Past elections show the Dem candidate needs nearly 95% of the black vote to win the presidential election.
The black vote saved Biden in 2020, and now he was down to only 73% before he bowed out. Harris is only up to 81% according to the MSNBC/U-Gov poll I cited. That is not a good number in an election that is going to come down to tens of thousands of votes in the swing states.
I get pissed for many reasons; one is that this board seems to take for granted that the black vote is in the bag for the Democratic party like it has been in the past, to the point where there are threads where the members of this board are straight up saying they don’t understand why any black person would vote for Trump. Or that they don’t understand what Trump was trying to achieve at the black journalist’s conference.
I tried to provide some perspective on what is happening, now in 2024, and have been trying to do that for more than a year. In fact, my very first post in the interview thread was saying that I understand what Trump is trying to do and why.
It is now coming out the Trump campaign knew what he was going to try to do what he did, it wasn’t just an off the cuff thing on Trumps part. Did he fail at what he was trying to do, I don’t know, but that is another discussion.
I’m trying to explain something in the demographics that even the Trump campaign sees that this board does not.
I get pissed because I make valid points and now that I’m hated on the board they just get dismissed out of hand, all the while you are asking why is Trump doing this.
Ok I think I found a way to dumb it down for the board going by the polls we have now.
It’s looking like a repeat of 2020, so down to a few tens of thousands of votes in a few swing states, and only one demographic has really changed according to the polls we have now.
The polls are saying that a decent percent of the black vote has left the Democratic party.
It’s not me saying that do you all understand that? It’s the polls and the Trump campaign’s own behavior trying to react to that. I’m trying to provide the board with an understanding as to why.
Do you have any stats to back this assertion up? Because I have stats to back up the opposite.
Here is a gift link to a Washington Post article. If you scroll about half way down there is a plot that shows the percentage of black vote by election. Its hard to read exact numbers since the axes only have marks every 20% but I exported into power point and read off exact vertical locations to get values.
Before the Civil rights act Black support of the Democrats bounced around 70%, Including a victory by Kennedy (68%). It took a giant jump for Johnson with the Civil rights giving him the highest percentage of the vote (94%) until Obama was first elected (95%) but still better than his re-election (93%)
Between Johnson and Obama the Black vote was pretty steady at about 87-88%, except for a dip down to in 1992 and 1996 (82% or 83%) when Clinton (a Democrat) was elected.
The graph stops at 2012, since the article was written in 2015, but looking elsewhere Clinton lost in 2016 with 89% of the black vote, and Biden won with 87% in 2020.
So overall the percentage of blacks voting for democrats seems fairly disconnected with their election prospects.
I’m not saying the polls are predicting the outcome, I’m saying the polls are being acted on now.
This just another thing that pisses me off. I was asked for cites to polls in the Harris thread I was banned from, and I could not provide them at that time and admitted that. The demographic I was talking about was not being polled back then and this board just assumed the black vote would go to the democratic party.
Not that the polls are backing up what I said then now it’s “oh the polls don’t matter, it’s only July”. Even though both parties are acting on these polls.
And as I’ve said I love what Harris is doing now and think she can win. Some of my opinions in the banned should Biden replace Harris thread were based on her weak performance in the primaries in 2020.
Thanks for your post. It would be interesting to see the Black turnout numbers across the same time period, and also to see if the Clinton dip was due to Blacks voting more for Perot or for Bush & Dole respectively.
If you look at the original Washington Post link you do see the independent vote as well and there is a significant Bump for that in the 92 election while there is only a very small rise in Republican vote. So you are probably right that the Clinton dip represents the effect of a semi-serious third party.
There is data that says Harris is getting 90% Black support. Data on demographics will be all over the place this early. We shouldn’t get too worked up about it.
It probably just a different exit poll, both are well within the margin of error of each other. Similar to the way that the 81% poll that you are touting, is at variance with the 90% poll some others have shown.
In any case both versions say that Biden lost black voters as compared to Clinton. Yet he won and she lost. So Black voters is not the absolute key to victory.
Split reminds me of the stereotypical mad scientist, like the Time Cube guy, who rant and rail at everybody who disagrees with him before actually getting to the point. “You all laughed at me then! Well who’s laughing now?”