Direct Democracy and Political Awareness: How Identity Shapes Knowledge of Carceral and Anti-Immigrant Ballot Measures

Direct Democracy and Political Awareness: How Identity Shapes Knowledge of Carceral and Anti-Immigrant Ballot Measures | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Direct Democracy and Political Awareness: How Identity Shapes Knowledge of Carceral and Anti-Immigrant Ballot Measures Kevin Bustamante This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7576288/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Who knows what about American politics? Traditional measures of political knowledge demonstrate a persistent “racial gap” with whites demonstrating higher levels than people of color. Recent scholarship has shown that this gap narrows or disappears when people are asked questions that have greater relevance to their racial or ethnic group. I contribute to this scholarship by examining the relationship between identity, political awareness, and direct democracy. I argue that identity shapes political awareness when ballot measures are perceived to be threatening or directly impacting one’s group. Using 21 Field Poll surveys in California between 1994 and 1998, I demonstrate the presence of a political awareness racial gap for traditional ballot measures but show that it disappears for carceral and anti-immigrant initiatives. My findings have implications for how political behavior will be shaped by a political environment where immigration and mass incarceration are increasingly intertwined. Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Introductıon Who knows what about politics? One indisputable fact about the American public is that they know remarkably little about the traditional features of American politics like the ideological placement of the parties (Zaller 1992). Particularly concerning is the uneven distribution of general political knowledge with women and people of color consistently demonstrating lower levels (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Pantoja 2006; Abrajano 2010, 115-16; Jerit and Barabas 2017). These low levels have prompted scholars to look at what people do know about politics with plenty of evidence demonstrating that they know more about the things pertinent to them (Iyengar 1990). This includes a greater ability to identify the political offices held by women and Latinos and awareness of racially charged issues like ending segregation in the public sphere (Hutchings 2001; Dolan 2011; Abrajano 2015, 47; Pérez 2015; Jackson 2025). More recent research extends this insight by focusing on what marginalized communities know about the coercive face of the state. In contrast to the liberal-democratic model, which emphasizes voting and institutional knowledge, this scholarship reveals that heavily policed populations often possess detailed knowledge of the carceral state (Soss and Weaver 2017; Weaver et al. 2019; Cohen and Luttig 2020). I build on these insights by examining political awareness of the carceral state and anti-immigration in a quintessential liberal-democratic process: direct democracy. Ballot initiatives and referendums represent the greatest manifestation of direct democracy as voters have clear influence over legislation. Their use has surged in recent decades with nearly 800 statewide initiatives appearing on ballots since 2000 and nearly $3 billion spent on them during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles alone (Figure 1).[1] A lively scholarly debate has considered the consequences of ballot initiatives on political behavior. A great deal of this has considered whether ballot initiatives promote civic engagement like greater voter turnout, higher social trust, or increased levels of political knowledge (Nicholson 2003; Biggers 2014, 8, 19; Dyck and Lascher 2019, 10-25; Barth et al. 2019). In California, Latino partisan realignment away from the Republican Party is considered primarily a result of the presence of punitive racialized ballot measures (Pantoja et al. 2001; Pantoja and Segura 2006; Bowler et al. 2006; Monogan and Doctor 2017; but see Hui and Sears 2018). These debates hinge on a critical but often unexamined assumption: that the public is aware of the initiatives in the first place. To my knowledge, no study has systematically assessed whether awareness of ballot initiatives varies across racial and ethnic groups or how awareness is shaped by the interaction of a person’s identity and an initiative’s content. There is a pressing contemporary relevance here since the last several election cycles have had voters decide on abortion rights, affirmative action, bail and criminal sentencing requirements, and immigrant rights. At stake is the possibility that the racial gaps that exist in traditional political knowledge also persist in ballot initiative awareness with direct consequences for the lives of people of color (Bell 1978; Hajnal et al. 2002). To that end, I ask two questions: Are Latinos and whites more aware of anti-immigrant and carceral ballot initiatives than they are of other types of initiatives? Are Latinos more aware of these initiatives than whites?[2] I argue that political awareness is structured by both group identity and the political environment (Hutchings 2001). While media coverage, moral framing, and political contestation increase general awareness of initiatives (Smith 2001; Nicholson 2003; Biggers 2014), these factors alone cannot account for variation across racial groups (Table 1). I contend that the differences can be explained by focusing on how people view the initiatives as directly impacting or threatening them and the communities they identify with (Cohen and Luttig 2020, 807). I make the case that Latinos will have elevated rates of anti-immigrant and carceral initiatives than other traditional measures because of their greater motivation and opportunities to learn about the issues (Luskin 1990). Their heightened motivation stems from a perception of how the measures will affect them and their communities while the greater opportunities come from increased rates of ethnic media coverage and their mobilization by advocacy groups. The same framework can be used to understand increased rates of white political awareness. Discriminatory whites will have a greater motivation to learn about these issues since they are liable to view the measures as a way to address perceived racial threats while increased mainstream media coverage will give all whites greater opportunities to learn about the measures. These distinct incentive structures lead to the expectation that racial gaps in awareness may narrow or reverse with Spanish-dominant Latinos and conservative whites exhibiting the highest levels of awareness of these initiatives within their respective groups. I evaluate this argument using 21 public opinion surveys conducted by the Field Poll in California between 1994 and 1998. These surveys provide rare and valuable insight into public awareness of a wide array of ballot propositions, including two anti-immigrant measures, one carceral initiative, a measure to end affirmative action, a moral issue measure, and seventeen other “traditional” proposals ranging from approving the killing of mountain lions to banning public smoking. Central to the analysis are Proposition 187, which sought to bar undocumented immigrants from public services such as education and health care, Proposition 184, which introduced mandatory minimum sentencing and helped usher in California’s era of mass incarceration, and Proposition 227, which effectively dismantled bilingual education in public schools (HoSang 2010; Gilmore 2007, 87-126). Table 1 presents the full set of ballot measures and average rates of awareness between Latinos and whites. A racial gap in political awareness becomes immediately self-evident. The Field Poll data is uniquely well-suited for this inquiry due to the consistency of the survey design, the range of initiative types included, and the large sample sizes, which enable robust comparisons between Latino and white respondents. To my knowledge, this is the first study to compare awareness of anti-immigration, carceral, and traditional politics together. I present two main findings from the analysis. First, both Latinos and whites demonstrate higher awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral initiatives compared to traditional propositions. This finding largely holds even when we compare these initiatives to other prominent measures concerning the legalization of medical marijuana or implementing a single-payer health care system. Examining the correlates of awareness on these issues offers support for my identity-based argument as Spanish-speaking Latinos show greater awareness of anti-immigrant initiatives compared to English-speaking Latinos whereas white Republicans are particularly aware of carceral and anti-immigrant measures relative to white Democrats. The second key finding is the virtual absence of a racial awareness gap on anti-immigrant and carceral issues whereas whites exhibit an awareness advantage of more than 9 percentage points over Latinos when it comes to traditional propositions. This pattern underscores the existence of domain-specific political knowledge among Latinos particularly in response to exclusionary measures and carceral control. These findings expand our understanding of political knowledge and suggest that what individuals know about politics is deeply conditioned by how they are positioned in relation to state power. In this article, I contribute to the literature on political knowledge by connecting the liberal-democratic promise of direct democracy with its often punitive application. While Americans broadly endorse the ideal of direct democracy and the opportunity to shape public life, less is known about how people and vulnerable communities think about direct democracy when their neighbors have a direct say of the curtailment of their rights or how they think about the power they hold over others (Dyck 2012; Donovan and Tolbert 2013). In their study of highly policed communities, Weaver et al. (2019) show that African-Americans in race-class subjugated communities are aware of the disconnect between what citizen-government encounters should be (responsive) and what their interactions are (punitive). In examining the intersection of liberal-democracy and its exclusionary processes, I build on this research agenda by demonstrating that people are especially attuned to ballot initiatives that threaten them and which allow them to threaten others. These dynamics force a reckoning with the dual nature of citizen power in shaping the rules of political belonging. Table 1. Bolded values indicate statistical significance at p < .05. An asterisk (*) marks marginal significance at p < .10. Sources: Field Polls 9401, 9403, 9405, 9406, 9407, 9501, 9502, 9503, 9504, 9601, 9602, 9603, 9604, 9605, 9606, 9607, 9704, 9801, 9802, 9803, 9804. Awareness of propositions 214/216 were asked jointly. Prop No. Ballot Type Description % White Awareness % Latino Awareness 184 (1994) Carceral Mandatory Minimum Sentencing 87 83 186 (1994) Traditional Single-Payer System 64 49 187 (1994) Anti-immigrant Ban Undocumented from Public Services 78 83 188 (1994) Traditional Ban Public Smoking 71 63 192 (1996) Traditional Seismic Retrofitting 43 30 197 (1996) Traditional Kill Mountain Lions 51 37 198 (1996) Traditional Blanket Primary 29 21 200 (1996) Traditional No-Fault Insurance 57 49 201 (1996) Traditional Limit Legal Fees 38 26 202 (1996) Traditional Limit Attorney Fees 37 30 203 (1996) Traditional School Bonds 36* 29 207 (1996) Traditional Limit Attorney Fees 55 44 209 (1996) Traditional End Affirmative Action 73 62 211 (1996) Traditional Retirement Fraud 75 66 214 / 216 (1996) Traditional New Healthcare Laws 42* 36 215 (1996) Traditional Medical Marijuana 76 69 218 (1996) Traditional Local Tax Increases 24 20 223 (1998) Traditional Limit School Spending 33 30 225 (1998) Traditional Declare Term Limits 74 47 226 (1998) Traditional Ban Contributions 48 40 227 (1998) Anti-immigrant English-Only Education 70 70 Identity, Ballot Initiatives, and Political Awareness Decades of scholarship on political knowledge have debated over what Americans know about politics and how much they need to know to ensure their interests are represented (Bereleson 1952; Converse 1964; Zaller 1992; Lupia 1994). Pernicious and persistent is the degree to which gender and racial gaps exist in measures of political knowledge.[3] Scholars have gone rounds over whether the gap is real or primarily an artifact of measurement (Abrajano 2015; Jerit and Barbaras 2017). The scholarship on race and ethnic politics (REP) has reconsidered the forms of political knowledge that people of color have in their heads with greater emphasis on how identity interacts with domain-specific knowledge (Hutchings 2001). This includes expanding traditional political knowledge measures to include identity-themed ones like “What office is held by Sonia Sotomayor” and which California law prohibits discrimination on the basis of hair style and texture (Pérez 2015; Jackson 2025). A branch of this has gone beyond traditional political knowledge measures to include what people know about the role of the state in their everyday lives which includes police and prisons (Prowse et al. 2020). What this newer work has shown is that the racial awareness gap in political knowledge either shrinks dramatically or is reversed with African-Americans demonstrating an informational advantage (Cohen and Luttig 2020). Fertile ground for the reconceptualization of political knowledge is determining what people know about anti-immigration policies given its increasing role in American society (Ibid, 816; Cortez 2021). Previous experimental work has shown that providing young U.S.-born Latinos with information about President Obama’s mass deportation efforts causes them to view the Democratic Party as less welcoming to Latinos (Street et al. 2015). This suggests that what Latinos know about anti-immigration can play a powerful role in shaping their partisan attachments and their willingness to engage in political participation (Walker et al. 2020; Martinez 2025). It is this logic that has been used to explain why Latinos shifted away from the Republican Party in California in the 1990s albeit without individual-level data of awareness of anti-immigrant propositions (Pantoja et al. 2001; Bowler et al. 2006; Monogan and Doctor 2017; but see Uhlaner 1996, 65). The payoff of uncovering whether Latinos are more aware of anti-immigration and carceral policies than other policies promise to pay dividends in our understanding of Latino politics. Insights from the REP literature have not been incorporated to the study of political awareness and ballot initiatives. This is a notable omission. Scholars have given great attention to determining whether direct democracy is amenable or antithetical to the interests of people of color (Gamble 1997; Hajnal et al. 2002; Dyck and Lascher 2018, 42). Ballot initiatives have often been criticized as allowing majority groups to exert power over minorities by eliminating their access to state services or institutionalizing restrictions on their civil rights (Bell 1978). Naturally, we should investigate whether targeted populations are aware when their rights and privileges stand to be expanded or be restricted especially in relation to the discriminating majority. If there is an identity gap, direct democracy may pose a greater risk to people of color if they are unable to defend themselves since they are unaware that their interests are at stake. Bringing in these insights promises to expand our understanding of REP and ballot awareness more generally. To date, few studies have examined the correlates of ballot awareness using individual-level data and instead infer that certain ballot measures attracted higher awareness because of their content or because of how much media attention they attracted (Smith 2001; Biggers 2014). The studies that have used individual-data have come to mixed conclusions. Bowler and Donovan (1994) demonstrate that higher educated individuals show a greater propensity to be aware earlier in political campaigns while Nicholson (2003) shows how a range of factors in the political environment contribute to higher rates of ballot initiative awareness that includes the presence of initiatives on civil rights and civil liberties. Burnett (2019) and Barth et al. (2019) contend that the oft-used Field Poll measure of ballot awareness is severely flawed and that more appropriate measures show an unaware public.[4] These works have contributed to the study of direct democracy but none of them have noted racial and ethnic differences in awareness or have offered a closer comparison between types of propositions like anti-immigration and carceral ballot measures. In sum, previous scholarship does not tell us whether the racial awareness gap that exists in traditional political knowledge measures continues to exist in rates of ballot awareness and whether there is variation in awareness on our outcomes of interest. Table 1 shows that there is. The following section theorizes why. Theoretical Framework Canonical theories of political knowledge maintain that what people know is a function of ability, motivation, and opportunity (Luskin 1990; Zaller 1992). This model is captured by whether people have the skills necessary to acquire the relevant political information, whether they have the interest to do so, and whether the information is available to them. Each part of this model is shaped by identity (Iyengar 1990). Discrimination and unequal access to education and the welfare state have had longstanding systemic consequences where whites have more wealth, more education, and are more likely to be represented in mainstream media than people of color (Harris-Lacewell 2004; Katznelson 2005). Accounting for these factors leads to the baseline expectation that whites should generally have higher levels of political awareness of ballot measures than people of color. Conversely, using this framework suggests that the racial awareness gap will shrink or disappear on ballot measures that directly implicate core experiences of a person of color in the United States. Since most immigration has come from Latin America in recent decades, this suggests that Latinos will be the ones most likely to be cognizant of anti-immigration policies. Several mechanisms can contribute to heightened awareness among Latinos: they may personally identify with the immigrant experience and seek information related to immigration, perceive the initiative as directly affecting their communities, maintain close ties with immigrants, they may consumer Spanish media which give immigration issues greater attention, or they may be mobilized by advocacy organizations and political coalitions opposing the measures (Ramírez 2013; Zepeda-Milán 2017). Each of these factors affects Latinos’ motivation and opportunities to learn about politics and leads us to expect that Latinos will have a greater awareness of anti-immigrant issues than traditional policies. A similar line of reasoning can be used to explain a generally elevated rate of Latino awareness of the carceral state. The racialization of Latinos as criminal and foreign makes them a target of immigration enforcement and local police. The fear of arrest and/or deportation can loom over Latinos and their communities, again giving rise to the motivation and opportunity needed to learn about these issues (Zepeda-Milán 2017). This is further compounded by their broader concerns with crime in their neighborhoods. In 1995, for example, Latinos represented the largest prison population in the California Department of Corrections while crime was one of their top 5 concerns between 1990 and 2000 (Gilmore 2007, 109, 111; Hajnal et al. 2002, 166). This leads us to expect that Latinos should have higher awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral state ballot measures than traditional initiatives. Whites can also be expected to have high rates of awareness of these initiatives. Political coalitions may use these initiatives to set the electoral agenda and use it as a rallying point to mobilize their base around, thus increasing the opportunities for whites to become aware of the issue (Nicholson 2005). Such mobilization can lead to further opportunities for awareness as mainstream media rises to the moment and covers crucial political issues. It is less clear to what extent these initiatives will affect white people’s motivations since not all whites are equally likely to feel like the initiatives is directly relevant to them. In one of the few intersectional works on political knowledge, Hutchings (2001) shows how overlapping identities can make particular subsets of people more likely to know about certain issues than other members of their group. Hutchings shows how black people, Republican men, and liberal women were significantly more knowledgeable about how their senator voted during the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas in the wake of the Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment relative to people of different identity groups. I build on this by examining intersecting identities and how it affects political awareness. Specifically, I expect Latinos who are closer to the immigrant experience to be more cognizant of anti-immigrant policies and Republican whites to be more aware of anti-immigration and carceral state measures. Both of these subsets are more likely to feel that their interests at stake than the rest of their group. Spanish-dominant Latinos tend to live in ethnically homogenous neighborhoods among other immigrants and are less socialized into the “electoral and political mainstream” (de la Garza and Yang 2015/2016, 661-663). Republican whites may personally see these initiatives as a way to respond to perceived racial threats in their community themselves or find them to gel with their ideological worldview (Tolbert and Hero 1998; Wilson et al. 2015, 78; Enns and Jardina 2021). Data This article seeks to demonstrate whether Latinos have a higher awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral ballot measures compared to traditional initiatives and show whether an awareness gap exists in relation to whites. This requires having a state with a history of direct democracy, similar periods where these measures are voted, sufficient sample size of Latinos and whites for comparability, and survey questions that gauge awareness of different kinds of ballot initiatives. California and the “reliable and well-respected” Field Poll meets these requirements (Hui and Sears 2017, 155). California has a long history of direct democracy and, for over fifty years, the Field Poll asked respondents whether they had “seen, read, or heard anything” about propositions that stood to be on the ballot in the coming election.[5] Answers to these questions forms my dependent variable measuring political awareness. This question was asked on 21 surveys between January 1994 and May 1998 on initiatives dealing with criminal sentencing, anti-immigrant restrictions, affirmative action, and a range of other issues as I explore more in depth below.[6] Like all measures, this one is not without its limits. Two key issues stand out which Barth et al. note (2019). First, the measure has no validation mechanism. The measure alone does not enable us to adjudicate between the true rate of awareness and an inflated rate biased by people responding affirmatively out of a social desirability to appear aware. Second, the measure only gauges awareness of a measure’s existence. People may truthfully say they have heard of a measure but not understand what the measure is about (Barth et al. 2019, 1016, 1021, 1028-1029). Whatever results that come from this data may be capturing nothing more than an unaware public misrepresenting what they think they know. These are strong critiques and represent a potentially fatal weakness of this paper. Nonetheless, there are two reasons to believe the measure is still useful. First, we are still left hard pressed to explain systematic differences in rates of ballot awareness among Latinos and whites (Table 1). Even if we accept that these rates are inflated, we must still explain why only a third of white respondents claim awareness of a proposition to implement a blanket primary but more than two-thirds claim awareness of a proposition to curtail bilingual education. Likewise, we still need an explanation on why the racial awareness gap dramatically narrows or disappears on anti-immigrant and carceral state initiatives. Second, three polls from 1996 do contain validation mechanisms that include correctly identifying the consequences of Proposition 209, an initiative concerning affirmative action. The validation measures involved asking respondents whether Proposition 209 would end affirmative action (correct) or continue it (incorrect). Regression analysis demonstrates that respondents who were aware of the ballot initiative were also significantly more likely to correctly determine the measure’s consequences (Appendix A). This fits with Burnett’s (2019) finding that the public may not be aware of the precise details of an initiative but still have a good comprehension of the political landscape that the initiatives exist in and what is at stake. These findings suggest that reports of ballot awareness may also signal ballot comprehension. Future research is needed to determine whether this finding holds more generally but it at least allows us to use these survey measures with greater confidence. Historical Context In the early 1990s, California experienced a sharp demographic shift. Immigration from Asia and Latin America quickly transformed the demographic makeup of the state with the white share of the population declining rapidly. At the same time, the state started to undergo a period of significant economic decline. These demographic and economic changes were conducive but insufficient to cause widespread support for Prop 187 as less than 5 percent of respondents surveys between May 1991 and August 1993 considered immigration the state’s most important problem. Spearheaded by anti-immigrant interest groups with deep pockets, the measure ultimately attracted enough attention to lead the state’s Republican party to back it and have it meet the May deadline to qualify for the 1994 November ballot and marked a dramatic shift in the state’s treatment of immigrants (HoSang 2010, 161-165, 168, 172, 176). Once the Republicans threw their weight behind the measure, they owned the issue and viewed it as a flagpole to rally their coalition around (Nicholson 2005, 91-131). It is in this context that the Republicans pushed for the criminal-sentencing Proposition 184, known as the “Three Strikes and You’re Out”. The Three Strikes proposition mandated a minimum 25-years-to-life for individuals convicted of even minor felonies if they had two or more prior serious or violent felonies and bolstered and had made more punitive an earlier mandatory minimum sentencing law passed by the California state legislature in March 1994 and made it more difficult to overturn. The Three Strikes measure is widely recognized a watershed moment as the subsequent surge in mass incarceration disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities (Nicholson-Crotty 2009, 200-202; Karch and Cravens 2014). Studies of Latino politics in this period often point to Propositions 187, 209, and 227 as creating a racially hostile environment for Latinos and which led them to abandon the Republican Party (Bowler et al. 2006; Monogan and Doctor 2017). The latter two efforts ended affirmative action in state and local government in 1996 while the second effectively eliminated bilingual education and forced most students into English-only classrooms after one year of being in a bilingual classroom. The struggle over affirmative action was fought primarily between interest groups and grassroots activists on both sides of the issue but largely failed to become a central point of partisan debate (HoSang 2010, 208-228). The bilingual initiative was geared towards attracting conservative support and attracted wealthy conservative donors cognizant of the opportunity to take advantage of the environment that allowed them to pass Prop 187 (Ibid, 230-235, 239-241). Methods To consider ballot awareness differences, I pool the data by initiatives that shared space at the time they were voted. The analysis begins in January 1994 with the Field Poll asking about awareness of the Three Strikes initiative and ends in May 1994 before Proposition 227 was voted on in June. My dependent variable is a binary outcome of whether an individual is aware or unaware of a proposition. I code “do not know” answers as unaware since people cannot be said to be aware if they are unsure of ever having heard about the initiative. My observations are at the level of the proposition and use logit regression models to estimate political awareness. I use clustered standard errors to account for individual differences. This is both for methodological and practical reasons. Methodologically, my interest is in the types of ballot initiatives that people have heard about rather than the number of initiatives they have heard of. Practically, the Field Poll did not always ask all respondents the same set of ballot measure questions. For example, they would often only ask registered voters the awareness questions which limits our ability to fully gauge what noncitizens or the less politically engaged know. The two primary relevant covariates are partisanship and language of interview. My partisanship variable includes people who have a registered party affiliation and includes those who are not registered but lean towards one party or the other (Klar and Krupniov 2016). I estimate the effect of being Republican and a Republican-leaner to a Democrat and Democrat-leaner baseline. My language of interview variable compares Latinos who interviewed in Spanish to Latinos who interviewed in English. I take this covariate as a proxy for immigrant status and assimilation into American society since their decision to interview in Spanish likely signals their social position (de la Garza and Yang 2015/2016). When possible, I use a standard set of control variables that include age, education, gender, homeownership, marital status, and use monthly fixed effects to account for temporal differences in political awareness.[7] As noted above, I am interested in political awareness differences between types of ballot initiatives. The data here offers a unique opportunity because there are five different kinds of measures survey. These include the anti-immigrant Proposition 184 and Proposition 227, the carceral Proposition 184, Proposition 209 and the end of affirmative action which is often considered a racially charged issue, Proposition 215 and the legalization of medical marijuana which is considered a moral issue (Biggers 2014), and the remaining seventeen traditional measures. If we accept claims that this was a politically charged moment, then it makes sense to advantage take advantage and compare awareness of these measures that are occurring in a political environment rather than trying to extend the analysis over decades. These different categories enable us to see whether people are more attuned to anti-immigrant and carceral measures. Results Table 2 presents the results for political awareness in 1994. The first model in the table estimates the likelihood of proposition awareness among Latino and whites and reveals important racial differences. Latino respondents were significantly less likely than their white counterparts to be aware of ballot initiatives overall after controlling for other factors (p < 0.01). This parallels the existence of a racial gap in political knowledge. Interacting Latino with proposition type demonstrates notable variation here with no statistical difference between Latinos and whites on the Three Strikes measure. This is a sizeable effect given how large the gap between the two groups is otherwise. The model further shows that the awareness gap is reversed on Prop 187 with Latinos being even more aware of it than whites. To make these findings more interpretable, Fig. 2 presents a visual representation of the predicted probabilities calculated from the model. Latino respondents show a predicted probability of awareness of approximately 0.90 for anti-immigrant propositions compared to 0.86 for white respondents. This gap is substantively meaningful as it indicates that Latino awareness is highly responsive to the content of ballot measures. The difference in predicted probabilities between Latinos and whites is evenly matched at a high rate and there is no statistically significant difference. It is not as if there was nothing else of importance on the ballot. Scholars have coded the other propositions on the ballot as salient issues as they deal with efforts to implement a single-payer healthcare system and to ban public smoking (Smith 2001 ). This suggests that even among salient issues, carceral and anti-immigrant propositions are first among equals. A deeper look at the data allows for us to gauge subgroup differences and assess which Latinos and whites were more likely to be aware. The coefficients of awareness among Latinos in Model 2 of the carceral and anti-immigrant propositions are notably larger than in the pooled model. Latinos who conducted their interviews in Spanish were significantly more likely to be aware of anti-immigrant propositions. This lends further support to our theory of political awareness since these individuals are especially likely to perceive being affected by these measures. In contrast, they were significantly less likely to be aware of Prop 184, potentially reflecting their distance from the mainstream rules of Californian society. Model 3 focuses on white respondents and reveals a different set of patterns. Whites are significantly more aware of carceral state and anti-immigrant propositions though the magnitudes of these effects are smaller than those observed among Latinos. Being a Republican or a Republican-leaner is negatively associated with awareness in general but they regain their advantage on the Three Strikes measure (p < 0.01) and Prop 187 though the latter demonstrates a weaker statistical relationship (p < 0.10). This likely reflects alignment with the policy agenda advanced during California’s conservative turn in the mid-1990s (Nicholson 2005 ). Table 2 Table 3 The results from 1998 reaffirm the pattern observed in 1994: Latino political awareness increases most notably in response to anti-immigrant initiatives. The logistic regression model for all respondents shows that, on average, there was no significant difference in overall proposition awareness between Latino and white respondents. Neither Latinos nor whites crack more than 50% of awareness in the predicted probabilities which suggests that the initiatives were generally unknown to everyone. Again, anti-immigrant propositions were associated with a large and statistically significant increase in public awareness ( p < 0.01) and the interaction between Latino identity and anti-immigrant propositions is also positive and significant ( p < 0.01). This indicates that Latinos were significantly more likely than whites to be aware of anti-immigrant ballot measures all else equal. These findings align with the broader theoretical expectation that racial and ethnic minorities develop domain-specific political knowledge when their group identity is perceived to be affected. The within-group models confirm this trend. Among Latino respondents, anti-immigrant propositions were a strong and significant predictor of awareness ( p < 0.01). The Spanish-speaking variable interaction term did not reach statistical significance but it aims in the right direction. For white respondents, anti-immigrant propositions also increased awareness ( p < 0.01), but to a lesser extent than among Latinos. The interaction between Republican identity and anti-immigrant awareness among whites was statistically significant ( p < 0.01) again aligning with our theoretical expectations. The predicted probabilities shown in Fig. 1 visually reinforce the regression results. While both Latinos and whites show relatively low awareness of traditional propositions, awareness of anti-immigrant propositions jumps substantially for both groups. Notably, the gap widens in favor of Latinos with their predicted probability of awareness surpassing 0.75 and white awareness remaining closer to 0.70. This divergence highlights the politically mobilizing nature of exclusionary initiatives for targeted communities. Table 4 Discussion This study demonstrates that political awareness among the public is structured in part how ballot propositions touch on group identity. Across three election years in California (1994, 1996, and 1998), Latino respondents consistently exhibited lower average levels of awareness of ballot initiatives compared to white respondents. However, this gap was not uniform across all types of propositions. Instead, it varied systematically depending on whether the proposition content directly implicated identity. In particular, anti-immigrant propositions consistently generated elevated levels of awareness among Latino respondents. This suggests that Latino political cognition is responsive to direct policy threats. When policies like Proposition 187 proposed to restrict immigrant rights or services, Latino awareness surged likely due to personal identification with the issue, social proximity to immigrants or targeted mobilization efforts. These findings support the idea that domain-specific knowledge can emerge in response to exclusionary political contexts and close certain disparities in political information. By contrast, Latino respondents did not exhibit significantly elevated awareness of ballot propositions that dealt with issues like affirmative action or moral politics. Awareness of affirmative action propositions was significantly lower among Latinos than whites despite the issue’s broad relevance to racial equity. This result complicates assumptions that racially-charged policies automatically generate increased engagement among people of color. Rather, it suggests that issue salience is conditional not just on racial content but on whether the framing of the proposition is perceived as directly targeting one’s group or lived experience. Indeed, there seems to have been some confusion and conflicting ideas about affirmative action among people of color during the period despite overwhelmingly voting in favor of it (Hosang 2010, 210–212, 228). Similarly, moral issues like marijuana legalization appear to have generated more universal engagement without significant racial differentiation. Taken together, the findings show that racial gaps in political awareness are not static or generalizable across issue types. They are deeply contextual and shaped by the intersection of identity, initiative, and political environment. Latino respondents are not uniformly disengaged or less informed but instead exhibit heightened awareness in domains where the stakes for their communities are perceived to be highest. This highlights the importance of moving beyond blanket assumptions about group-level political knowledge and toward a more nuanced understanding of how different factors interact to shape political cognition. Conclusion In the summer of 2025, Florida opened a new detention center in the middle of a wildlife preserve meant to contain 5,000 immigrants. Colloquially known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, the detention center symbolizes the intersection of anti-immigration and mass incarceration. The detention center foreshadows the future of American politics as the federal government has promised to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day and the 2025 budget bill dedicates an estimated $ 37 billion to Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE). We are only beginning to understand the consequences of the ICE age (Street et al. 2015 ; Walker et al. 2020; Martinez 2025 ). Determining how people will respond to these political developments requires figuring out if they are aware of what is happening around them and whether they understand it. There is no guarantee that they will. An April 2025 survey of American citizens showed that 76% of whites and only 66% of Latino citizens were aware about the illegal removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador (Orth 2025 ). The pattern persisted across several other factual questions about the case. In contrast, polling data from February 2025 demonstrated that Latinos displayed higher rates of factual knowledge of how birthright citizenship operates relative to whites and blacks (Ballard 2025 ). At a time where even previously settled constitutional questions are being reconsidered, it is essential that we understand what people know about cross-cutting issues that sit at the intersection between the traditional and the domain-specific. This article advances our understanding of political behavior by examining political awareness of anti-immigrant, carceral, and traditional ballot initiatives. This article presents two key findings. First, I have shown that Latinos demonstrate higher rates of political awareness of the former two than of traditional ballot measures. In particular, Spanish-speaking Latinos were overwhelmingly likely to be aware of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 while Republican whites were more aware of this and the mandatory minimum sentencing measure. Despite the recent spate of ballot measures prohibiting noncitizens from voting in state and local elections, noncitizens have long played a role in American politics by protesting and registering people to vote. With over 25 million noncitizens in the United States today, this article calls for further research investigating what they know about politics too. Second, I have shown that the racial gap in political knowledge persists in awareness of traditional initiatives but gets erased or reversed in awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral state ballot proposals. In an era when democracy is increasingly shaped by direct voter action and punitive state power, it is essential to understand who gets to participate in democracy, who gets excluded, and who is paying attention while it happens. Declarations Author Contribution K.B. wrote the text and conducted the analysis. Acknowledgement I am indebted to Jeff Harden, Geoff Layman, Robert “Connor” Martinez, Ricardo Ramírez, and Shana Scogin. I thank Kris Kasianovitz at the University of California Berkeley for her research assistance. Sharon Bonilla and Urania Solis have my love for giving me the time to finish this project. Data Availability Field Poll data available through here: https://dlab.berkeley.edu/data/california-public-opinion-polls. References Abrajano, M. (2015). Reexamining the Racial Gap in Political Knowledge. Journal of Politics , 77 (1), 44–54. Ballard, J. (2025). Which U.S. Births Americans think Should be Entitled to Birthright Citizenship. YouGov . Available at https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51702-which-births-americans-think-should-be-entitled-to-birthright-citizenship . Access July 16, 2025. Barth, J., & Burnett, C. M., and Janine Parry (2020). Direct Democracy, Educative Effects, and the (Mis) Measurement of Ballot Measure Awareness. Political Behavior , 42 (4), 1015–1034. Bell, D. Jr (1978). The Referendum: Democracy’s Barrier to Racial Equality. Washington Law Review , 54 , 1–29. Berelson, B. (1952). Democratic Theory and Public Opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly , 16 (3), 313–330. Biggers, D. R. (2012). Can a Social Issue Proposition Increase Political Knowledge? Campaign Learning and the Educative Effects of Direct Democracy. American Politics Research , 40 (6), 998–1025. Biggers, D. R. (2014). Morality at the Ballot: Direct Democracy and Political Engagement in the United States . Cambridge University Press. Bowler, S. and Todd Donovan (1994). Information and Opinion Change on Ballot Propositions. Political Behavior , 16 (4), 411–435. Bowler, S., Nicholson, S. P., & Segura, G. M. (2006). Earthquakes and Aftershocks: Race, Direct Democracy, and Partisan Change. American Journal of Political Science , 50 (1), 146–159. Burnett, C. M. (2019). Information and Direct Democracy: What Voters Learn about Ballot Measures and How it Affects their Votes. Electoral Studies , 57 (1), 223–244. Cohen, C. J., and Matthew Luttig (2020). Reconceptualizing Political Knowledge: Race, Ethnicity, and Carceral Violence. Perspectives on Politics , 18 (3), 805–818. Converse, P. E. (1964). The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics. Critical Review , 18 (1–3), 1–74. Cortez, D. (2021). Latinxs in La Migra: Why They Join and Why it Matters. Political Research Quarterly , 74 (3), 688–702. De La Garza, R. O., and Alan Yang (2015). Language Dominance, Bilingualism, and Latino Political Participation in the United States. Political Science Quarterly , 130 (4), 655–699. Delli Carpini, M. X., and Scott Keeter (1996). What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters . Yale University Press. Dolan, K. (2011). Do Women and Men Know Different Things? Measuring Gender Differences in Political Knowledge. Journal of Politics , 73 (1), 97–107. Donovan, T. and Shaun Bowler (1998). Direct Democracy and Minority Rights: An Extension. American Journal of Political Science , 42 (3), 1020–1024. Donovan, T. and Caroline Tolbert (2013). Do Popular Votes on Rights create Animosity toward Minorities? Political Research Quarterly , 66 (4), 910–922. Dyck, J. J. (2012). Racial Threat, Direct Legislation, and Social Trust: Taking Tyranny Seriously in Studies of the Ballot Initiative. Political Research Quarterly , 35 (3), 615–628. Dyck, J. J., & LascherJr, E. L. (2019). Initiatives without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy’s Secondary Effects . University of Michigan Press. Enns, P. K., and Ashley Jardina (2021). Complicating the Role of White Racial Attitudes and Anti-immigrant Sentiment in the 2016 US Presidential Election. Public Opinion Quarterly , 85 (2), 539–570. Gamble, B. S. (1997). Putting Civil Rights to a Popular Vote. American Journal of Political Science , 41 (1), 245–269. Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California . University of California Press. Hajnal, Z. L., Elisabeth, R., & Gerber, and Hugh Louch (2002). Minorities and Direct Legislation: Evidence from California Ballot Proposition Election. Journal of Politics , 64 (1), 154–177. Harris-Lacewell, M. V. (2004). Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought . Princeton University Press. Hui, I., and David O. Sears (2018). Reexamining the Effect of Racial Propositions on Latinos’ Partisanship in California. Political Behavior , 40 (1), 149–174. Hutchings, V. L. (2001). Political Context, Issue Salience, and Selective Attentiveness: Constituent Knowledge of the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Vote. Journal of Politics , 63 (3), 846–868. Iyengar, S. (1990). Shortcuts to Political Knowledge: The Role of Selective Attention and Accessibility. In J. H. Ferejohn (Ed.), Information and Democratic Processes (pp. 160–185). University of Illinois Press. Jackson, J. C. (2025). Dismantling the Master’s House: An Assessment of the Gender Gap in the Political Knowledge of African Americans. Social Science Quarterly , 106 (3), e70015. Jerit, J. and Jason Barabas (2017). Revisiting the Gender Gap in Political Knowledge. Political Behavior , 39 (4), 817–838. Katznelson, I. (2005). When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-century America . WW Norton and Company. Klar, & Samara and Yanna Krupnikov. (2016). Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction . Cambridge University Press. Lupia, A. (1994). Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections. American Political Science Review , 88 (1), 63–76. Luskin, R. C. (1990). Explaining Political Sophistication. Political Behavior , 12 (4), 331–361. Males, M., & Macallair, D. Striking Out: The Failure of California’s ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out’ Law. Stanford Law and Policy Review 11: 65–102. Martinez, R. (2025). Precarious Youth: The Impact of Immigration Enforcement on Latino Adolescents’ Public Engagement. Political Research Quarterly (Forthcoming). Monogan, I. I. I., James, E., & Doctor, A. C. (2017). Immigration Politics and Partisan Realignment: California, Texas, and the 1994 Election. State Politics & Policy Quarterly , 17 (1), 3–23. Nicholson, S. P. (2003). The Political Environment and Ballot Proposition Awareness. American Journal of Political Science , 47 (3), 403–410. Nicholson, S. P. (2005). Voting the Agenda: Candidates, Elections, and Ballot Propositions . Princeton University Press. Nicholson-Crotty, S. (2009). The Politics of Diffusion: Public Policy in the American States. Journal of Politics , 71 (1), 192–205. Orth, T. (2025). What Do Americans Believe about Kilmar Abrego Garcia? YouGov . Available at https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52094-what-do-americans-believe-about-kilmar-abrego-garcia . Accessed July 16, 2025. Pantoja, A. D. (2006). More Alike Than Different: Explaining Political Information among African Americans and Latinos. in Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States , ed. Gary M. Segura and Shaun Bowler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 29–50. Pantoja, A. D., Gary, M., & Segura (2006). Fear and Loathing in California: Contextual Threat and Political Sophistication among Latino Voters. Political Behavior , 25 (3), 265–286. Pérez, E. O. (2015). Mind the Gap: Why Large Group Deficits in Political Knowledge Emerge – And What to do About Them. Political Behavior , 37 (4), 933–954. Prowse, G., Weaver, V. M., & Meares, T. L. (2020). The State from Below: Distorted Responsiveness in Policed Communities. Urban Affairs Review , 56 (5), 1423–1471. Ramírez, R. (2013). Mobilizing Opportunities: The Evolving Latino Electorate and the Future of American Politics . University of Virginia. Smith, M. A. (2001). The Contingent Effects of Ballot Initiatives and Candidate Races on Turnout. American Journal of Political Science , 45 (3), 700–706. Soss, J. and Vesla Weaver (2017). Police are our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race-Class Subjugated Communities. Annual Review of Political Science , 20 (1), 565–591. Street, A., Zepeda-Millán, C., & Jones‐Correa, M. (2015). Mass Deportations and the Future of Latino Partisanship. Social Science Quarterly , 96 (2), 540–552. Tolbert, C. J., & Hero, R. E. Race/Ethnicity and Direct Democracy: The Contextual Basis of Support for Anti-Immigrant and Official English Measures, in Citizens as Legislations: Direct Democracy in the United States , S. Bowler, T. Donovan, & J. Caroline (Eds.), Tolbert. Athens: Ohio State University, 209–227. Uhlaner, C. J. (1996). Latinos and Ethnic Politics in California: Participation and Preference. Latino Politics in California, ed. Aníbal Yáñez-Chávez (pp. 33–72). Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California San Diego. Walker, H., & Roman, M., and Matt Barreto (2020). The Ripple Effect: The Political Consequences of Proximal Contact with Immigration Enforcement. Journal of Race Ethnicity and Politics , 5 (3), 537–572. Weaver, V., & Prowse, G., and Spencer Piston (2019). Too Much Knowledge, Too Little Power: An Assessment of Political Knowledge in Highly Policed Communities. The Journal of Politics , 81 (3), 1153–1166. Wilson, D. C., Leo Owens, M., & Darren, W. D. (2015). How Racial Attitudes and Ideology affect Political Rights for Felons. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , 12 (1), 73–93. Zaller, J. (1992). The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion . Cambridge University Press. Zepeda-Millán, C. (2017). Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism . Cambridge University Press. Tables Tables 2 to 4 are available in the Supplementary Files section. Footnotes For the campaign spending; see https://www.opensecrets.org/ballot-measures?t0-search=a Data limitations prohibit including African-Americans and Asians in the analysis. Though often used interchangeably, I make a conceptual distinction between “political knowledge” and “political awareness” (Zaller 1992 , 333; Jones 2023, 510fn1). I define political awareness as the degree to which an individual is cognizant of the existence of a political issue and understands its consequences (Zaller 1992 , 21). Examining political awareness in the context of ballot initiatives is inherently a short-term enterprise since we are generally interested in whether voters have enough information about the measures to faithfully express their preferences. In contrast, political knowledge is typically understood “as the range of factual information about politics that is stored in long-term memory” (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, 10). The temporal distinction is deliberate since the latter is meant to capture what people know about politics that endures beyond whether people are aware of emerging issues and events (Ibid, 11). Since this article uses the cited Field Poll measure, I address their critique at length below. The question template is as follows: “Have you seen, read or heard anything about an initiative - Proposition X – that will appear on the X election ballot having to do with X laws relating to X?” The analysis here ends mid-1998 because the anti-immigrant effort to curtail bilingual education was voted on in the June primary special election rather than on the general ballot in November. I present the main set of regression models here for clarity. The full regression models can be found in Appendix B. Certain surveys did not ask about homeownership or marital status. Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files AppendixA.docx Table24.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7576288","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":524942722,"identity":"107ecfb4-933d-4149-9a40-abfcf83aa2cc","order_by":0,"name":"Kevin Bustamante","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA40lEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACAygtByYrGBgYGxCCOLWAFDEYM7AByTOkaElsIFqLuUT68wc/c+zS589vfvbgQMU92Qb25m0S+LRYzsgxbOzdlpy74RibucGBM8XGDTzHyvBqMbiRw9jAu405dwMbg5n0x7aExAaJHDMCWtIfNv7dVp8u38b+TeIgSIv8G0JaEgybebcdTmA4xmMG0SLBg1+LZc8bw9my244bbjiWUyZx4EyCcRtPWrEFPi3m7OkPPr7dVi0v33x8m8SBigTZfvbDG2/g04IJ2EhTPgpGwSgYBaMAGwAA361N34XeAXkAAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"","institution":"Stanford University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Kevin","middleName":"","lastName":"Bustamante","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-09-09 17:53:14","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7576288/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7576288/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":93063983,"identity":"627f9543-8355-404b-b852-52e0a6bdde08","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:31","extension":"docx","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":3580532,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"mountainlionsanon.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/99061c956629e2adcb5b7b2e.docx"},{"id":93063903,"identity":"4a71a4d0-70c6-46af-9a3f-e51de21460dc","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:22","extension":"json","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":3217,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"823f36209c5c44579b8b335c3e38db31.json","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/e9ceb7056c90e5788be319d1.json"},{"id":93063930,"identity":"b446d920-c399-4769-b00e-837be95fca28","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:28","extension":"xml","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":130337,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"823f36209c5c44579b8b335c3e38db311enriched.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/edd3b391af6834b8e470966a.xml"},{"id":93063916,"identity":"d024f1ba-675a-4148-ab72-2908688e3d5e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:24","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":415023,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/e4f825cac9d0126e2423fe35.png"},{"id":93063907,"identity":"543a6ea1-d6ac-49ba-8404-b68b10cc431e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:22","extension":"jpeg","order_by":5,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":650617,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage10.jpeg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/3fa220edd6dff51e786d5a30.jpeg"},{"id":93064005,"identity":"c1df9a01-4ad2-4242-9016-917dfbacfffd","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:34","extension":"jpeg","order_by":6,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":554972,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage11.jpeg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/25d2178b0344343f79edd091.jpeg"},{"id":93064030,"identity":"edb9671b-549c-4d3e-b062-c07549371270","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:41","extension":"jpeg","order_by":7,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":581689,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage12.jpeg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/e2bdc1763e9024a9c009e36e.jpeg"},{"id":93064015,"identity":"66de048f-fe05-4681-9076-8cbf97717b8b","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:37","extension":"jpeg","order_by":8,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":2226,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage13.jpeg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/87f7d729d0addfae59bcb49c.jpeg"},{"id":93063926,"identity":"d0c29a52-0391-43e5-9bed-a8a1afe6e1af","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:27","extension":"png","order_by":9,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":77074,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/36f5cf85f0caa5cca4549c16.png"},{"id":93064032,"identity":"331d4da0-5635-431c-9d7d-94455edc75e4","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:43","extension":"png","order_by":10,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":256780,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/b9bb662421e9bedac5faeaf6.png"},{"id":93063956,"identity":"0857595b-f7ac-4c49-ac01-bcb5e1a3a519","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:29","extension":"png","order_by":11,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":67022,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/b3b957273e96f790ab37ebc7.png"},{"id":93064037,"identity":"b586f23c-e6a6-4f73-bbb2-e7e285454ee3","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:45","extension":"png","order_by":12,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":326761,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage5.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/580d27d7888c231fc8058861.png"},{"id":93064028,"identity":"3060b7ad-ceed-493b-a372-66586a44ff53","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:41","extension":"png","order_by":13,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":71922,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage6.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/a1c8d45b88935e0009fce0ac.png"},{"id":93063910,"identity":"3406316f-0099-486c-a2f3-9de9cd95e542","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:23","extension":"png","order_by":14,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":193848,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage7.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/c554d94ae6c564cb2875d68f.png"},{"id":93063906,"identity":"7edb79b3-f7e2-4d01-9b10-a69c252e5619","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:22","extension":"png","order_by":15,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":380247,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage8.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/2d9637223624030bc3178c23.png"},{"id":93063985,"identity":"84014b28-616d-480e-8ca0-508ea3483373","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:32","extension":"jpeg","order_by":16,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":597273,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage9.jpeg","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/a6f279ce9b159e7dc5e445a6.jpeg"},{"id":93064043,"identity":"c083847e-9b8b-46ea-936d-f8df10812bb0","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:49","extension":"png","order_by":17,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":133511,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/3f31089a054e8e3a7de0acb1.png"},{"id":93063921,"identity":"68d35305-c7e0-4b9d-bbbf-4945b3b0f015","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:26","extension":"png","order_by":18,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":441467,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage10.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/1392cac2a0e8a132059fe5d9.png"},{"id":93064044,"identity":"4994c7b5-5620-4310-87d2-b7f0cf7f66e5","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:49","extension":"png","order_by":19,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":309747,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage11.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/f904da1b13c235bea95ba38d.png"},{"id":93064004,"identity":"3ec75466-a183-4c8c-a6e0-199511e06dac","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:34","extension":"png","order_by":20,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":335518,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage12.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/c10d1ead9e2be7c83e17e43b.png"},{"id":93066073,"identity":"1f654b85-0527-4c3e-b348-58d62ae296bd","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:47:28","extension":"png","order_by":21,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":1015,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage13.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/2f42f58416eff0fdb37b9854.png"},{"id":93064045,"identity":"19e93d1f-a0f8-4c7a-927c-afa56f44620b","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:49","extension":"png","order_by":22,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":34819,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/97f2d3d192b078fd5250c549.png"},{"id":93063988,"identity":"0cf01ba8-ebc6-45c7-9eeb-b37ce8132ff7","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:32","extension":"png","order_by":23,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":108716,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/7c006b8fe1627dc90f395e66.png"},{"id":93063933,"identity":"ce7ab07b-84b6-4d46-9d90-cc9e65acac67","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:28","extension":"png","order_by":24,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":30859,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/8f56bc7da37405d83ac1f0b8.png"},{"id":93063931,"identity":"63f85d95-55e4-47c5-83ca-4ff8ff19d9eb","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:28","extension":"png","order_by":25,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":103785,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage5.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/20a97a9c2b22e74ec081e585.png"},{"id":93063913,"identity":"f9e223e4-f95a-46f7-ac6a-5fb31eda61af","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:24","extension":"png","order_by":26,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":30248,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage6.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/ce6864bfe022a04418687da7.png"},{"id":93064006,"identity":"1607813a-adc0-4d74-b7cb-4637822032ee","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:34","extension":"png","order_by":27,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":58019,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage7.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/3e73a697b9fbafc41fca62ec.png"},{"id":93063995,"identity":"af456fa9-4a33-4211-9de6-76c61440e164","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:33","extension":"png","order_by":28,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":141756,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage8.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/6ebe8cd75fdc4e0ccd0648a7.png"},{"id":93063934,"identity":"ad039b75-0600-4c18-8179-7cf9d63fcd14","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:28","extension":"png","order_by":29,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":403840,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage9.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/9f3ef6f3b8c35e6b44c091f7.png"},{"id":93063924,"identity":"d64cf35c-4de5-46c5-8b86-d3de24239dfb","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:27","extension":"xml","order_by":30,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":125008,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"823f36209c5c44579b8b335c3e38db311structuring.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/01a3033e14a426ec60cfb45b.xml"},{"id":93064039,"identity":"c522ae33-9a7c-4c83-85bf-15501f8e68ab","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:47","extension":"html","order_by":31,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":139350,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"earlyproof.html","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/d888d131469396727eedf4fc.html"},{"id":93064029,"identity":"6de485fe-283b-465e-877a-de808e59d5c0","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:41","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":33178,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eData acquired from the Initiative and Referendum Institute. Available at https://www.initiativeandreferenduminstitute.org/direct-democracy-data\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/95a1b6cc07282bae3794164c.png"},{"id":93063927,"identity":"b14f8f40-ae43-4f15-a4d7-3607cefaf071","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:27","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":54507,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eLegend not included with this version.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/dcfb50457ead5d9d5ee4c72d.png"},{"id":93063987,"identity":"d63d5764-c279-42cc-a233-e851505bc7e9","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:32","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":45503,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eLegend not included with this version.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/3eaad7026d23414bfa3963f6.png"},{"id":93066074,"identity":"02249f04-3c84-4ee8-8a97-95889d020782","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:47:32","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":688835,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/7b225914-2737-4c95-bfee-688e0a24fcca.pdf"},{"id":93066072,"identity":"9dfe7f7d-708b-4ce2-b774-87ae17f3c6db","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:47:28","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":2300829,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"AppendixA.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/68ac44489a7827ea602ec24f.docx"},{"id":93063912,"identity":"0d160d39-9f06-47e9-b6bd-29d63e6c9650","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-10-08 16:39:23","extension":"docx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":614468,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Table24.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7576288/v1/04ec083e24aeb3b88451c4e6.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Direct Democracy and Political Awareness: How Identity Shapes Knowledge of Carceral and Anti-Immigrant Ballot Measures","fulltext":[{"header":"Introductıon","content":"\u003cp\u003eWho knows what about politics? One indisputable fact about the American public is that they know remarkably little about the traditional features of American politics like the ideological placement of the parties (Zaller 1992). Particularly concerning is the uneven distribution of general political knowledge with women and people of color consistently demonstrating lower levels (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Pantoja 2006; Abrajano 2010, 115-16; Jerit and Barabas 2017). These low levels have prompted scholars to look at what people do know about politics with plenty of evidence demonstrating that they know more about the things pertinent to them (Iyengar 1990). This includes a greater ability to identify the political offices held by women and Latinos and awareness of racially charged issues like ending segregation in the public sphere (Hutchings 2001; Dolan 2011; Abrajano 2015, 47; P\u0026eacute;rez 2015; Jackson 2025). More recent research extends this insight by focusing on what marginalized communities know about the coercive face of the state. In contrast to the liberal-democratic model, which emphasizes voting and institutional knowledge, this scholarship reveals that heavily policed populations often possess detailed knowledge of the carceral state (Soss and Weaver 2017; Weaver et al. 2019; Cohen and Luttig 2020).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI build on these insights by examining political awareness of the carceral state and anti-immigration in a quintessential liberal-democratic process: direct democracy. Ballot initiatives and referendums represent the greatest manifestation of direct democracy as voters have clear influence over legislation. Their use has surged in recent decades with nearly 800 statewide initiatives appearing on ballots since 2000 and nearly $3 billion spent on them during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles alone (Figure 1).[1] A lively scholarly debate has considered the consequences of ballot initiatives on political behavior. A great deal of this has considered whether ballot initiatives promote civic engagement like greater voter turnout, higher social trust, or increased levels of political knowledge (Nicholson 2003; Biggers 2014, 8, 19; Dyck and Lascher 2019, 10-25; Barth et al. 2019). In California, Latino partisan realignment away from the Republican Party is considered primarily a result of the presence of punitive racialized ballot measures (Pantoja et al. 2001; Pantoja and Segura 2006; Bowler et al. 2006; Monogan and Doctor 2017; but see Hui and Sears 2018). These debates hinge on a critical but often unexamined assumption: that the public is aware of the initiatives in the first place. To my knowledge, no study has systematically assessed whether awareness of ballot initiatives varies across racial and ethnic groups or how awareness is shaped by the interaction of a person\u0026rsquo;s identity and an initiative\u0026rsquo;s content. There is a pressing contemporary relevance here since the last several election cycles have had voters decide on abortion rights, affirmative action, bail and criminal sentencing requirements, and immigrant rights. At stake is the possibility that the racial gaps that exist in traditional political knowledge also persist in ballot initiative awareness with direct consequences for the lives of people of color (Bell 1978; Hajnal et al. 2002).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo that end, I ask two questions: Are Latinos and whites more aware of anti-immigrant and carceral ballot initiatives than they are of other types of initiatives? Are Latinos more aware of these initiatives than whites?[2] I argue that political awareness is structured by both group identity and the political environment (Hutchings 2001). While media coverage, moral framing, and political contestation increase general awareness of initiatives (Smith 2001; Nicholson 2003; Biggers 2014), these factors alone cannot account for variation across racial groups (Table 1). I contend that the differences can be explained by focusing on how people view the initiatives as directly impacting or threatening them and the communities they identify with (Cohen and Luttig 2020, 807). I make the case that Latinos will have elevated rates of anti-immigrant and carceral initiatives than other traditional measures because of their greater motivation and opportunities to learn about the issues (Luskin 1990). Their heightened motivation stems from a perception of how the measures will affect them and their communities while the greater opportunities come from increased rates of ethnic media coverage and their mobilization by advocacy groups. The same framework can be used to understand increased rates of white political awareness. Discriminatory whites will have a greater motivation to learn about these issues since they are liable to view the measures as a way to address perceived racial threats while increased mainstream media coverage will give all whites greater opportunities to learn about the measures. These distinct incentive structures lead to the expectation that racial gaps in awareness may narrow or reverse with Spanish-dominant Latinos and conservative whites exhibiting the highest levels of awareness of these initiatives within their respective groups.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI evaluate this argument using 21 public opinion surveys conducted by the Field Poll in California between 1994 and 1998. These surveys provide rare and valuable insight into public awareness of a wide array of ballot propositions, including two anti-immigrant measures, one carceral initiative, a measure to end affirmative action, a moral issue measure, and seventeen other \u0026ldquo;traditional\u0026rdquo; proposals ranging from approving the killing of mountain lions to banning public smoking. Central to the analysis are Proposition 187, which sought to bar undocumented immigrants from public services such as education and health care, Proposition 184, which introduced mandatory minimum sentencing and helped usher in California\u0026rsquo;s era of mass incarceration, and Proposition 227, which effectively dismantled bilingual education in public schools (HoSang 2010; Gilmore 2007, 87-126). Table 1 presents the full set of ballot measures and average rates of awareness between Latinos and whites. A racial gap in political awareness becomes immediately self-evident. The Field Poll data is uniquely well-suited for this inquiry due to the consistency of the survey design, the range of initiative types included, and the large sample sizes, which enable robust comparisons between Latino and white respondents. To my knowledge, this is the first study to compare awareness of anti-immigration, carceral, and traditional politics together.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI present two main findings from the analysis.\u0026nbsp;First, both Latinos and whites demonstrate higher awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral initiatives compared to traditional propositions. This finding largely holds even when we compare these initiatives to other prominent measures concerning the legalization of medical marijuana or implementing a single-payer health care system. Examining the correlates of awareness on these issues offers support for my identity-based argument as Spanish-speaking Latinos show greater awareness of anti-immigrant initiatives compared to English-speaking Latinos whereas white Republicans are particularly aware of carceral and anti-immigrant measures relative to white Democrats. The second key finding is the virtual absence of a racial awareness gap on anti-immigrant and carceral issues whereas whites exhibit an awareness advantage of more than 9 percentage points over Latinos when it comes to traditional propositions. This pattern underscores the existence of domain-specific political knowledge among Latinos particularly in response to exclusionary measures and carceral control. These findings expand our understanding of political knowledge and suggest that what individuals know about politics is deeply conditioned by how they are positioned in relation to state power.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this article, I contribute to the literature on political knowledge by connecting the liberal-democratic promise of direct democracy with its often punitive application.\u0026nbsp;While Americans broadly endorse the ideal of direct democracy and the opportunity to shape public life, less\u0026nbsp;is known about how people and vulnerable communities think about direct democracy when their neighbors have a direct say of the curtailment of their rights or how they think about the power they hold over others (Dyck 2012; Donovan and Tolbert 2013). In their study of highly policed communities, Weaver et al. (2019) show that African-Americans in race-class subjugated communities are aware of the disconnect between what citizen-government encounters should be (responsive) and what their interactions are (punitive). In examining the intersection of liberal-democracy and its exclusionary processes, I build on this research agenda by demonstrating that people are especially attuned to ballot initiatives that threaten them and which allow them to threaten others. These dynamics force a reckoning with the dual nature of citizen power in shaping the rules of political belonging.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 1. Bolded values indicate statistical significance at p \u0026lt; .05. An asterisk (*) marks marginal significance at p \u0026lt; .10. Sources: Field Polls 9401, 9403, 9405, 9406, 9407, 9501, 9502, 9503, 9504, 9601, 9602, 9603, 9604, 9605, 9606, 9607, 9704, 9801, 9802, 9803, 9804. Awareness of propositions 214/216 were asked jointly.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"638\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eProp No.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBallot Type\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDescription\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e% White\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAwareness\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e% Latino\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAwareness\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e184 (1994)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eCarceral\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eMandatory Minimum Sentencing\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e87\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e83\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e186 (1994)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSingle-Payer System\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e64\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e49\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e187 (1994)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAnti-immigrant\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBan Undocumented from\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003cp\u003ePublic Services\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e78\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e83\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e188 (1994)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBan Public Smoking\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e71\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e63\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e192 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSeismic Retrofitting\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e43\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e30\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e197 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eKill Mountain Lions\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e51\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e37\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e198 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBlanket Primary\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e29\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e21\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e200 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eNo-Fault Insurance\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e57\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e49\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e201 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLimit Legal Fees\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e38\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e26\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e202 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLimit Attorney Fees\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e37\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e30\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e203 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSchool Bonds\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e36*\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e29\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e207 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLimit Attorney Fees\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e55\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e44\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e209 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEnd Affirmative Action\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e73\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e62\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e211 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eRetirement Fraud\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e75\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e66\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e214 / 216 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eNew Healthcare Laws\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e42*\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e36\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e215 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eMedical Marijuana\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e76\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e69\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e218 (1996)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLocal Tax Increases\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e24\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e20\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e223 (1998)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLimit School Spending\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e33\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e30\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e225 (1998)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDeclare Term Limits\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e74\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e47\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e226 (1998)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTraditional\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBan Contributions\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e48\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e40\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.2104%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e227 (1998)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 18.8383%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAnti-immigrant\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 29.9843%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEnglish-Only Education\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 20.7221%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e70\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd valign=\"top\" style=\"width: 12.2449%;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e70\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIdentity, Ballot Initiatives, and Political Awareness\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDecades of scholarship on political knowledge have debated over what Americans know about politics and how much they need to know to ensure their interests are represented (Bereleson 1952; Converse 1964; Zaller 1992; Lupia 1994). Pernicious and persistent is the degree to which gender and racial gaps exist in measures of political knowledge.[3] Scholars have gone rounds over whether the gap is real or primarily an artifact of measurement (Abrajano 2015; Jerit and Barbaras 2017). The scholarship on race and ethnic politics (REP) has reconsidered the forms of political knowledge that people of color have in their heads with greater emphasis on how identity interacts with domain-specific knowledge (Hutchings 2001). This includes expanding traditional political knowledge measures to include identity-themed ones like \u0026ldquo;What office is held by Sonia Sotomayor\u0026rdquo; and which California law prohibits discrimination on the basis of hair style and texture (P\u0026eacute;rez 2015; Jackson 2025). A branch of this has gone beyond traditional political knowledge measures to include what people know about the role of the state in their everyday lives which includes police and prisons (Prowse et al. 2020). What this newer work has shown is that the racial awareness gap in political knowledge either shrinks dramatically or is reversed with African-Americans demonstrating an informational advantage (Cohen and Luttig 2020).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFertile ground for the reconceptualization of political knowledge is determining what people know about anti-immigration policies given its increasing role in American society (Ibid, 816; Cortez 2021). Previous experimental work has shown that providing young U.S.-born Latinos with information about President Obama\u0026rsquo;s mass deportation efforts causes them to view the Democratic Party as less welcoming to Latinos (Street et al. 2015). This suggests that what Latinos know about anti-immigration can play a powerful role in shaping their partisan attachments and their willingness to engage in political participation (Walker et al. 2020; Martinez 2025). It is this logic that has been used to explain why Latinos shifted away from the Republican Party in California in the 1990s albeit without individual-level data of awareness of anti-immigrant propositions (Pantoja et al. 2001; Bowler et al. 2006; Monogan and Doctor 2017; but see Uhlaner 1996, 65). The payoff of uncovering whether Latinos are more aware of anti-immigration and carceral policies than other policies promise to pay dividends in our understanding of Latino politics.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInsights from the REP literature have not been incorporated to the study of political awareness and ballot initiatives. This is a notable omission. Scholars have given great attention to determining whether direct democracy is amenable or antithetical to the interests of people of color (Gamble 1997; Hajnal et al. 2002; Dyck and Lascher 2018, 42). Ballot initiatives have often been criticized as allowing majority groups to exert power over minorities by eliminating their access to state services or institutionalizing restrictions on their civil rights (Bell 1978). Naturally, we should investigate whether targeted populations are aware when their rights and privileges stand to be expanded or be restricted especially in relation to the discriminating majority. If there is an identity gap, direct democracy may pose a greater risk to people of color if they are unable to defend themselves since they are unaware that their interests are at stake. Bringing in these insights promises to expand our understanding of REP and ballot awareness more generally.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo date, few studies have examined the correlates of ballot awareness using individual-level data and instead infer that certain ballot measures attracted higher awareness because of their content or because of how much media attention they attracted (Smith 2001; Biggers 2014). The studies that have used individual-data have come to mixed conclusions. Bowler and Donovan (1994) demonstrate that higher educated individuals show a greater propensity to be aware earlier in political campaigns while Nicholson (2003) shows how a range of factors in the political environment contribute to higher rates of ballot initiative awareness that includes the presence of initiatives on civil rights and civil liberties. Burnett (2019) and Barth et al. (2019) contend that the oft-used Field Poll measure of ballot awareness is severely flawed and that more appropriate measures show an unaware public.[4] These works have contributed to the study of direct democracy but none of them have noted racial and ethnic differences in awareness or have offered a closer comparison between types of propositions like anti-immigration and carceral ballot measures. In sum, previous scholarship does not tell us whether the racial awareness gap that exists in traditional political knowledge measures continues to exist in rates of ballot awareness and whether there is variation in awareness on our outcomes of interest. Table 1 shows that there is. The following section theorizes why.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Theoretical Framework","content":"\u003cp\u003eCanonical theories of political knowledge maintain that what people know is a function of ability, motivation, and opportunity (Luskin 1990; Zaller 1992). This model is captured by whether people have the skills necessary to acquire the relevant political information, whether they have the interest to do so, and whether the information is available to them. Each part of this model is shaped by identity (Iyengar 1990). Discrimination and unequal access to education and the welfare state have had longstanding systemic consequences where whites have more wealth, more education, and are more likely to be represented in mainstream media than people of color (Harris-Lacewell 2004; Katznelson 2005). Accounting for these factors leads to the baseline expectation that whites should generally have higher levels of political awareness of ballot measures than people of color.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConversely, using this framework suggests that the racial awareness gap will shrink or disappear on ballot measures that directly implicate core experiences of a person of color in the United States. Since most immigration has come from Latin America in recent decades, this suggests that Latinos will be the ones most likely to be cognizant of anti-immigration policies. Several mechanisms can contribute to heightened awareness among Latinos: they may personally identify with the immigrant experience and seek information related to immigration, perceive the initiative as directly affecting their communities, maintain close ties with immigrants, they may consumer Spanish media which give immigration issues greater attention, or they may be mobilized by advocacy organizations and political coalitions opposing the measures (Ram\u0026iacute;rez 2013; Zepeda-Mil\u0026aacute;n 2017). Each of these factors affects Latinos\u0026rsquo; motivation and opportunities to learn about politics and leads us to expect that Latinos will have a greater awareness of anti-immigrant issues than traditional policies. A similar line of reasoning can be used to explain a generally elevated rate of Latino awareness of the carceral state. The racialization of Latinos as criminal and foreign makes them a target of immigration enforcement and local police. The fear of arrest and/or deportation can loom over Latinos and their communities, again giving rise to the motivation and opportunity needed to learn about these issues (Zepeda-Mil\u0026aacute;n 2017). This is further compounded by their broader concerns with crime in their neighborhoods. In 1995, for example, Latinos represented the largest prison population in the California Department of Corrections while crime was one of their top 5 concerns between 1990 and 2000 (Gilmore 2007, 109, 111; Hajnal et al. 2002, 166). This leads us to expect that Latinos should have higher awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral state ballot measures than traditional initiatives.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhites can also be expected to have high rates of awareness of these initiatives. Political coalitions may use these initiatives to set the electoral agenda and use it as a rallying point to mobilize their base around, thus increasing the opportunities for whites to become aware of the issue (Nicholson 2005). Such mobilization can lead to further opportunities for awareness as mainstream media rises to the moment and covers crucial political issues. It is less clear to what extent these initiatives will affect white people\u0026rsquo;s motivations since not all whites are equally likely to feel like the initiatives is directly relevant to them. In one of the few intersectional works on political knowledge, Hutchings (2001) shows how overlapping identities can make particular subsets of people more likely to know about certain issues than other members of their group. Hutchings shows how black people, Republican men, and liberal women were significantly more knowledgeable about how their senator voted during the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas in the wake of the Anita Hill\u0026rsquo;s allegations of sexual harassment relative to people of different identity groups. I build on this by examining intersecting identities and how it affects political awareness.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpecifically, I expect Latinos who are closer to the immigrant experience to be more cognizant of anti-immigrant policies and Republican whites to be more aware of anti-immigration and carceral state measures. Both of these subsets are more likely to feel that their interests at stake than the rest of their group. Spanish-dominant Latinos tend to live in ethnically homogenous neighborhoods among other immigrants and are less socialized into the \u0026ldquo;electoral and political mainstream\u0026rdquo; (de la Garza and Yang 2015/2016, 661-663). Republican whites may personally see these initiatives as a way to respond to perceived racial threats in their community themselves or find them to gel with their ideological worldview (Tolbert and Hero 1998; Wilson et al. 2015, 78; Enns and Jardina 2021).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis article seeks to demonstrate whether Latinos have a higher awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral ballot measures compared to traditional initiatives and show whether an awareness gap exists in relation to whites. This requires having a state with a history of direct democracy, similar periods where these measures are voted, sufficient sample size of Latinos and whites for comparability, and survey questions that gauge awareness of different kinds of ballot initiatives. California and the \u0026ldquo;reliable and well-respected\u0026rdquo; Field Poll meets these requirements (Hui and Sears 2017, 155). California has a long history of direct democracy and, for over fifty years, the Field Poll asked respondents whether they had \u0026ldquo;seen, read, or heard anything\u0026rdquo; about propositions that stood to be on the ballot in the coming election.[5] Answers to these questions forms my dependent variable measuring political awareness. This question was asked on 21 surveys between January 1994 and May 1998 on initiatives dealing with criminal sentencing, anti-immigrant restrictions, affirmative action, and a range of other issues as I explore more in depth below.[6]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLike all measures, this one is not without its limits. Two key issues stand out which Barth et al. note (2019). First, the measure has no validation mechanism. The measure alone does not enable us to adjudicate between the true rate of awareness and an inflated rate biased by people responding affirmatively out of a social desirability to appear aware. Second, the measure only gauges awareness of a measure\u0026rsquo;s existence. People may truthfully say they have heard of a measure but not understand what the measure is about (Barth et al. 2019, 1016, 1021, 1028-1029). Whatever results that come from this data may be capturing nothing more than an unaware public misrepresenting what they think they know. These are strong critiques and represent a potentially fatal weakness of this paper. Nonetheless, there are two reasons to believe the measure is still useful.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, we are still left hard pressed to explain systematic differences in rates of ballot awareness among Latinos and whites (Table 1). Even if we accept that these rates are inflated, we must still explain why only a third of white respondents claim awareness of a proposition to implement a blanket primary but more than two-thirds claim awareness of a proposition to curtail bilingual education. Likewise, we still need an explanation on why the racial awareness gap dramatically narrows or disappears on anti-immigrant and carceral state initiatives. Second, three polls from 1996 do contain validation mechanisms that include correctly identifying the consequences of Proposition 209, an initiative concerning affirmative action. The validation measures involved asking respondents whether Proposition 209 would end affirmative action (correct) or continue it (incorrect). Regression analysis demonstrates that respondents who were aware of the ballot initiative were also significantly more likely to correctly determine the measure\u0026rsquo;s consequences (Appendix A). This fits with Burnett\u0026rsquo;s (2019) finding that the public may not be aware of the precise details of an initiative but still have a good comprehension of the political landscape that the initiatives exist in and what is at stake. These findings suggest that reports of ballot awareness may also signal ballot comprehension. Future research is needed to determine whether this finding holds more generally but it at least allows us to use these survey measures with greater confidence.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHistorical Context\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the early 1990s, California experienced a sharp demographic shift. Immigration from Asia and Latin America quickly transformed the demographic makeup of the state with the white share of the population declining rapidly. At the same time, the state started to undergo a period of significant economic decline. These demographic and economic changes were conducive but insufficient to cause widespread support for Prop 187 as less than 5 percent of respondents surveys between May 1991 and August 1993 considered immigration the state\u0026rsquo;s most important problem. Spearheaded by anti-immigrant interest groups with deep pockets, the measure ultimately attracted enough attention to lead the state\u0026rsquo;s Republican party to back it and have it meet the May deadline to qualify for the 1994 November ballot and marked a dramatic shift in the state\u0026rsquo;s treatment of immigrants (HoSang 2010, 161-165, 168, 172, 176). Once the Republicans threw their weight behind the measure, they owned the issue and viewed it as a flagpole to rally their coalition around (Nicholson 2005, 91-131). It is in this context that the Republicans pushed for the criminal-sentencing Proposition 184, known as the \u0026ldquo;Three Strikes and You\u0026rsquo;re Out\u0026rdquo;. The Three Strikes proposition mandated a minimum 25-years-to-life for individuals convicted of even minor felonies if they had two or more prior serious or violent felonies and bolstered and had made more punitive an earlier mandatory minimum sentencing law passed by the California state legislature in March 1994 and made it more difficult to overturn. The Three Strikes measure is widely recognized a watershed moment as the subsequent surge in mass incarceration disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities (Nicholson-Crotty 2009, 200-202; Karch and Cravens 2014).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStudies of Latino politics in this period often point to Propositions 187, 209, and 227 as creating a racially hostile environment for Latinos and which led them to abandon the Republican Party (Bowler et al. 2006; Monogan and Doctor 2017). The latter two efforts ended affirmative action in state and local government in 1996 while the second effectively eliminated bilingual education and forced most students into English-only classrooms after one year of being in a bilingual classroom. The struggle over affirmative action was fought primarily between interest groups and grassroots activists on both sides of the issue but largely failed to become a central point of partisan debate (HoSang 2010, 208-228). The bilingual initiative was geared towards attracting conservative support and attracted wealthy conservative donors cognizant of the opportunity to take advantage of the environment that allowed them to pass Prop 187 (Ibid, 230-235, 239-241).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Methods","content":"\u003cp\u003eTo consider ballot awareness differences, I pool the data by initiatives that shared space at the time they were voted. The analysis begins in January 1994 with the Field Poll asking about awareness of the Three Strikes initiative and ends in May 1994 before Proposition 227 was voted on in June. My dependent variable is a binary outcome of whether an individual is aware or unaware of a proposition. I code \u0026ldquo;do not know\u0026rdquo; answers as unaware since people cannot be said to be aware if they are unsure of ever having heard about the initiative. My observations are at the level of the proposition and use logit regression models to estimate political awareness. I use clustered standard errors to account for individual differences. This is both for methodological and practical reasons. Methodologically, my interest is in the types of ballot initiatives that people have heard about rather than the number of initiatives they have heard of. Practically, the Field Poll did not always ask all respondents the same set of ballot measure questions. For example, they would often only ask registered voters the awareness questions which limits our ability to fully gauge what noncitizens or the less politically engaged know.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe two primary relevant covariates are partisanship and language of interview. My partisanship variable includes people who have a registered party affiliation and includes those who are not registered but lean towards one party or the other (Klar and Krupniov 2016). I estimate the effect of being Republican and a Republican-leaner to a Democrat and Democrat-leaner baseline. My language of interview variable compares Latinos who interviewed in Spanish to Latinos who interviewed in English. I take this covariate as a proxy for immigrant status and assimilation into American society since their decision to interview in Spanish likely signals their social position (de la Garza and Yang 2015/2016). When possible, I use a standard set of control variables that include age, education, gender, homeownership, marital status, and use monthly fixed effects to account for temporal differences in political awareness.[7]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs noted above, I am interested in political awareness differences between types of ballot initiatives. The data here offers a unique opportunity because there are five different kinds of measures survey. These include the anti-immigrant Proposition 184 and Proposition 227, the carceral Proposition 184, Proposition 209 and the end of affirmative action which is often considered a racially charged issue, Proposition 215 and the legalization of medical marijuana which is considered a moral issue (Biggers 2014), and the remaining seventeen traditional measures. If we accept claims that this was a politically charged moment, then it makes sense to advantage take advantage and compare awareness of these measures that are occurring in a political environment rather than trying to extend the analysis over decades. These different categories enable us to see whether people are more attuned to anti-immigrant and carceral measures.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;2 presents the results for political awareness in 1994. The first model in the table estimates the likelihood of proposition awareness among Latino and whites and reveals important racial differences. Latino respondents were significantly less likely than their white counterparts to be aware of ballot initiatives overall after controlling for other factors (p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.01). This parallels the existence of a racial gap in political knowledge. Interacting Latino with proposition type demonstrates notable variation here with no statistical difference between Latinos and whites on the Three Strikes measure. This is a sizeable effect given how large the gap between the two groups is otherwise. The model further shows that the awareness gap is reversed on Prop 187 with Latinos being even more aware of it than whites. To make these findings more interpretable, Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e presents a visual representation of the predicted probabilities calculated from the model. Latino respondents show a predicted probability of awareness of approximately 0.90 for anti-immigrant propositions compared to 0.86 for white respondents. This gap is substantively meaningful as it indicates that Latino awareness is highly responsive to the content of ballot measures. The difference in predicted probabilities between Latinos and whites is evenly matched at a high rate and there is no statistically significant difference. It is not as if there was nothing else of importance on the ballot. Scholars have coded the other propositions on the ballot as salient issues as they deal with efforts to implement a single-payer healthcare system and to ban public smoking (Smith \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e). This suggests that even among salient issues, carceral and anti-immigrant propositions are first among equals.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA deeper look at the data allows for us to gauge subgroup differences and assess which Latinos and whites were more likely to be aware. The coefficients of awareness among Latinos in Model 2 of the carceral and anti-immigrant propositions are notably larger than in the pooled model. Latinos who conducted their interviews in Spanish were significantly more likely to be aware of anti-immigrant propositions. This lends further support to our theory of political awareness since these individuals are especially likely to perceive being affected by these measures. In contrast, they were significantly less likely to be aware of Prop 184, potentially reflecting their distance from the mainstream rules of Californian society. Model 3 focuses on white respondents and reveals a different set of patterns. Whites are significantly more aware of carceral state and anti-immigrant propositions though the magnitudes of these effects are smaller than those observed among Latinos. Being a Republican or a Republican-leaner is negatively associated with awareness in general but they regain their advantage on the Three Strikes measure (p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.01) and Prop 187 though the latter demonstrates a weaker statistical relationship (p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.10). This likely reflects alignment with the policy agenda advanced during California\u0026rsquo;s conservative turn in the mid-1990s (Nicholson \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;2\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;3\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results from 1998 reaffirm the pattern observed in 1994: Latino political awareness increases most notably in response to anti-immigrant initiatives. The logistic regression model for all respondents shows that, on average, there was no significant difference in overall proposition awareness between Latino and white respondents. Neither Latinos nor whites crack more than 50% of awareness in the predicted probabilities which suggests that the initiatives were generally unknown to everyone. Again, anti-immigrant propositions were associated with a large and statistically significant increase in public awareness (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.01) and the interaction between Latino identity and anti-immigrant propositions is also positive and significant (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.01). This indicates that Latinos were significantly more likely than whites to be aware of anti-immigrant ballot measures all else equal. These findings align with the broader theoretical expectation that racial and ethnic minorities develop domain-specific political knowledge when their group identity is perceived to be affected.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe within-group models confirm this trend. Among Latino respondents, anti-immigrant propositions were a strong and significant predictor of awareness (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.01). The Spanish-speaking variable interaction term did not reach statistical significance but it aims in the right direction. For white respondents, anti-immigrant propositions also increased awareness (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.01), but to a lesser extent than among Latinos. The interaction between Republican identity and anti-immigrant awareness among whites was statistically significant (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.01) again aligning with our theoretical expectations. The predicted probabilities shown in Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e visually reinforce the regression results. While both Latinos and whites show relatively low awareness of traditional propositions, awareness of anti-immigrant propositions jumps substantially for both groups. Notably, the gap widens in favor of Latinos with their predicted probability of awareness surpassing 0.75 and white awareness remaining closer to 0.70. This divergence highlights the politically mobilizing nature of exclusionary initiatives for targeted communities.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;4\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study demonstrates that political awareness among the public is structured in part how ballot propositions touch on group identity. Across three election years in California (1994, 1996, and 1998), Latino respondents consistently exhibited lower average levels of awareness of ballot initiatives compared to white respondents. However, this gap was not uniform across all types of propositions. Instead, it varied systematically depending on whether the proposition content directly implicated identity.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn particular, anti-immigrant propositions consistently generated elevated levels of awareness among Latino respondents. This suggests that Latino political cognition is responsive to direct policy threats. When policies like Proposition 187 proposed to restrict immigrant rights or services, Latino awareness surged likely due to personal identification with the issue, social proximity to immigrants or targeted mobilization efforts. These findings support the idea that domain-specific knowledge can emerge in response to exclusionary political contexts and close certain disparities in political information.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy contrast, Latino respondents did not exhibit significantly elevated awareness of ballot propositions that dealt with issues like affirmative action or moral politics. Awareness of affirmative action propositions was significantly lower among Latinos than whites despite the issue\u0026rsquo;s broad relevance to racial equity. This result complicates assumptions that racially-charged policies automatically generate increased engagement among people of color. Rather, it suggests that issue salience is conditional not just on racial content but on whether the framing of the proposition is perceived as directly targeting one\u0026rsquo;s group or lived experience. Indeed, there seems to have been some confusion and conflicting ideas about affirmative action among people of color during the period despite overwhelmingly voting in favor of it (Hosang 2010, 210\u0026ndash;212, 228). Similarly, moral issues like marijuana legalization appear to have generated more universal engagement without significant racial differentiation. Taken together, the findings show that racial gaps in political awareness are not static or generalizable across issue types. They are deeply contextual and shaped by the intersection of identity, initiative, and political environment. Latino respondents are not uniformly disengaged or less informed but instead exhibit heightened awareness in domains where the stakes for their communities are perceived to be highest. This highlights the importance of moving beyond blanket assumptions about group-level political knowledge and toward a more nuanced understanding of how different factors interact to shape political cognition.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 2025, Florida opened a new detention center in the middle of a wildlife preserve meant to contain 5,000 immigrants. Colloquially known as \u0026ldquo;Alligator Alcatraz\u0026rdquo;, the detention center symbolizes the intersection of anti-immigration and mass incarceration. The detention center foreshadows the future of American politics as the federal government has promised to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day and the 2025 budget bill dedicates an estimated \u003cspan\u003e$\u003c/span\u003e37\u0026nbsp;billion to Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE). We are only beginning to understand the consequences of the ICE age (Street et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Walker et al. 2020; Martinez \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDetermining how people will respond to these political developments requires figuring out if they are aware of what is happening around them and whether they understand it. There is no guarantee that they will. An April 2025 survey of American citizens showed that 76% of whites and only 66% of Latino citizens were aware about the illegal removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador (Orth \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). The pattern persisted across several other factual questions about the case. In contrast, polling data from February 2025 demonstrated that Latinos displayed higher rates of factual knowledge of how birthright citizenship operates relative to whites and blacks (Ballard \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). At a time where even previously settled constitutional questions are being reconsidered, it is essential that we understand what people know about cross-cutting issues that sit at the intersection between the traditional and the domain-specific.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis article advances our understanding of political behavior by examining political awareness of anti-immigrant, carceral, and traditional ballot initiatives. This article presents two key findings. First, I have shown that Latinos demonstrate higher rates of political awareness of the former two than of traditional ballot measures. In particular, Spanish-speaking Latinos were overwhelmingly likely to be aware of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 while Republican whites were more aware of this and the mandatory minimum sentencing measure. Despite the recent spate of ballot measures prohibiting noncitizens from voting in state and local elections, noncitizens have long played a role in American politics by protesting and registering people to vote. With over 25\u0026nbsp;million noncitizens in the United States today, this article calls for further research investigating what they know about politics too. Second, I have shown that the racial gap in political knowledge persists in awareness of traditional initiatives but gets erased or reversed in awareness of anti-immigrant and carceral state ballot proposals. In an era when democracy is increasingly shaped by direct voter action and punitive state power, it is essential to understand who gets to participate in democracy, who gets excluded, and who is paying attention while it happens.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eK.B. wrote the text and conducted the analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAcknowledgement\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eI am indebted to Jeff Harden, Geoff Layman, Robert \u0026ldquo;Connor\u0026rdquo; Martinez, Ricardo Ram\u0026iacute;rez, and Shana Scogin. I thank Kris Kasianovitz at the University of California Berkeley for her research assistance. Sharon Bonilla and Urania Solis have my love for giving me the time to finish this project.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eData Availability\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eField Poll data available through here: https://dlab.berkeley.edu/data/california-public-opinion-polls.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAbrajano, M. (2015). Reexamining the Racial Gap in Political Knowledge. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e77\u003c/em\u003e(1), 44\u0026ndash;54.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBallard, J. (2025). Which U.S. Births Americans think Should be Entitled to Birthright Citizenship. \u003cem\u003eYouGov\u003c/em\u003e. Available at \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51702-which-births-americans-think-should-be-entitled-to-birthright-citizenship\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/51702-which-births-americans-think-should-be-entitled-to-birthright-citizenship\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e. Access July 16, 2025.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBarth, J., \u0026amp; Burnett, C. M., and Janine Parry (2020). Direct Democracy, Educative Effects, and the (Mis) Measurement of Ballot Measure Awareness. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Behavior\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e42\u003c/em\u003e(4), 1015\u0026ndash;1034.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBell, D. Jr (1978). The Referendum: Democracy\u0026rsquo;s Barrier to Racial Equality. \u003cem\u003eWashington Law Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e54\u003c/em\u003e, 1\u0026ndash;29.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBerelson, B. (1952). Democratic Theory and Public Opinion. \u003cem\u003ePublic Opinion Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e16\u003c/em\u003e(3), 313\u0026ndash;330.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBiggers, D. R. (2012). Can a Social Issue Proposition Increase Political Knowledge? Campaign Learning and the Educative Effects of Direct Democracy. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Politics Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e40\u003c/em\u003e(6), 998\u0026ndash;1025.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBiggers, D. R. (2014). \u003cem\u003eMorality at the Ballot: Direct Democracy and Political Engagement in the United States\u003c/em\u003e. Cambridge University Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBowler, S. and Todd Donovan (1994). Information and Opinion Change on Ballot Propositions. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Behavior\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e16\u003c/em\u003e(4), 411\u0026ndash;435.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBowler, S., Nicholson, S. P., \u0026amp; Segura, G. M. (2006). Earthquakes and Aftershocks: Race, Direct Democracy, and Partisan Change. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Journal of Political Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e50\u003c/em\u003e(1), 146\u0026ndash;159.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBurnett, C. M. (2019). Information and Direct Democracy: What Voters Learn about Ballot Measures and How it Affects their Votes. \u003cem\u003eElectoral Studies\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e57\u003c/em\u003e(1), 223\u0026ndash;244.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCohen, C. J., and Matthew Luttig (2020). Reconceptualizing Political Knowledge: Race, Ethnicity, and Carceral Violence. \u003cem\u003ePerspectives on Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e18\u003c/em\u003e(3), 805\u0026ndash;818.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eConverse, P. E. (1964). The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics. \u003cem\u003eCritical Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e18\u003c/em\u003e(1\u0026ndash;3), 1\u0026ndash;74.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCortez, D. (2021). Latinxs in La Migra: Why They Join and Why it Matters. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Research Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e74\u003c/em\u003e(3), 688\u0026ndash;702.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDe La Garza, R. O., and Alan Yang (2015). Language Dominance, Bilingualism, and Latino Political Participation in the United States. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Science Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e130\u003c/em\u003e(4), 655\u0026ndash;699.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDelli Carpini, M. X., and Scott Keeter (1996). \u003cem\u003eWhat Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters\u003c/em\u003e. Yale University Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDolan, K. (2011). Do Women and Men Know Different Things? Measuring Gender Differences in Political Knowledge. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e73\u003c/em\u003e(1), 97\u0026ndash;107.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDonovan, T. and Shaun Bowler (1998). Direct Democracy and Minority Rights: An Extension. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Journal of Political Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e42\u003c/em\u003e(3), 1020\u0026ndash;1024.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDonovan, T. and Caroline Tolbert (2013). Do Popular Votes on Rights create Animosity toward Minorities? \u003cem\u003ePolitical Research Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e66\u003c/em\u003e(4), 910\u0026ndash;922.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDyck, J. J. (2012). Racial Threat, Direct Legislation, and Social Trust: Taking Tyranny Seriously in Studies of the Ballot Initiative. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Research Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e35\u003c/em\u003e(3), 615\u0026ndash;628.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDyck, J. J., \u0026amp; LascherJr, E. L. (2019). \u003cem\u003eInitiatives without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy\u0026rsquo;s Secondary Effects\u003c/em\u003e. University of Michigan Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEnns, P. K., and Ashley Jardina (2021). Complicating the Role of White Racial Attitudes and Anti-immigrant Sentiment in the 2016 US Presidential Election. \u003cem\u003ePublic Opinion Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e85\u003c/em\u003e(2), 539\u0026ndash;570.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGamble, B. S. (1997). Putting Civil Rights to a Popular Vote. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Journal of Political Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e41\u003c/em\u003e(1), 245\u0026ndash;269.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGilmore, R. W. (2007). \u003cem\u003eGolden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California\u003c/em\u003e. University of California Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHajnal, Z. L., Elisabeth, R., \u0026amp; Gerber, and Hugh Louch (2002). Minorities and Direct Legislation: Evidence from California Ballot Proposition Election. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e64\u003c/em\u003e(1), 154\u0026ndash;177.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHarris-Lacewell, M. V. (2004). \u003cem\u003eBarbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought\u003c/em\u003e. Princeton University Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHui, I., and David O. Sears (2018). Reexamining the Effect of Racial Propositions on Latinos\u0026rsquo; Partisanship in California. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Behavior\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e40\u003c/em\u003e(1), 149\u0026ndash;174.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHutchings, V. L. (2001). Political Context, Issue Salience, and Selective Attentiveness: Constituent Knowledge of the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Vote. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e63\u003c/em\u003e(3), 846\u0026ndash;868.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIyengar, S. (1990). Shortcuts to Political Knowledge: The Role of Selective Attention and Accessibility. In J. H. Ferejohn (Ed.), \u003cem\u003eInformation and Democratic Processes\u003c/em\u003e (pp. 160\u0026ndash;185). University of Illinois Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eJackson, J. C. (2025). Dismantling the Master\u0026rsquo;s House: An Assessment of the Gender Gap in the Political Knowledge of African Americans. \u003cem\u003eSocial Science Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e106\u003c/em\u003e(3), e70015.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eJerit, J. and Jason Barabas (2017). Revisiting the Gender Gap in Political Knowledge. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Behavior\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e39\u003c/em\u003e(4), 817\u0026ndash;838.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eKatznelson, I. (2005). \u003cem\u003eWhen Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-century America\u003c/em\u003e. WW Norton and Company.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eKlar, \u0026amp; Samara and Yanna Krupnikov. (2016). \u003cem\u003eIndependent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction\u003c/em\u003e. Cambridge University Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLupia, A. (1994). Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Political Science Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e88\u003c/em\u003e(1), 63\u0026ndash;76.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLuskin, R. C. (1990). Explaining Political Sophistication. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Behavior\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e12\u003c/em\u003e(4), 331\u0026ndash;361.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMales, M., \u0026amp; Macallair, D. Striking Out: The Failure of California\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Three Strikes and You\u0026rsquo;re Out\u0026rsquo; Law. \u003cem\u003eStanford Law and Policy Review\u003c/em\u003e 11: 65\u0026ndash;102.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMartinez, R. (2025). Precarious Youth: The Impact of Immigration Enforcement on Latino Adolescents\u0026rsquo; Public Engagement. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Research Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e (Forthcoming).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMonogan, I. I. I., James, E., \u0026amp; Doctor, A. C. (2017). Immigration Politics and Partisan Realignment: California, Texas, and the 1994 Election. \u003cem\u003eState Politics \u0026amp; Policy Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e17\u003c/em\u003e(1), 3\u0026ndash;23.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNicholson, S. P. (2003). The Political Environment and Ballot Proposition Awareness. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Journal of Political Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e47\u003c/em\u003e(3), 403\u0026ndash;410.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNicholson, S. P. (2005). \u003cem\u003eVoting the Agenda: Candidates, Elections, and Ballot Propositions\u003c/em\u003e. Princeton University Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNicholson-Crotty, S. (2009). The Politics of Diffusion: Public Policy in the American States. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e71\u003c/em\u003e(1), 192\u0026ndash;205.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOrth, T. (2025). What Do Americans Believe about Kilmar Abrego Garcia? \u003cem\u003eYouGov\u003c/em\u003e. Available at \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52094-what-do-americans-believe-about-kilmar-abrego-garcia\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52094-what-do-americans-believe-about-kilmar-abrego-garcia\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e. Accessed July 16, 2025.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePantoja, A. D. (2006). More Alike Than Different: Explaining Political Information among African Americans and Latinos. in \u003cem\u003eDiversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States\u003c/em\u003e, ed. Gary M. Segura and Shaun Bowler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 29\u0026ndash;50.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePantoja, A. D., Gary, M., \u0026amp; Segura (2006). Fear and Loathing in California: Contextual Threat and Political Sophistication among Latino Voters. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Behavior\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e25\u003c/em\u003e(3), 265\u0026ndash;286.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eP\u0026eacute;rez, E. O. (2015). Mind the Gap: Why Large Group Deficits in Political Knowledge Emerge \u0026ndash; And What to do About Them. \u003cem\u003ePolitical Behavior\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e37\u003c/em\u003e(4), 933\u0026ndash;954.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eProwse, G., Weaver, V. M., \u0026amp; Meares, T. L. (2020). The State from Below: Distorted Responsiveness in Policed Communities. \u003cem\u003eUrban Affairs Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e56\u003c/em\u003e(5), 1423\u0026ndash;1471.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRam\u0026iacute;rez, R. (2013). \u003cem\u003eMobilizing Opportunities: The Evolving Latino Electorate and the Future of American Politics\u003c/em\u003e. University of Virginia.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSmith, M. A. (2001). The Contingent Effects of Ballot Initiatives and Candidate Races on Turnout. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Journal of Political Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e45\u003c/em\u003e(3), 700\u0026ndash;706.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSoss, J. and Vesla Weaver (2017). Police are our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race-Class Subjugated Communities. \u003cem\u003eAnnual Review of Political Science\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e20\u003c/em\u003e(1), 565\u0026ndash;591.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eStreet, A., Zepeda-Mill\u0026aacute;n, C., \u0026amp; Jones‐Correa, M. (2015). Mass Deportations and the Future of Latino Partisanship. \u003cem\u003eSocial Science Quarterly\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e96\u003c/em\u003e(2), 540\u0026ndash;552.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTolbert, C. J., \u0026amp; Hero, R. E. Race/Ethnicity and Direct Democracy: The Contextual Basis of Support for Anti-Immigrant and Official English Measures, in \u003cem\u003eCitizens as Legislations: Direct Democracy in the United States\u003c/em\u003e, S. Bowler, T. Donovan, \u0026amp; J. Caroline (Eds.), Tolbert. Athens: Ohio State University, 209\u0026ndash;227.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUhlaner, C. J. (1996). Latinos and Ethnic Politics in California: Participation and Preference. \u003cem\u003eLatino Politics in California, ed. An\u0026iacute;bal Y\u0026aacute;\u0026ntilde;ez-Ch\u0026aacute;vez\u003c/em\u003e (pp. 33\u0026ndash;72). Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California San Diego.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWalker, H., \u0026amp; Roman, M., and Matt Barreto (2020). The Ripple Effect: The Political Consequences of Proximal Contact with Immigration Enforcement. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Race Ethnicity and Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e(3), 537\u0026ndash;572.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWeaver, V., \u0026amp; Prowse, G., and Spencer Piston (2019). Too Much Knowledge, Too Little Power: An Assessment of Political Knowledge in Highly Policed Communities. \u003cem\u003eThe Journal of Politics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e81\u003c/em\u003e(3), 1153\u0026ndash;1166.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWilson, D. C., Leo Owens, M., \u0026amp; Darren, W. D. (2015). How Racial Attitudes and Ideology affect Political Rights for Felons. \u003cem\u003eDu Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e12\u003c/em\u003e(1), 73\u0026ndash;93.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZaller, J. (1992). \u003cem\u003eThe Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion\u003c/em\u003e. Cambridge University Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZepeda-Mill\u0026aacute;n, C. (2017). \u003cem\u003eLatino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism\u003c/em\u003e. Cambridge University Press.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"},{"header":"Tables","content":"\u003cp\u003eTables 2 to 4 are available in the Supplementary Files section.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Footnotes","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e For the campaign spending; see \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://www.opensecrets.org/ballot-measures?t0-search=a\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://www.opensecrets.org/ballot-measures?t0-search=a\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Data limitations prohibit including African-Americans and Asians in the analysis.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Though often used interchangeably, I make a conceptual distinction between \u0026ldquo;political knowledge\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;political awareness\u0026rdquo; (Zaller \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1992\u003c/span\u003e, 333; Jones 2023, 510fn1). I define political awareness as the degree to which an individual is cognizant of the existence of a political issue and understands its consequences (Zaller \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1992\u003c/span\u003e, 21). Examining political awareness in the context of ballot initiatives is inherently a short-term enterprise since we are generally interested in whether voters have enough information about the measures to faithfully express their preferences. In contrast, political knowledge is typically understood \u0026ldquo;as the range of factual information about politics that is stored in long-term memory\u0026rdquo; (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, 10). The temporal distinction is deliberate since the latter is meant to capture what people know about politics that endures beyond whether people are aware of emerging issues and events (Ibid, 11).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Since this article uses the cited Field Poll measure, I address their critique at length below.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e The question template is as follows: \u0026ldquo;Have you seen, read or heard anything about an initiative - Proposition X \u0026ndash; that will appear on the X election ballot having to do with X laws relating to X?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e The analysis here ends mid-1998 because the anti-immigrant effort to curtail bilingual education was voted on in the June primary special election rather than on the general ballot in November.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003e I present the main set of regression models here for clarity. The full regression models can be found in Appendix B. Certain surveys did not ask about homeownership or marital status.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7576288/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7576288/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eWho knows what about American politics? Traditional measures of political knowledge demonstrate a persistent “racial gap” with whites demonstrating higher levels than people of color. Recent scholarship has shown that this gap narrows or disappears when people are asked questions that have greater relevance to their racial or ethnic group. I contribute to this scholarship by examining the relationship between identity, political awareness, and direct democracy. I argue that identity shapes political awareness when ballot measures are perceived to be threatening or directly impacting one’s group. Using 21 Field Poll surveys in California between 1994 and 1998, I demonstrate the presence of a political awareness racial gap for traditional ballot measures but show that it disappears for carceral and anti-immigrant initiatives. My findings have implications for how political behavior will be shaped by a political environment where immigration and mass incarceration are increasingly intertwined.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Direct Democracy and Political Awareness: How Identity Shapes Knowledge of Carceral and Anti-Immigrant Ballot Measures","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-10-08 16:15:19","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7576288/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"07a1f147-611a-4b77-a5a0-24f8e70921d1","owner":[],"postedDate":"October 8th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-05-21T21:38:19+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-10-08 16:15:19","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7576288","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7576288","identity":"rs-7576288","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}