The Associated Press
Sunday, April 28, 2013 | 5:20 a.m.
America's
blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by
most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time,
reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks
strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.
Had
people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when
black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt
Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for
The Associated Press.
Census data and exit polling show that
whites and blacks will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible
voters for the next decade. Last year's heavy black turnout came despite
concerns about the effect of new voter-identification laws on minority
voting, outweighed by the desire to re-elect the first black president.
William
H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, analyzed the 2012
elections for the AP using census data on eligible voters and turnout,
along with November's exit polling. He estimated total votes for Obama
and Romney under a scenario where 2012 turnout rates for all racial
groups matched those in 2004. Overall, 2012 voter turnout was roughly 58
percent, down from 62 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2004.
The
analysis also used population projections to estimate the shares of
eligible voters by race group through 2030. The numbers are supplemented
with material from the Pew Research Center and George Mason University
associate professor Michael McDonald, a leader in the field of voter
turnout who separately reviewed aggregate turnout levels across states,
as well as AP interviews with the Census Bureau and other experts. The
bureau is scheduled to release data on voter turnout in May.
Overall,
the findings represent a tipping point for blacks, who for much of
America's history were disenfranchised and then effectively barred from
voting until passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
But the
numbers also offer a cautionary note to both Democrats and Republicans
after Obama won in November with a historically low percentage of white
supporters. While Latinos are now the biggest driver of U.S. population
growth, they still trail whites and blacks in turnout and electoral
share, because many of the Hispanics in the country are children or non-citizens.
In recent weeks, Republican leaders have urged a
"year-round effort" to engage black and other minority voters,
describing a grim future if their party does not expand its core support
beyond white males.
The 2012 data suggest Romney was a
particularly weak GOP candidate, unable to motivate white voters let
alone attract significant black or Latino support. Obama's personal
appeal and the slowly improving economy helped overcome doubts and spur
record levels of minority voters in a way that may not be easily
replicated for Democrats soon.
Romney would have erased Obama's
nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote
if voters had turned out as they did in 2004, according to Frey's
analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting
lower.
More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor
of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states
remained the same.
"The 2012 turnout is a milestone for blacks and
a huge potential turning point," said Andra Gillespie, a political
science professor at Emory University who has written extensively on
black politicians.
"What it suggests is that there is an `Obama effect'
where people were motivated to support Barack Obama. But it also means
that black turnout may not always be higher, if future races aren't as
salient."
Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant who is advising GOP Sen.
Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible 2016 presidential contender, says the
last election reaffirmed that the Republican Party needs "a new
message, a new messenger and a new tone." Change within the party need
not be "lock, stock and barrel," Ayres said, but policy shifts such as
GOP support for broad immigration legislation will be important to woo
minority voters over the longer term.
"It remains to be seen how successful Democrats are if you don't have Barack Obama at the top of the ticket," he added.
In
Ohio, a battleground state where the share of eligible black voters is
more than triple that of other minorities, 27-year-old Lauren Howie of
Cleveland didn't start out thrilled with Obama in 2012. She felt he
didn't deliver on promises to help students reduce college debt, promote
women's rights and address climate change, she said. But she became
determined to support Obama as she compared him with Romney.
"I
got the feeling Mitt Romney couldn't care less about me and my fellow
African-Americans," said Howie, an administrative assistant at Case
Western Reserve University's medical school who is paying off college
debt.
Howie said she saw some Romney comments as insensitive to
the needs of the poor. "A white Mormon swimming in money with offshore
accounts buying up companies and laying off their employees just doesn't
quite fit my idea of a president," she said. "Bottom line, Romney was
not someone I was willing to trust with my future."
The numbers show how population growth will translate into changes in who votes over the coming decade:
_The
gap between non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black turnout in 2008
was the smallest on record, with voter turnout at 66.1 percent and 65.2
percent, respectively; turnout for Latinos and non-Hispanic Asians
trailed at 50 percent and 47 percent. Rough calculations suggest that in
2012, 2 million to 5 million fewer whites voted compared with 2008,
even though the pool of eligible white voters had increased.
_Unlike
other minority groups, the rise in voting for the slow-growing black
population is due to higher turnout. While blacks make up 12 percent of
the share of eligible voters, they represented 13 percent of total 2012
votes cast, according to exit polling. That was a repeat of 2008, when
blacks "outperformed" their eligible voter share for the first time on
record.
_Latinos now make up 17 percent of the population but 11
percent of eligible voters, due to a younger median age and lower rates
of citizenship and voter registration. Because of lower turnout, they
represented just 10 percent of total 2012 votes cast. Despite their fast
growth, Latinos aren't projected to surpass the share of eligible black
voters until 2024, when each group will be roughly 13 percent. By then,
1 in 3 eligible voters will be nonwhite.
_In 2026, the total
Latino share of voters could jump to as high as 16 percent, if nearly 11
million immigrants here illegally become eligible for U.S. citizenship.
Under a proposed bill in the Senate, those immigrants would have a
13-year path to citizenship. The share of eligible white voters could
shrink to less than 64 percent in that scenario. An estimated 80 percent
of immigrants here illegally, or 8.8 million, are Latino, although not
all will meet the additional requirements to become citizens.
"The
2008 election was the first year when the minority vote was important
to electing a U.S. president. By 2024, their vote will be essential to
victory," Frey said. "Democrats will be looking at a landslide going
into 2028 if the new Hispanic voters continue to favor Democrats."
Even
with demographics seeming to favor Democrats in the long term, it's
unclear whether Obama's coalition will hold if blacks or younger voters
become less motivated to vote or decide to switch parties.
Minority
turnout tends to drop in midterm congressional elections, contributing
to larger GOP victories as happened in 2010, when House control flipped
to Republicans.
The economy and policy matter. Exit polling shows
that even with Obama's re-election, voter support for a government that
does more to solve problems declined from 51 percent in 2008 to 43
percent last year, bolstering the view among Republicans that their core
principles of reducing government are sound.
The party's "Growth
and Opportunity Project" report released last month by national leaders
suggests that Latinos and Asians could become more receptive to GOP
policies once comprehensive immigration legislation is passed.
Whether
the economy continues its slow recovery also will shape voter opinion,
including among blacks, who have the highest rate of unemployment.
Since
the election, optimism among nonwhites about the direction of the
country and the economy has waned, although support for Obama has held
steady. In an October AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of nonwhites said the
nation was heading in the right direction; that's dropped to 52 percent
in a new AP-GfK poll. Among non-Hispanic whites, however, the numbers
are about the same as in October, at 28 percent.
Democrats in
Congress merit far lower approval ratings among nonwhites than does the
president, with 49 percent approving of congressional Democrats and 74
percent approving of Obama.
William Galston, a former policy
adviser to President Bill Clinton, says that in previous elections where
an enduring majority of voters came to support one party, the president
winning re-election _ William McKinley in 1900, Franklin D. Roosevelt
in 1936 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 _ attracted a larger turnout over his
original election and also received a higher vote total and a higher
share of the popular vote. None of those occurred for Obama in 2012.
Only
once in the last 60 years has a political party been successful in
holding the presidency more than eight years _ Republicans from
1980-1992.
"This doesn't prove that Obama's presidency won't turn
out to be the harbinger of a new political order," Galston says. "But it
does warrant some analytical caution."
Early polling suggests
that Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton could come close in 2016 to
generating the level of support among nonwhites as Obama did in
November, when he won 80 percent of their vote. In a Fox News poll in
February, 75 percent of nonwhites said they thought Clinton would make a
good president, outpacing the 58 percent who said that about Vice
President Joe Biden.
Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the
NAACP, predicts closely fought elections in the near term and worries
that GOP-controlled state legislatures will step up efforts to pass
voter ID and other restrictions to deter blacks and other minorities
from voting. In 2012, African-Americans were able to turn out in large
numbers only after a very determined get-out-the-vote effort by the
Obama campaign and black groups, he said.
Jealous says the 2014
midterm election will be the real bellwether for black turnout. "Black
turnout set records this year despite record attempts to suppress the
black vote," he said.
AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.
