We are in agreement that in a close race, almost any factor, from Romney’s Mormonism (and the Pew survey – not the headline! – but the actual survey is interesting in this regard) to Obama’s race could prove crucial. I’ve said that repeatedly. But the key word in your post is “implicit”, in that it is clear that race is implicitly behind much of the controversy surrounding Romney’s welfare stance, the birther movement, etc. But that’s my point – when we need to “infer” motives, it becomes far easier for partisans to select the ones that fit with their pre-existing belief systems. You may be right that all these issues are dog whistles for closet Republican racists – but I don’t see much data specifying just how loud the whistle is, and who might be hearing it. Klein’s column is a classic illustration of this problem – long on speculation, short on fact. Of course, he’s a pundit, so he can paint in broad strokes without worrying too much who gets tarred in the process.

What my post tries to show is that when we look at some of the explicit evidence (and we can debate whether those survey questions are really measuring racism), two facts stand out: “racist” beliefs are not restricted to the Republican party, and that most Republicans and Democrats do not hold views that one might ascribe as racist (again, keeping in mind the limits on this type of polling data.)

I’m glad you are enjoying the blog! As for 2008, except for Brad Lockerbie’s and perhaps Tom Holbrook’s forecasts, I think almost all the econometric-based models pretty much nailed the two-party vote share for Obama, which is one reason why I don’t think race played nearly the role in that election that Obama’s supporters feared it would – and why I suspect it will be a marginal factor this time around as well. Indeed, in the aggregate I think the econometric forecast models were almost dead on in 2008. See: http://bit.ly/TpBLVQ

I think there is some hard evidence when you take any old predictive model two party model loaded with economic variables, subtract against the real outcome with Obama at the top of the ticket, and you’ve got the race factor in the palm of your hand. So, it seems like Obama came in at 5-7% lower in ’08 then he should have. So, I would expect with the economy no longer at Obama’s back, Romney will win in a walk. There is all sort of evidence that survey data can’t be trusted on race and elections in races for many mayors. Lewis-Beck and Tien had something on this if I’m not mistaken.

I agree with you race won’t be the dominant factor, and that the election will, in the end, be largely about the economy. But with an election this close, smaller differences matter, and so race will matter too. In today’s politics, racial appeals will be indirect (see Tali Mendelberg or Don Kinder’s work. Keeping that in mind, you don’t need to poke around very much see that about a third of the electorate sees Obama through a racialized lens (again, reflected in their responses to Obama’s religion, citizenship, socialism and general un-Americanness). These are the people the Romney campaign is trying to mobilize with the candidate’s comments about “being born here” and ads about Obama revoking welfare reform.

I discuss this in detail in a post on my web site. http://dalesideas.com/2012/08/17/a-dangerous-idea/ My premise is that race matters most when we don’t know someone. After we know someone, we judge them as individuals based on their performance. The charge charge of racism is an epithet instead of an argument.