By Robert Schlesinger
How much do black voters matter to Democrats in a presidential election? Try 76 electoral votes worth.
I was home in NYC for part of Easter weekend and during a family gathering, the Democratic debate broke out. My family reflects the current Democratic spectrum: We’ve got a staunch Obama-ite (who would not vote for Clinton), a couple of either-works-for-me types (including me), some committed Clinton-ites (at least one of whom swears they will not pull the lever for Obama in November).
I argued — as I have here and elsewhere — that Barack Obama’s got the nomination virtually sewn up, barring a colossal collapse. She can’t overtake him in pledged delegates, and the superdelegates (being mostly elected officials who have to stand on a Democratic ticket in the fall and in the future) won’t risk the wrath of black voters by tossing Obama aside.
One of my brothers raised an objection I had not heard before: Black voters are critical in Democratic primaries, he argued, because they make up a huge portion of the electorate, especially in the south; but in how many general election states is the black vote important for Democrats? I didn’t have an answer. Thanks to exit polls and some rough calculations, I now do.
I started with the 20 states that John Kerry won in 2000; then using CNN’s exit polls I estimated the number of black voters in each state and the number that voted Democratic. I found that black votes numbered more than Kerry’s margin for error in six states: Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes), Michigan (17), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Wisconsin (10), and Delaware (3).
Of course there’s no scenario under which black voters simply don’t show up. Instead, the danger is depressed turn-out. So, again using CNN’s exit poll numbers, I ran some estimates of what would happen if a smaller percentage of blacks turned out:
- At 90 percent black turn-out, Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes slide into the GOP column.
- At 75 percent black turn-out, Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes go Republican.
- At 70 percent Michigan’s 17 electoral votes turn from blue to red.
- At 50 percent the GOP collects Delawre’s three electoral votes.
I don’t know what a realistic number to project is for the effects of angry black apathy, but I’ll stop at 50 percent. It may be that going as low as 75 percent is unrealistic. Most likely it’s impossible to say. (And this doesn’t take into account things like congressional districts where black voters make the margin of difference.)
So: More grist for the argument mill.
4 Comments
April 4, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Another interesting analysis would be:
What would the effect on depressed turnout be on the bottom of the ticket?
Superdelegates who are concerned first and foremost about their own political survival will surely not risk political suicide by overturning an Obama win.
April 5, 2008 at 4:44 am
One reason the Clintons decided to play the race card is that they assume that traditionally Democratic interests groups will always vote Democratic because they have nowhere else to go. that’s old machine politics, and has been disproven over and over – voter turn-out has been decisive in many national elections. And Hill and Bill having insulted the African American community repeatedly, there is a very good chance that a Hillary nomination could lead to a 50% – or less – African American turn-out. If the superdelegates can’t get that through their heads, they might just as well vote Republican for all the good they do the party voting for clinton.
April 7, 2008 at 7:04 pm
The Democrats need the African-American vote to make up for the fact that they’ve lost the white male vote since…well, at least since Carter in 1976, if he won it then. They have to keep their coalition together, or even a weak candidate like McCain will beat them in the fall.
I think the problem with this race has not been the length of the primary but it’s nastiness. And it seems to me that most of the nastiness is coming from Sen. Clinton. Perhaps Mark Penn’s much overdue departure will do something to raise the tone–I certainly hope so!
April 24, 2008 at 11:42 pm
speaking as an African-American, I hear a lot of talk from my mother and her friends about not voting for Hillary, and that they would rather vote Republican.
i think the dems run a real risk of losing the black vote for good if Hillary steals the nomination.
Evidently the Republicans are quietly sending in black Republican pastors to black churches.
Many blacks are quite socially conservative and are a good cultural fit.
http://www.barackoblogger.com/2008/04/how-dems-could-lose-black-vote.html
http://www.barackoblogger.com/2008/04/how-dems-could-lose-black-vote.html