Obama Election Watch

In the 2004 presidential election Iowa went to the GOP by a mere 10,000 votes. That year there were 20,000 blacks in Iowa who did not bother to vote. A razor-thin margin is likely to settle the outcome in Iowa this November. For this reason the turnout of the black vote for Obama could be decisive.

The first constitution of the state of Iowa, which was ratified in 1846, required blacks to post a $500 bond before they could enter the state. Blacks who lived in Iowa could not vote, hold public office, attend public schools, or marry whites.

Today, the vestiges of Jim Crow remain. Most Americans do not realize that blacks make up a greater percentage of the prison population in Iowa compared to its overall population than is the case in any state in the union. In Iowa, the percentage of blacks suspended or expelled from school compared to the overall student population is among the highest in the nation. To most Americans this evidence of an antiblack environment in Iowa seems odd since in the January Democratic caucuses, huge numbers of whites turned out to vote for Obama rather than for Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, statistics suggest that Iowa has not been a hospitable place for black Americans.

Blacks in Iowa are highly motivated in their desire for change, particularly to rid the nation of the vestiges of a Washington administration that for the past eight years has been insensitive to the aspirations of African Americans. These hopes became clear in this winter’s Iowa caucuses where black voters turned out in droves to support Barack Obama. At one caucus site in Waterloo, a city which is 14 percent black, 90 percent of people at the caucus were African Americans.

It is well known that the number of eligible black voters in Iowa is small, about 60,000. They make up only about 2.5 percent of the total voting population. But there is a significant number of eligible black voters in Iowa — perhaps 20,000 or more — who do not vote. This figure is twice Bush’s margin of victory in the state in the 2004 presidential election.

Clearly, the Obama campaign needs to conduct aggressive voter registration drives in black areas of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Sioux City, Davenport, Waterloo, and other cities in Iowa. Extensive get-out-the-vote campaigns in these areas on Election Day will add value because at least 9 out of 10 of these black voters will vote the Democratic ticket.

The largest concentration of black voters is in the capital city of Des Moines. There could be 15,000 potential black votes in the city, more than Bush’s margin of victory in the entire state in the 2004 election. A major asset for the Obama campaign could be the more than 1,000 black students at the Des Moines Area Community College. These students could work to organize the 15,000 or more black voters in Des Moines and get them to the polls on Election Day.

College students in Iowa may be energized by the fact that Obama chose Iowa as the place where he launched his then long-shot campaign to win the Democratic Party’s presidental nomination.

A large turnout by black voters in Iowa would contribute to an Obama victory there and possibly add as well Iowa’s seven electoral votes to the Democratic column.