It is estimated that there are 8 million eligible African Americans nationwide who still have not registered to vote in the November election. This figure is almost one third of the eligible black electorate in this country.
Laws vary from state to state, but in many key states registration deadlines are close at hand. Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida have a registration deadline of October 6. This is only three weeks away.
The black vote in these states may prove decisive. Obviously, the Obama campaign will need to devote huge resources to register voters in key battleground states over the next three weeks.
With polls showing a tight race, the campaign that can register the most voters and do the best job of getting its voters to the polls on Election Day is likely to be the winner.
In recent weeks, nationwide polls have shown a definite trend in favor of John McCain. One poll released Wednesday put McCain ahead of Obama nationwide by 5 percentage points. Numerous state polls report McCain is reversing Obama’s lead or is severely cutting into his margins.
McCain’s negative campaign advertisements referring to Obama as a “celebrity” rather than a leader appear to be helping the GOP candidate. Also, Russia’s invasion of the nation of Georgia has raised international tensions. A majority of American voters hold to beliefs that McCain would be a better commander in chief than Obama.
But Obama staffers remain optimistic. In their official assurances that some observers see as brash or overly cocky, Obama’s surrogates tell party regulars that all is well. They say, “Don’t worry, the polls don’t reflect the ‘X factor.’” (Click Here to Read More)
Barack Obama can count on the votes of at least 9 out of every 10 African Americans who make it to the polls. The problem is that there appears to be 9 million or more adult black Americans who may not show up to vote in the presidential election this fall.
A lot of Democratic Party officials are deluded in a belief that an overwhelmingly large percentage of African Americans will automatically flock to the polls this November simply because an African-American man will head the ticket.
But as one black voter in Michigan told OEW, “They are counting their eggs when they have no chickens.”
There remains widespread voter apathy in hundreds of black communities in this country. Many African Americans cling to the belief that Obama, as a black man, simply can’t be elected president. Others are concerned that the economy is so dismal that even if Obama is elected, nothing will change. Others resent Obama’s “tough love” Bill Cosby-like lectures to young blacks to get their act together. Some African Americans believe Obama is an elitist with little concern for the black men and women on the street. This past Friday, Obama was heckled by a group of young blacks at a town-hall meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida. The young African Americans held up a sign that read, “What about the black community, Obama?” (Click Here to Read More)
In the 2004 presidential election there were more than 2 million African Americans who were registered to vote but who did not cast a ballot.
Census statistics show that only 16 percent of nonvoting African Americans among those registered failed to vote for the reason that either they were not interested in the campaign or they did not like the candidates.
The other 84 percent of these 2 million African Americans — or 1,680,000 registered black Americans — did not vote for one of the following stated reasons:
• I was too busy.
• I was out of town.
• I forgot to vote.
• I had transportation problems.
• I am disabled and unable to get to the polls.
• The weather was bad.
• Polling place was far out of my way.
Clearly, most of the registered African Americans did not vote because making it to the polls was burdensome or difficult. This group offers a ripe field for Obama to harvest hundreds of thousands of additional votes. The weapon is the absentee ballot. Chances are that nine out of 10 blacks who choose to vote by absentee ballot will support Obama. Clearly, an effort to increase overall absentee voter turnout will be a huge plus for Obama’s election prospects. (Click Here to Read More)
The organization of a nationwide coalition for the voter registration of America’s college students is likely to add 30 to 35 percent more votes for Obama than for McCain.
The presidential race could well come down to which campaign mobilizes America’s youth and particularly the nation’s college students. Nearly all of the 15 million students attending college this fall will be eligible to vote on November 4. All told, there are about 200 million Americans of voting age. Therefore, college students make up a very important 7.5 percent of the nation’s potential voters. Half or more of these 15 million college students may not be registered to vote.
Polls show that young voters of all ages prefer Barack Obama over John McCain. Obama’s advantage is even greater among students with some college education. Thus, a nonpartisan voter registration drive will almost certainly produce significantly more votes for Obama than for McCain. (Click Here to Read More)
In 1989 L. Douglass Wilder was elected governor of the state of Virginia. He was the first African American to be elected governor of any of the 50 states. Wilder counted on a large turnout of black voters. But blacks make up only 20 percent of the electorate in the state of Virginia so Wilder needed a large share of the white vote in order to be elected.
His election strategies for winning white voters may provide a useful roadmap for Barack Obama.
In 1969 Wilder was the first African American elected to the Virginia state Senate since Reconstruction. In 1989 he then decided to run for governor of Virginia. Wilder’s staff calculated that he would need more than 90 percent of the black vote and 42 percent of the white vote in order to win the election.
Advertising campaigns emphasized Wilder’s Horatio Alger success story showing how he had worked his way up from poverty to establish his own law practice. Media campaigns truthfully portrayed him as a solid family man. The focus of the campaign was to show white Virginians that he was not a black radical, but a patriotic, responsible, hard-working man who shared their values. (Click Here to Read More)
Tom Bradley
Much has been written about the so-called Bradley Effect. This phenomenon was named after former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley who lost a close gubernatorial election in California after pre-election polls showed him with a comfortable lead.
The Bradley Effect occurs when white voters tell pollsters they are willing to vote for a black candidate, but upon entering the voting booth, their deeply ingrained racial bias kicks in and they pull the lever for the white candidate.
It remains to be seen if the Bradley Effect will play a role in this November’s election. There is some evidence from a number of states that Obama fared better in pre-primary polls and in exit polls conducted on primary day than he did in the actual election results.
But there may be a second effect that might also skew the polling in this unique election year. We’ll call this the “Obama Effect.” (Click Here to Read More)
John McCain may be writing off the black vote in 2008. And Barack Obama is polling well over 90 percent among African-American voters. Yet this is a solid voting bloc that still needs continuing attention from the Obama campaign.
Why? Because huge and unprecedented black voter turnout on election day — even higher than in recent primaries — could swing several key states to the Obama column.
Here is the story. In the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush won Ohio by fewer than 119,000 votes. But there was a very large bloc of 350,000 eligible black voters who did not bother to vote in that election. Today, the black electorate in Ohio numbers more than 1 million potential voters and hundreds of thousands of them have not registered to vote. (Click Here to Read More)
