It sounds corny, I know, but I loved it!
In college I majored in political science, and my interest and passion for politics only grew, but I acquired a more formal and structured appreciation of politics as a field of study. I then decided to further pursue my interest of politics and political science in graduate school. At the same time that I was in graduate school incredibly momentous political events were occurring – the Bush-Gore election, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq – that further drove me to understand our surrounding political world. Then, shortly after becoming a professor, the 2008 election geared up. It was an election of many firsts – the first woman candidate, the first Mormon candidate, the first black candidate, the first Latino candidate. I felt like a kid in a candy store. My research has come to focus on identities and campaigns and elections, so I couldn’t have had a better case study than what I was witnessing in the real world.
I didn’t actually self-identify as a political junkie until a couple of years ago when my students started calling me that. In my student evaluations, my students say, “Prof. DeFrancesco Soto is a political junkie, and if you’re not really interested in politics you shouldn’t take the course.”
Womenetics: At the end of the popular political TV show, West Wing, a Latino man was elected president. How likely is that in the next few decades? Has it improved because Obama was elected president?
DeFrancesco Soto: Absolutely. There are two main reasons why a Latino/a will be elected president in the short- to medium-term. First, the American electorate has become comfortable with individuals from a variety of backgrounds vying for and ultimately achieving the highest office. For close to 200 years we had only one tangible image of the president: white, protestant, and male. In theory, anybody could be president, but our minds only had one concrete group to go on.
And for better or worse, seeing is believing. This picture started to change with John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic president (which back in the day was a big deal). Now with President Obama and the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney the variety of backgrounds in leadership is very much in the realm of reality. The recent diversification of the Supreme Court and the more established diversification of Congress will also further reinforce that leadership positions can be and are filled by people of all shapes and colors.
Second, the demographics of the American electorate are changing. More specifically the Latino population is rapidly growing. By 2050 Latinos are projected to make up over a third of the U.S. population. Latinos have been frequently referred to as the sleeping giant because their numbers have not translated into political leadership. Much of this is due to the fact that Latinos are on average a younger population. As this population matures they will become more politically involved. The issue of illegal immigration does affect the size of the Latino electorate, but given that Latinas have the highest birth rates, regardless of how the immigration issue pans out, the population will continue to grow.
Latinos have not only become more politically involved as voters, but also as political leaders. Latinos have been elected across the local and state level and have a caucus of 24 members in Congress, in addition to a Supreme Court justice. In short, the sleeping giant has been awakening from its slumber.
Womenetics: What is it about politics that attracts you?
DeFrancesco Soto: Politics has all of the best elements of life: intrigue, suspense, drama, love, hate. With politics, who needs fiction?
Womenetics: What do you do for fun?
DeFrancesco Soto: Keep up with politics, seriously! And watch telenovelas. I also like to cook, mostly Italian and Mexican food.
Womenetics: What’s your ethnic background?
DeFrancesco Soto: My father is of Italian-Jewish descent, and my mother is from Mexico. I grew up on the Arizona-Mexico border, went to the school in the South, and have lived on the East Coast and Midwest. I feel that my diverse background together with the various contexts I have been exposed to have provided me with a unique lens to view our political environment
Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.
