Ohio Voters' Perception of Racial Minority Acceptance

Executive Summary

This report explores the results of a survey of Ohio voters, with a focus on the perception of the Midwest's acceptance of racial minorities as a whole and participants' perceptions of the acceptance of racial minorities in their local communities. These questions were analyzed through the lens of political partisanship, whether the participant considered themselves White, and their education level. All of these demographic factors were significantly related to perceptions of the Midwest as a whole. There is also a significant relationship between partisanship and community racial acceptance, as well as race and community racial acceptance. There was not, however, a significant relationship between perceptions of community racial acceptance and education level. There is a significant relationship between perceptions of Midwest acceptance of racial minorities and perceptions of community acceptance of racial minorities.

Survey Details and AAPOR Disclosure

The data is from a survey of 1,027 registered voters in Ohio. Survey questions were written and distributed by students at Miami University taking POL 307: Public Opinion Lab. The sample frame was purchased from L2 Data and was a random sample of registered voters with cell phones. The survey was sponsored by the Menard Family Center for Democracy. The full survey language can be found here.

The sample was rake weighted to Ohio registered voters using education (3 categories), race (white/non-white) by sex, age (3 categories), recalled vote for the 2024 election, party registration, and vote history. The targets for the last two variables were taken from L2 voter file data while the remaining variables (except for recalled vote choice) were from the CPS November 2024 Voter Supplement. For recalled vote choice we assumed that 5% of votes in the 2024 election would fit into the “Other/Did not vote” category.

This report will analyze two questions, "In your opinion, how accepting do you feel the Midwest, as a whole, is of racial minorities?" and "In your opinion, how accepting do you feel the community you currently live in is of racial minorities?" Original response options for both questions were "Accepting", "Not Accepting at All", "Not Very Accepting", "Somewhat Accepting", and "Very Accepting."

For analysis, these responses were collapsed into three categories. "Accepting" and "Somewhat Accepting" were transformed to "Accepting," "Not very accepting," and "Not Accepting" to "Not Accepting," and "Very Accepting" remained "Very Accepting."

The figures below show the results for all registered voters, followed by a subset of voters. The margin of error for both questions is +/- 3 percentage points. Note this only captures the error from sampling and does not account for errors from question wording, frame, over or undercoverage, etc.

Acceptance of Racial Minorities for the Midwest, as a whole.

Ohio voters were asked, "In your opinion, how accepting do you feel the Midwest, as a whole, is of racial minorities?"

Figure 1 shows a breakdown of responses. A majority (66%) indicated that they felt the Midwest, as a whole, is accepting of racial minorities. 15% selected that they felt the Midwest was not accepting. Further, 18% felt the Midwest was very accepting.

Note: "Skipped" option was removed from all questions for the bivariate analysis below

Midwest Acceptance by Partisanship

Opinions of how accepting the Midwest is of racial minorities vary by partisanship. The p-value on a χ² test of independence was less than 0.001, indicating strong dependence. Republicans were more likely to feel the Midwest is very accepting of racial minorities. 31% of Republicans felt the Midwest was very accepting of racial minorities, while only 2% of Democrats and 14% of Independents chose this response. Similarly, Democrats and Independents were more likely to perceive the Midwest as not accepting of racial minorities. 26% of Democrats and 24% of Independents selected not accepting, while only 5% of Republicans and 9% of those identifying as “Other” selected this response. Conversely, there was less of a difference by partisanship for perceiving the Midwest as accepting. 71% of Democrats and of those identifying as Other felt the Midwest was accepting, while 64% of Republicans and 62% of Independents chose this response. Overall, the biggest partisan differences came from the extreme answers.

Midwest Acceptance by Race and Ethnicity

Opinions of how accepting the Midwest is of racial minorities are significantly different for those who consider themselves White (χ² test of independence p < .05). The biggest difference was in perceiving the Midwest as not accepting. Those who did not consider themselves White were more likely to select that the Midwest was not accepting of racial minorities (23%), while 14% of those who considered themselves White selected this answer. Likewise, there was a large difference in perceiving the Midwest as accepting. 58% those who do not consider themselves white felt that the Midwest was accepting, while 68% of those identifying as white chose this response. Surprisingly, there was only a percentage difference in responses for very accepting, with 18% of those identifying as white and 19% of those not identifying as white choosing this answer.

Midwest Acceptance by Education Level

Opinions of how accepting the Midwest is of racial minorities vary across education level (χ² test of independence p < .05). Those with post graduate education were least likely to percieve the Midwest as very accepting, with only 9% choosing this answer, compared to 14% of those with a 4 year college degree and 21% of those with some college or less. Other responses had much less of a difference.

Community Acceptance of Racial Minorities

Ohio voters were asked, "In your opinion, how accepting do you feel the community you currently live in is of racial minorities?"

Figure 1 and Table 1 below show a breakdown of responses. A majority (56%) indicated that they felt the Midwest, as a whole, is accepting of racial minorities. 11% selected that they felt the Midwest was not accepting. Further, 29% felt the Midwest was very accepting.

Note: "Skipped" option was removed from all questions for the bivariate analysis below

Community Acceptance by Partisanship

Opinions of how accepting the Midwest is of racial minorities vary by partisan affiliation (χ² of independence p < 0.05). Republicans and those who identified as Other were more likely to perceive the Midwest as very accepting of racial minorities. 41% of Republicans and 43% of those identifying as Other selected very accepting, while only 13% of Democrats and 29% of Independents chose this response. Similarly, Democrats and Independents were more likely to perceive the Midwest as not accepting of racial minorities. 21% of Democrats and 15% of Independents selected not accepting, while only 4% of Republicans and 3% of those identifying as Other selected this response. Differences in perceiving their communities as accepting were not as stark. Democrats were the most different, with 66% of Democrats perceiving their community as accepting, while 56% of Republicans, 57% of Independents, and 53% of those identifying as Other chose this response. Again, the biggest partisan differences came from the more extreme answers.

Community Acceptance by Race and Ethnicity

Opinions of how accepting the "community you currently live in" is of racial minorities are significantly different for those who consider themselves White (χ² test of independence p < .05). Those who consider themselves White were more likely to percieve their communities as not accepting of racial minorities (12%), while only 6% of those who do not considered themselves White selected this answer. Likewise, there was a large difference in perceiving local communities as very accepting. 38% those who do not consider themselves White found that their community was very accepting, while 29% of those identifying as White chose this response.

Community Acceptance by Education Level

Opinions of how accepting "the community where you currently live” is were not significantly different across education levels. χ² test of independence has a p-value of 0.503. 32% of people with some college or less, 27% of those with 4 year degrees, and 26% of people with post graduate degrees felt their communities were very accepting. 10% of people with some college or less, 14% of those with 4 year college degrees, and 12% of people with post graduate education felt their communities were not accepting.

Comparing perceptions of the Midwest as a whole with perceptions of the community

Community Acceptance by Midwest Acceptance

Figure 9 indicates generally similar responses between perceived Midwest racial acceptance and perceived local community racial acceptance. The percentage of people who perceived their local community as very accepting is higher than in the Midwest.

The relationship between how accepting the Midwest is of racial minorities and how accepting local communities are of racial minorities is significant, as the p-value for a χ² independence test was way below 0.05. In general, people seemed to pick the same response for both questions. 75% of people that perceived the Midwest as accepting also perceived their communities as accepting, and 85% of people who perceived the Midwest as very accepting also perceived their communities as very accepting. However, only 40% of people who perceived the Midwest as not accepting also perceived their community as not accepting. A full breakdown of responses to the community racial acceptance question based on their perception of Midwest racial acceptance is provided to the left in Table 1. Community acceptance was assessed on Midwest Acceptance because the Midwest Acceptance question appeared first, thus it may have had an impact on the community acceptance question.

Differences in Demographics

Trends between political partisanship and perceived acceptance were generally consistent between the Midwest and local community. It should be noted, however, that the percentage of Democrats who perceived their communities was much higher than the percentage of Democrats who perceived the Midwest as very accepting.

Similarly, trends across educational levels remained generally the same between the two questions. Again, there are higher percentages of people across all levels who perceive their community as very accepting compared to the Midwest as a whole.

The biggest demographic differences between the two questions were in race. A higher percentage of people who identified as non-White perceived the Midwest as not accepting compared to perceptions of their communities. Likewise, a much higher percentage of people who did not consider themselves White perceived their communities as very accepting compared to perceptions of the Midwest as a whole. Conversely, those who identified as White had similar responses to both community and Midwest acceptance. Thus, in general, people who did not consider themselves White perceived their communities as more accepting than the Midwest as a whole, a difference not observed in White people.

More research should be done to investigate the differences in the perception of racial acceptance on the community level compared to the perception of racial acceptance of the Midwest as a whole.

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