POLITICS-US: Black Vote Could Be Decisive in November Election

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2000 (IPS) - Of the major racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States, African Americans, who have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in recent years, may determine the outcome of this year’s presidential elections in November.

While early media attention this year focused on the strategic importance of the Hispanic vote, and both Republican Gov. George Bush and Democrat Vice President Al Gore have spotlighted their Spanish-speaking abilities at various campaign appearances, black voters are concentrated in key “swing states,” those states which remain very much up for grabs three weeks before voters go to the polls.

The most important such “battleground” states, which could go to either Gore or Bush, according to the latest state polls, are Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Delaware, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina – all states where African Americans make up between 12 and 30 percent of the population.

Moreover, African-American groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are preparing a multi- million-dollar effort to get out the vote on election day, Nov. 7. In contrast to the last two presidential elections, the organisation’s treasury is well- stocked this year; indeed one single contributor gave it 9 million dollars to get African-Americans to the polls.

“A lot is going to be decided this year by the mechanics of getting people out to vote,” according to David Bositis, a political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who tracks black voting patterns. “Could black votes be decisive? Yes, there is definitely that potential.”

Their potential for influencing the vote goes beyond the presidential election which most analysts believe is a toss-up at the moment. The make- up of the next Congress will also be determined Nov. 7. Democrats are given a strong chance of retaking control of the House of Representatives, which they lost in 1994, and could possibly gain a majority in the 100- seat Senate, where they have 46 seats now.

African Americans make up about 12 percent of the total US population and about 10 percent of the electorate. Hispanic Americans also make up about 12 percent of the total US population, but the rate at which they vote, while rising sharply in recent years, came to only five percent of the electorate in the last Congressional elections in 1998.

In addition to their low turnout rate, Hispanic Americans are concentrated in just a handful of states, compared to African Americans. Some 75 percent of the total Hispanic population live in just two states: Texas, which is certain to go for Bush, and California, which most political analysts believe is solidly in the Gore camp.

Presidents in the United States are not elected by the popular vote, but rather by an “electoral college” of the states. Depending on its total population, each state is accorded a certain number of electoral votes, all of which are cast on behalf of the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in that state.

In other words, if Gore receives the most votes in California, he will gain all of that state’s 54 electoral votes no matter how many voters voted for Bush or third-party candidates. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the election.

With the electoral votes of Texas, with 32 electoral votes, and California all but decided, the remaining 25 percent of the Hispanic vote will be spread over a number of states, including three key swing states in which the Hispanic vote could be significant: Florida, Colorado, and New Mexico.

Of these, Florida, with 25 electoral votes, is by far the most important; indeed, many analysts say Bush, whose brother is the state’s governor, cannot win the election without Florida. But there the Hispanic vote is split between Cuban-Americans, who vote mainly Republican, and non- Cuban Hispanics, who, like non-Cuban Hispanic Americans elsewhere in the United States, especially Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and Mexicans, have voted by strong majorities of up to 80 percent for Democrats in recent elections.

If Hispanics are split over party loyalties in Florida and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere, however, African-Americans are overwhelmingly Democratic.

In the most recent elections, almost nine in 10 blacks voted for Democrats, and despite the many black entertainers and speakers featured at the Republican National Convention last summer, as well as a special advertising campaign directed by Republicans at African American voters, Bositis believes that Gore will win 90 percent of the black vote.

“African Americans don’t trust the Republican Party,” according to Bositis, who adds that the flap over Bush’s and other Republicans’ refusal to support the removal of South Carolina’s old Confederate flag from its state Capitol reminded blacks of how much the party has changed from the 1950s and 1960s when it was led by Northeastern and Midwestern “moderate” Republicans who were more sympathetic to the civil-rights struggle.

“African Americans are not going to trust a party that is dominated by white southerners who opposed the civil-rights movement,” says Bositis, who is regarded by Democrats and Republicans alike as the nation’s top expert on the African American vote. Republicans, he says, have increasingly become a “white party”.

In 1996, for example, Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole received 40 percent of the total vote of which white voters accounted for well over 90 percent. And, while blacks make up 22 percent of the Democratic National Committee, there is only one black member out of a total of 153 members of the Republican National Committee.

At the same time, President Bill Clinton and Gore appear genuinely popular with the African-American community where black unemployment rates are at record lows and income levels are at record highs; and crime and teenage pregnancy have fallen steadily over the life of the administration. In contrast, “the more Bush has become known, his popularity among African Americans has declined”.

Unlike Hispanic voters outside of California and Texas, African American voters are certain to play major roles in key swing states just as they have in recent senate and gubernatorial races, particularly in the South where about 60 percent of the country’s black population lives.

In Florida, for example, blacks outnumber Hispanics; in Georgia and Louisiana, they make up well over 25 percent of the electorate.