Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto

Assistant Professor of Political Science
and African American Studies
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
PhD, Political Science, Duke University
vmds@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Victoria DeFrancesco Soto's work focuses on campaigns and elections underpinned by the intersection of political psychology and race and ethnic politics. She is interested in how cognition and affect shape the processing of political information within a dynamic political environment of changing racial and ethnic demographics. Her research projects examine the influence of social group identity on political behavior, in particular with regards to campaigns; black-Latino intergroup relations; comparative race studies; and attitudes toward immigration.

DeFrancesco Soto is currently examining how Latinos evaluate co-ethnic candidates. In particular, she considers how different dimensions of Latino group identity influence the ultimate evaluation of a co-ethnic candidate. She has also published several papers on inter-minority relations, with an emphasis on the negotiation of race relations in the new South as a result of the growth of Latinos in that region. A third major component of DeFrancesco Soto's research is the area of campaign media effects, where she and Jennifer Merolla were the first to publish a study on the role of Latino-angled campaign advertisements on electoral behavior in 2006.

Current Research

Ethnic Group Identity and Political Preference. DeFrancesco Soto's research agenda concentrates on the preferences of minorities toward fellow minority candidates. She examines whether ethnicity will come to trump partisanship and other primary political predictors of choice. In examining how Latinos evaluate co-ethnic candidates--those from the same as well as opposing parties, she finds that in some instances, an ethnic in-group match by itself predicts political choice, but not for all Latinos and not all the time.

DeFrancesco Soto introduces multidimensional measures of identity from social psychology. Her analysis finds that Latinos with higher levels of Latino group identification are most likely to support a Latino candidate. However, the preference for a Latino candidate depends on whether the candidate is a Republican or Democrat. Additionally, stigma has a significantly negative effect on the preference of an ethnic in-group candidate.

Additionally, she is currently developing a study to understand the role of ethnic out-group status on political preferences. Over the past decade, the number of elected Latino officials grew by 70 percent. This drastic and rapid demographic change demands an answer to how non-Latinos react to Latino candidates.

Campaign Media Analysis. In the 2000 presidential election, $771 million was spent on television advertising, with estimates for 2008 reaching well above $1.5 billion. DeFrancesco Soto applies an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) approach to examine the effect of campaign advertising on turnout, political preferences such as candidate evaluation, vote choice, and issue positions.

Early campaign studies posited that campaigns exerted only minimal effects on voters. However, DeFrancesco Soto and Jennifer Merolla have found that they do affect political behavior, but in subtle ways, influencing candidate evaluation, partisanship, and issue positions. A consistent finding emerging from this analysis is that targeted messages are more effective than general messages--a finding well established in the consumer marketing literature but not in political marketing. Regarding Latinos, ads with an ethnic angle have the strongest substantive effect, especially among less culturally assimilated segments.   

Black-Latino Relations. DeFrancesco Soto has been examining the changing demographic nature of the new South with an emphasis on the emerging--and sometimes problematic--interminority relations between the established black population and Latino newcomers.   In reconsidering the nature of minority relations, she incorporates Latin American racial frameworks to understand the racial attitudes of U.S.-based Latinos, in particular in response to African Americans.

Currently, DeFrancesco Soto is working with Jaime Dominguez of Northwestern University to establish the ethnographic basis for a Chicago-based project on inter- and intraminority relations. The project will also examine intragroup dynamics between Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent.

Immigration. Public opinion on immigration cleaves party lines, and studies of immigration policy have been inconclusive. DeFrancesco Soto points to a lack of attention to the processes involved in the formation of attitudes toward immigration policy and the influence of varying frames of presentation.

DeFrancesco Soto is investigating immigration at the individual level as the Chicagoland representative for a national immigration project. She is working with political scientists from across the country to examine how Americans perceive cultural threat in addition to more traditional socio-economic predictors of opinion.

Selected Publications

Journal Articles

DeFrancesco Soto, V., with P. D. McClain and J. Carew. Evolving racial identity in American politics. In The Annual Review of Political Science, forthcoming.

DeFrancesco Soto, V., with P. D. McClain, et al. Black Americans and Latino immigrants in a Southern city: Friendly neighbors or economic competitors? Du Bois Review, forthcoming.

DeFrancesco Soto, V., with J. L. Merolla. 2006. Vota por tu futuro: Partisan mobilization of Latino voters in the 2000 presidential election. Political Behavior 28(4): 285-304.

DeFrancesco Soto, V., with P. D. McClain, et al. 2006. Racial distancing in a Southern city: Latino immigrants' views of black Americans. Journal of Politics, 68(3): 571-584.

Book Chapters

DeFrancesco Soto, V., with P. D. McClain, et al. 2006. Rebuilding black voting rights before the Voting Rights Act. In The Voting Rights Act: Securing the Ballot, ed. R. M. Valelly. Washington D.C.: CQ Press.

DeFrancesco Soto, V., with J. L. Merolla. Se habla espanol: Ethnic campaign strategies and Latino voting behavior. In New Race Politics: Understanding Minority and Immigrant Voting, ed. K. Haynie and J. Junn. New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

Black and Latino immigrant relations in a Southern city: Do black elites and the black and Latino immigrant masses agree? In New Race Politics: Understanding Minority and Immigrant Voting, ed. K. Haynie and J. Junn. New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.