Philip Bump crunches numbers and writes politics for
The Washington Post. In today's
column, he looks at the drop in the black vote between 2012 and 2016. It was other than trivial.
The most heavily white neighborhoods voted much more heavily Republican in 2016 than in 2012. Second, the most heavily black neighborhoods voted less heavily Democratic last year than four years ago. Third, Hispanic neighborhoods voted for Republicans less than in 2012.
I've omitted parenthetic comments from the above quote as they refer to charts I've not reproduced here. Actually, nothing in the above paragraph is counterintuitive, it's about what we'd expect.
Trump earned less support from black Americans than any Republican in 40 years, except those who ran against Obama. But a small uptick in support for Trump vs. Romney combined with less support for Clinton means that Obama’s 87-point margin became an 80-point margin for Clinton. That mattered.
In 2016, the turnout rate for black Americans dropped about 8 points, McDonald estimates — meaning that 8 percent fewer black Americans who were registered to vote came out to cast a ballot. That’s a lower rate than in 2004. The percentage of white voters turning out increased slightly.
I see nothing here to question my prediction that Democrats will, in 2020, nominate for president a person of color. Bump may underestimate the extent to which African-Americans actually voted
for Trump, rather than failing to vote.
