How Obama Can Find Votes Among Black Republicans
The thrilling idea of shattering a seemingly impenetrable racial barrier — the election of a black man as president of the United States — may be sufficient in itself to draw hundreds of thousands of black Republican voters to the Obama ticket.
Riding on the crest of the Obama candidacy, Democrats tend to think that they virtually own the black vote. This may cause them to overlook a hidden potential of bringing large numbers of black Republican voters into the Democratic fold. The numbers are very large — much larger than most people realize.
In the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush won 11 percent of all black votes nationwide. This doesn’t seem like much, but when we convert this percentage to the actual votes cast, we learn that 1.5 million African Americans voted for Bush. Bush won the election by about 3 million votes. We see then that if the 1.5 million black votes Bush received had instead gone to John Kerry, the popular vote in the entire United States would have been a virtual tie.
But today the historic political event in which a black candidate has been nominated to run on the Democratic ticket has changed everything. A large number of black Republicans now may be persuaded to vote for a Democrat for the simple reason that their vote may help put an African American in the White House. And to see this happen, large numbers of black Republicans may be willing to change party allegiance in the fall election. (Click Here to Read More)
