The Growing Electoral Clout of Blacks Is Driven by Turnout, Not Demographics

[theworldismine13]

The Growing Electoral Clout of Blacks Is Driven by Turnout, Not Demographics | Pew Social & Demographic Trends

 

[Prince Akeem]

Well duh...

 

[Black Magisterialness]

so electoral power is determined by voting?!

 

[theworldismine13]

I thought it was a very interesting article with very interesting breakdowns of voting patterns

 

[newworldafro]

Didn't 7 million fewer white people NOT VOTE in the 2012 PREZ ELECTION???

The Case of the Missing White Voters | RealClearPolitics

By Sean Trende - November 8, 2012

But most importantly, the 2012 elections actually weren’t about a demographic explosion with non-white voters. Instead, they were about a large group of white voters not showing up.

As of this writing, Barack Obama has received a bit more than 60 million votes. Mitt Romney has received 57 million votes. Although the gap between Republicans and Democrats has closed considerably since 2008, Romney is still running about 2.5 million votes behind John McCain; the gap has closed simply because Obama is running about 9 million votes behind his 2008 totals.

Of course, there are an unknown number of ballots outstanding. If we guesstimate the total at 7 million (3 million in California, 1.5 million or so in Oregon and Washington, and another 2.5 million or so spread throughout the country), that would bring the total number of votes cast in 2012 to about 125 million: 5 million votes shy of the number cast four years ago.

With this base line, and armed with the exit-poll data, we can get a pretty good estimate of how many whites, blacks, and Latinos cast ballots in both 2008 and 2012. Assuming the 72/13/10/5 percentage split described above for 2012, that would equate to about 91.6 million votes cast by whites, 16.6 million by blacks, 12.7 million by Latinos, with the balance of 6.3 million votes spread among other groups.

Compare this with 2008, when the numbers were 98.6 million whites, 16.3 million blacks, 11 million Latinos, and 5.9 million from other groups.

In other words, if our underlying assumption -- that there are 7 million votes outstanding -- is correct, then the African-American vote only increased by about 300,000 votes, or 0.2 percent, from 2008 to 2012. The Latino vote increased by a healthier 1.7 million votes, while the “other” category increased by about 470,000 votes.

This is nothing to sneeze at, but in terms of the effect on the electorate, it is dwarfed by the decline in the number of whites. Again, if our assumption about the total number of votes cast is correct, almost 7 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008. This isn’t readily explainable by demographic shifts either; although whites are declining as a share of the voting-age population, their raw numbers are not

.... They weren't feeling either candidate apparently.....

 

[Meta Reign]

I thought it was a very interesting article with very interesting breakdowns of voting patterns

You thought wrong.

1 star.

*slams gavel*

 

[Julius Skrrvin]

this is exactly why you shouldnt listen to guys like thekingsmen telling you not to vote