In 2012 the black turnout rate surpassed the white turnout rate for the first time. Bouie looks ahead:
One interesting question is whether blacks continue to vote at such high levels. It’s easy to be skeptical—since Barack Obama won’t head the Democratic ticket in 2016—but it’s also important to remember the overall trend for African American turnout. Since 1996, black voters have been turning out to vote in higher and higher numbers. 2016 might not match 2012, but my hunch is that it will be much closer to that benchmark than we think.
Which means that, if there’s a critical task for the GOP for the next two years, it’s recapturing its former standing among black voters. At the moment, black support for Republicans is in the low single digits. Even in the last 30 years, this is unusual—most Republican presidential nominees since Ronald Reagan have been able to count on 10 to 13 percent black support.
He goes into more detail in a later post:
Republicans can greatly improve their position in presidential elections by just winning more black voters. Without near-unanimous support from African Americans, states like Virginia and Florida become much harder to win for Democrats, while North Carolina falls out of reach completely. And this is true even with a large advantage among Latino voters.
Via Andrew Sullivan.
