Even a Small Boost in the African American Voter Turnout Would Drive Republicans From Office

8/28/07

To: NPR, All Things Considered

Re: "Would a Run by Obama Boost Black Voter Turnout?" All Things Considered, August 23, 2007

Last week, you aired a piece during which a political analyst disagreed with Senator Obama's comments that if African Americans turned out in higher numbers, that Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina would be Democratic states.

If one uses the 2004 exit poll data supplied by CNN, however, it's quite clear that because African American voters show such a strong Democratic preference (by an 8:1 margin), even a small increase in African American turnout would carry the day for Democrats.

Let's assume that in the 2008 election the racial preferences mirror those of 2004, a conservative assumption since 2004 was pre-Katrina and the war in Iraq had not yet melted down into the debacle it has now become. Many whites (who voted for Bush by a 58:41 margin) are no doubt disillusioned with Republicans, and Katrina solidified the notion, fair or not, that Republicans do not represent African American interests as well as Democrats.

The question then becomes: what proportion of the voters would have to be African American for the Democrats to carry the day? As it turns out, only 20% of votes cast and counted must be African American (80% white) for the Democrats to squeak by with 50.4% of the vote. [For simplicity's sake, I am ignoring other racial groups since the piece mainly focused on black-white politics, but the mathematical principles would remain the same.] If 30% of the voters are African American, then the Democrats would win 55.1% of the vote. If the 40% of Mississippians who are African American vote, even if every white citizen voted, the Democrats would win 59.8% of the vote.

Sadly, African American turnout has historically been much lower and the probability of an African American vote being correctly counted is much lower than for a white American, but if every American voted and every vote counted, it would be very hard for a single Republican to hold onto office, particularly in the South. [This makes it clear why every single "voter fraud" case the Justice Department pursued was always in the direction of decreasing the probability net-net of an African American vote being counted. The Republicans, whose Presidential candidate lost the popular vote in 2000 and barely squeaked into office in 2004, are scared to death of effective universal suffrage.]

Your intro to the piece implied the South had been Republican for decades. Not true. When I moved to Georgia in 1996, it was solidly Democrat. The Republican makeover of the South was a recent phenomenon, and like the Republican-dominated era during Reconstruction, it can be reversed.

- Mark Vakkur, Atlanta

From CNN:

VOTE BY RACE	BUSH			KERRY		NADER
TOTAL	2004	2000	2004		2004
White (77%)	58%	+4	41%		0%
African-American (11%)	11%	+2	88%		0%
Latino (8%)	44%	+9	53%		2%
Asian (2%)	44%	+3	56%		*
Other (2%)	40%	+1	54%		2%