GOP chairman sees 'drift' in black votes

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Ed Gillespie, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Tuesday that the GOP could attract African-American voters by bypassing traditional black organizations such as the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus. ---

"I don't expect a massive wave of party switching among African-Americans from Democrat to Republican, but I think there is drift there," he said.

Gillespie noted that the number of blacks who identify themselves as Democrat dropped from 74% in 2000 to 63% in 2002. "I'm serving notice to Terry (McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman) to not take a single voter for granted," Gillespie said. "It's not in the interest of African-Americans to vote 90% for Democrats." ---


We are going to change history -- we're going to have a ton of fun doing it.

like always no chance in hell the black population aint stupid.
could by chance those votes be going green not republican.

Black voters going Green. But repub? Not a freaking chance as long as these people are in charge. This administration has done aboslutely nothing to help minorities. Or the rest of us either for that matter!

in large numbers. The older ones at least are extremely loyal to the Democrats. I doubt the Democrats can continue to hold 90% of the black vote since the younger ones do not remember the civil rights battles of the 60's, but I don't think the Republicans will be able to take more than 20% - 25% in the forseeable future.

You know the ones that Chuck Hagel got in his "upset" victory where even Black districts voted Republican for the 1st time...thanks to his PC voting systems?

It is in their interest to go 100% dem. More minorities have lost their jobs under Bush percentage wise. Bush still makes speeches at Bob Jones University. People like Trent Lott still make speeches at the Conservative Citizens Council, esentially a PAC of the KKK. He is gutting Head Strt, he is cutting back on college scholorships, he is doing away with affirmative action. It is in ther best interest to vote 100% dem, not 90% dem.

What can we make of the slippage in Black identification with the Democrats in 2002? Nothing that favors Republicans or conservatives of any stripe. Enough Blacks were disappointed with the party this mid-term election season to eliminate the word Democrat from their personal self-description. But they voted for the party, anyway, in the usual numbers, because their disappointment was from the Left, and because the Right - the Republican Party - was no alternative at all.

It is at this point that Dr. Michael Dawson's Swedish Social Democrat-type Blacks become relevant. Black voters are not simply darker American "liberals." As Dr. Dawson maintains, African Americans express themselves in the same way as do white American liberals at the polls, because that is the only option available. When that option appears to collapse, as the Democrats did in fear of George Bush, substantial numbers of African Americans recoil in despair and disgust - as would any good, Swedish Social Democrat. In the end, however, they have continued to show up to vote against the GOP.

A proper headline to announce the results from the JCPES survey might have read:

Poll: Blacks Disappointed at
Democrats, But Reject GOP

Professionals in both parties know perfectly well that the growing softness of Black identification with Democrats represents Left discontent. Real news people understand this, as well. Yet the fiction of a growing body of political conservatism among Blacks has become media dogma, despite the absence of supporting evidence. Corporations create their own version of reality, and call it news.

When it came to the hard question, "Who would you vote for?" in the looming congressional elections, the ambiguities of self-identification partially disappeared, as the conservatives among Blacks made themselves known. 10.9 percent of the Blacks surveyed said they planned to vote Republican. As it turned out, one of every ten Black votes is near the outer limits of what Republicans actually received, nationally, November 5.

70.6 percent of Blacks declared their intention to vote Democratic, while 18.5 said they "don't know." The Don't-Knows either didn't vote at all or, in much larger proportion, cast Democrat ballots.

We are not engaged in second-guessing of the JCPES poll, but showing that even the 18.5 percent that remained reluctant to commit themselves to a Democratic choice for the benefit of a pollster, never represented a potential reservoir of Republican-leaning Black voters. In all probability, a healthy slice of them were decidedly leftish, Swedish Social Democrat types who needed time to overcome their disgust with the drift of the Democratic Party. This is supported by JCPES numbers showing that the 51-64 age group, the cohort in which Republicans are all but non-existent at 3.1%, contained the highest proportion of Don't-Knows: 22.1%. (This is the Civil Rights - Black Power generation.)

In the real world, 90%-plus Blacks voted for congressional Democrats. Many would have preferred voting for Swedish Social Democrats.

A LOT More. . .