New polling from the progressive think-tank Data For Progress contains results that will confound some.
When pollsters reminded voters of the stop-and-frisk policies Mike Bloomberg enacted as mayor of New York City, the effect it had on support for the Bloomberg candidacy varied significantly by race, but not in a way that the prevailing progressive narrative about the policy would suggest.
Reminding white voters of stop-and-frisk decreased their support for Bloomberg by 1.6 percent. Mentioning the policy to black voters, however, yielded only a 0.1 percent decline in Bloomberg support, while Asian and Latino voters were more likely to support the candidate (0.3 and 0.8 percent, respectively) upon being reminded of the former mayor’s stop-and-frisk policy.
Vicarious aggrievement — where white liberals take offense on behalf of putatively disempowered minority groups and appoint themselves as those groups’ political saviors — is effectively a signaling mechanism for rich, progressive, white voters.
As George Baca wrote, “political correctness and what we may call progressive politics in the West actually functions as a class marker that is used to draw class boundaries.”
