"Why Black Voters will cost Kerry the Presidency"
This article posted at "the horse race blog" is simply amazing, I will encourage you to read the whole piece. Here are my favorite portions of this blogBlack America has been voting solidly with the Democratic Party since the 1960s. They were part of the Roosevelt Coalition beginning in 1932, but a sizeable portion had remained with Republicans. Thanks to Kennedy’s support of and Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act, Johnson’s Great Society, and Nixon’s divide-and-conquer strategy in 1968, blacks switched to the Democratic Party and have never left. After 1968, Republicans were lucky to score 15% of black voters on a presidential ticket. The average level of black support for Republicans has been about 12%.
While blacks have been reliable voters for the Democrats, almost every other sizeable demographic has not been. There has been an interesting phenomenon in the Democratic Party in the last 25 years. Its voting coalition has been slowly decaying. The first obvious sign of this were the Reagan and Blue Dog Democrats. After that the South fell away. After that union workers began voting increasingly for Republicans, and union workers began declining as an overall percentage of the American public. Abortion has pulled a good chunk of Catholics away. Issues surrounding homosexuality have amplified this problem. What largely remains of the original coalition is urbanites. Urban voters continue to vote solidly Democratic (this is why the 2000 county-by-county map looks so striking). But the cornerstone of Democratic hegemony among urban voters is the black portion of urban voters.
What does this mean for the Democrats nationally? Well, it basically means that for the Democrats to compete against Republicans, they have to pull an ever-larger proportion of their dwindling base. At this point this means black voters. They are only reliable and sizeable group of voters. Thus, the more the rest of the base decays, the better blacks must perform for the Democrats for the party to do well nationally.
It gets more interesting
See, the Democrats have money. They have gobs and gobs of money. Wealthy white people are actually just as inclined to vote Democrat as they are to vote Republican. This is how Howard Dean got so much money and virtually no votes.
What they are lacking is a core voter base. You can see this all over the nation as the number of safe Democratic states have fallen away. Think about Minnesota. Think about the whole South. The entire South (including West Virginia) has, in the last 40 years, transitioned from being safe Democrat to safe Republican. Several perennial swing states are no longer in that condition – Missouri, Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana. As a matter of fact, much of the Democrat’s electoral position has nothing to do with a solid base (as the Republican’s position does), but is due to Republican Party incompetence or corruption (or both), particularly in Illinois and California. That gives the Democrats a foundation of more than 70 Electoral Votes to add to their natural base in the urban Northeast, which is the only safe spot left for them. This puts a band-aid on their wound. But the wound remains. They lack a solid foundation of base voters.
As the Democrats base has diminished, their reliance upon black voters has increased dramatically.
Nationwide, Al Gore carried a whopping 91% of the black electorate, which constituted an impressive 10% of the entire electorate (proportional, by the way, to the black adult population, which constitutes 10% of the voting-age public). That means that of the 105 million of us who voted in 2000, 10.5 million blacks came to the polls. Black turnout in 2000 was low relative to white turnout, but it was high relative to previous levels of black turnout. Of the 22.0 million black Americans of voting age, 45% of them came to the polls. Gore carried roughly 9.4 million of them, Dubya only pulled in 937,000. That gave Gore a whopping 8.46 million vote net advantage over Bush. The trend was quite pronounced in key states.
In Florida, blacks constituted 15% of electorate on 11-07-00. This is more than the percentage they constitute of total eligible voters. They went for Gore by 93% to 7%, giving him a net advantage of 751,352 votes in a state decided by 537 votes.
In Ohio, blacks constituted 9% of the electorate on 11-07-00. Again, this is more than the percentage they constitute of total eligible voters. They went to Gore 89% to 9%, giving him an advantage of 355,471 votes in a state decided by 166,735 votes.
In Michigan, blacks constituted 11% of the electorate on 11-07-00. This is about the same percentage that blacks constitute of total eligible voters. They went to Gore 91% to 8%, giving him a net advantage of 335,214 votes in a state decided by 217,279 votes.
One can get a sense of just how necessary blacks are to the Democrats not just from these numbers, but from a consideration of the big picture in 2000. Bill Clinton was a popular President who presided over a time of peace and prosperity. His vice-president was considered approvingly, though without the same affection that Clinton enjoyed. And yet, he only won the popular vote by 500,000 votes. This is virtually unprecedented in American history.
Two weeks ago, the latest Pew Poll came out showing Kerry enjoying 70% support among blacks. Just today The Center for Policy and Economic Studies announced that in their poll, Kerry enjoyed 69% support among blacks compared to 18% for Bush. They conducted a similar poll at the same point in the 2000 race. It showed Gore 74%, Bush 9%. According to this poll, then, Kerry is underperforming among blacks by roughly 14% of the vote, a statistically significant difference. What would that mean if these numbers hold for the next month?
If there were a perfect replay of Florida, Kerry’s total would shrink by 122,312 votes.
If there were a perfect replay of Ohio, Kerry’s total would shrink by 62,207 votes (making Nader’s absence on the ballot this year wholly irrelevant).
If there were a perfect replay of Michigan, Kerry’s total would shrink by 56,542 votes.
If there were a perfect replay of the national vote, Kerry’s total would shrink by 1,459,966. In other words, Bush would win the popular vote by about 1 million votes!
John Kerry simply cannot win this election if he performs among blacks 14% worse than Gore did. There is no where else in America he can make up those votes. The Democrats have no other constituencies from which they can draw their voters.
Why Has This Happened?
There are two broad, fairly obvious, reasons that Bush has netted 14% among black voters. He has done a good job and Kerry has done a horrible job.
Bush Has Done a Good Job By:
If you want to know where Kerry went wrong with blacks, then you have to read the whole piece to get the true picture and boy is he ever right!
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