Clinton, Sanders and black support

[JG]

I didn't follow U.S. politics as closely during the 2016 democratric primaries, so I was wondering why did black voters (with the exception of black millenials) overwhelmingly supported Clinton against Sanders?

[Rookie Yinzer]

These videos would provide some insight:

https://youtu.be/Gy_FqMuehjQ

https://youtu.be/sJkSpJF5l3c

Long story short---- she was the wife of a popular Democratic president (who was affectionately called "the first black president" before Obama) running against an unknown from 99% white Vermont, served faithfully under Obama, she had a "name brand" to run on. Black voters are loyal, they only broke away from her in 2008 when Obama's campaign began to look robust and legitimate.

ETA: I spoke with some elderly black voters when I did phone banking to notify them of the primary election date that didn't even know she had an opponent. LOL.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Um, she's also worked hard building relationships with the community and African American leaders for decades.

I imagine Bernie Sanders' "risk everything for a huge revolution" approach doesn't sell well to a community who has had to fight tooth and nail to claw its way up. AAs probably knew better than anyone what was on the line in the midst of these talks to scrap Obamacare or start over.

[Mr. Morden]

Ethnic minorities usually tend to go with the so-called "pragmatic" choice in competitive primaries between "pragmatism" and "purity".  See, e.g.:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/pragmatic-tradition-of-black-voters.html

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[NOVA Green]

Cool thread topic and concept from the OP and insightful analysis from the other posters on thread....

Now that the 2016 Democratic Primary "Civil Wars" are over, I think we can all agree on some basic facts regarding this election.

Mr Morden provided an extremely interesting argument regarding "Purity vs Pragmatism" Political Science discussion, especially within the context of Ethnic Minorities within the Democratic Party.

Hagrid speaks to the relationship that HRC built within the AA community for decades on key issues of political, social, and economic justice....

RFK Fan talks about the popularity of Bill Clinton within the AA Community, as well as the "Name Brand" concept.

JG talks to the basic fact is that with the exception of AA Millennials, the Community "overwhelmingly voted HRC".

One item that has not been mentioned thus far, is the regional variations among African-American voting patterns, especially as the Democratic Primary Season developed.

Early on HRC overwhelmingly dominated AA DEM Primary voters in the Southern States, where after all this a "front-loaded" Primary region of the Country.

We started to observe different voting dynamics once the Democratic Primary shifted to the Industrial MidWest and Western States.....

For example Bernie Sanders performed extremely well in heavily African-American precincts in Washington, Oregon, and California (Relatively late in the Primary Season), and certainly we have precinct data that supports Bernie performing extremely well in heavily Black precincts in Chicago, St Louis, etc...

To go back to Mr Morden's point regarding pragmatism vs purity, we can look at all sorts of data from the '16 Dem Primaries starting in South Carolina, rolling down to Florida, hitting "Super Tuesday", rolling over to Texas, where although many AA voters agreed with many of Bernie's fundamental points (Although there was significant debate about the merits of various policy positions just as within most parts of the Modern Democratic Coalition), but didn't necessarily believe he had a chance to win against a Republican.

Now AA voters in California tend to be a bit different than those in the Southlands, Industrial Midwest, and "Northeast", but precinct and municipal level data from Cali suggests that Bernie Sanders likely performed better among "Ethnic Minority" populations in California than among Anglo Populations in the 2016 California Democratic Primary....

Much of that is likely driven by the fact that HRC did much better among Upper-Income populations than Bernie overall in the '16 Dem Primaries, and in Cali that is going to mean much more heavily Anglo....

Still, even though Cali isn't considered a heavily "Black State" as a percentage of the population, there are still 2.3 Million Brothers and Sisters in the Golden State, which would place it behind quite a few other states.

1.) Florida- 3.06 Million AA Residents
2.) New York- 3.04 Million AA Residents
3.) Texas- 3.03 Million AA Residents
4.) Georgia- 3.01 Million AA Residents
5.) California- 2.26 Million AA Residents
6.) North Carolina- 2.07 Million AA Residents

Note that there isn't a single state in the Midwest on the "Top Six" List....

Now, what is the overall % of the Population by State that is African-American?



So what does anything of all this mean?

The African-American Democratic voting population has been spread throughout the entire United States, from the early days of the American Revolution, to the Underground Railroad to the "Free Cities of the North", from the Great Depression and Push/Pull Migration as the result of a combination of Industrial Work in the North during WW II, and leaving behind the White Supremacist system and Jim Crow.

This trend accentuated in the 1960s as Black Brothers and Sisters left the Southlands to work in the Auto Plants and Steel Mills of the "Rust Belt", or maybe out to California where there were tons of good paying Union jobs in places like Oakland and Long Beach, where at least a brother could get a decent shake even from a White Union foreman running the crew....

I know I'm getting slightly OT here, but is interesting that Bernie Sanders tended to perform best in African-American communities where there was a traditionally high rate of Union membership...

Obviously, Bernie Sanders does not appear to have performed extremely well among African-Americans in most States with a high AA population.

It does appear that he performed much better among AA voters in States where where has traditionally been a much higher rate of Private Sector Union Membership, where perhaps WWC voters tend to be a bit more "Liberal" on racial equality issues and vote less on the whole racial polarization dawg whistles than many other places....

[Rookie Yinzer]

Interesting post NOVA, just pulling this theory out of my head, but I did begin to think about why Sanders did better in the mid-west and on the West Coast in relation to black voters.

Obviously younger voters broke for Bernie because they have never really been in the position to be pragmatic over a presidential candidate. Many of them had never cast a ballot or had enthusiastically supported Obama and he won both times, so they never felt they needed to compromise their values over something like name recognition or electability.

But as far as blacks 35+, could it be that blacks have been apart of the political process longer in areas like Detroit, Chicago, etc for decades even before the VRA was signed black communities wielded some political sway and were actively courted by big city bosses and politicans.

And out west, they reside in states that typically elect Democratic governors or go for the Democratic nominee for President. So residing in Safe D states they felt or were more acclimated to be a little more free to vote based on things like policy rather than electability.

Black voters in the South for the past 40 years have been governed under Moderate blue dog Dems who have had to tow a fine line between their black electorate and the ancestral Conservative white Dems or Republicans who outright do not care about their black constituencies. Maybe a vote for Hillary was seen as a necessity because even if Sanders' message spoke to them they cherished their current progress under Obama (I'm sure many would debate the definition of progress) and did not want to waste it on a "pipe dream" and would rather hold the place they are in rather than have the clock rolled back.  They made the decision of choosing someone safe and stable over something new, unproven, and radical. Just a thought! This was really a word salad in my head. LOL.

[SInNYC]

Although people always claim that Hillary had the support of black voters, I wonder how much of this had to do with establishment support as opposed to black support. Many black voters in the south are heavily influenced by the church and Hillary probably gobbled up the tacit endorsements of black churches.

Same for big city machines outside the south.  I live near a Hispanic area in NYC, and Bernie simply wasnt on the radar. It was all about 'vote for Hillary [in the primaries] to stop Trump'.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

He did well among young blacks. The reason he lost older blacks is due to their support of the Democratic Party's establishment, which has a strong relation with the black community.

Also, a lot of older blacks didn't trust some random (to them) old white guy from Vermont (95% white state). He was never really around for their communities visibly so they didn't trust him, even if they liked some of what he said.

[NOVA Green]

To be Fair (tbf), honestly Obama didn't play that well among African-American voters in SC in the '08 Dem Primary, and although his numbers picked up a bit from AA voters by the time of Super Tuesday, the reality is that the '08 Dem Primary wasn't nearly as racialized as one might imagine, although perhaps to a greater extent than the '84 Democratic Primary on Super Tuesday in the South (Mondale vs Jesse Jackson).

tbh the whole concept that Southern Black Voters vote for a Dem Candidate just because they are Black doesn't really have tons of scientific evidence behind it, although I'll be more than happy to be proven wrong.....

[Canis]

I think its more about turnout Obama had historic levels of black turnout I don't think Clinton or Sanders could get those levels again

[OneJ]

I guess I’ll just talk about Black Millennials a little bit more since everyone practically hit the nail with older Black voters.

Unlike older Black voters, Black Millennials are more liberal/progressive as Millennials overall are more liberal than their parents or grandparents. It wouldn’t surprise me if some older Black people were afraid of the word “Socialist” because it reminded them of the Cold War days. Millennials were too young to remember and/or experience the great fear of Communism back in the day, so they’re more open to it. Hell, “liberal” was actually a dirty word. In many polls, notice how there are few Black people who identified themselves as “liberal” compared to many describing themselves as “moderate” & “conservative.” Many are probably socially conservative, but not necessarily fiscally. I do think that a lot of that deals with people not knowing what liberal, conservative and moderate actually mean.

Just my two cents. 

[James Monroe]

People of Color understand the consequences of going against the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders ran a smear campaign trashing the party, saying how corrupt Hillary is, how Obama should've been primaries back in 2012, that political correctness is bad and we need to pander racist blue collar folks. Sanders is a white leftist that doesn't understand that POC don't want to be told they are stupid for voting against their interests, nor be attacked on Twitter because they are #withher. They have a rightful skepticism of white populism, be it Trump or Bernie.  If Bernie wanted to win over POC voters he should better communicated by not be so damn condescending.

[Adam Griffin]

These videos would provide some insight:

https://youtu.be/Gy_FqMuehjQ

https://youtu.be/sJkSpJF5l3c

Long story short---- she was the wife of a popular Democratic president (who was affectionately called "the first black president" before Obama) running against an unknown from 99% white Vermont, served faithfully under Obama, she had a "name brand" to run on. Black voters are loyal, they only broke away from her in 2008 when Obama's campaign began to look robust and legitimate.

ETA: I spoke with some elderly black voters when I did phone banking to notify them of the primary election date that didn't even know she had an opponent. LOL.

The bolded part is interesting. Back in 2016, I took a national PPP poll's crosstabs (conducted around Feb 1 if I recall correctly; when the caucuses essentially began) and analyzed them. I'll see if I can find the post.

At the time, almost half of likely black primary voters had "no opinion" of Sanders (compared to <10% among white and Latino likely voters). In most situations like this, "no opinion of" tends to be a good indicator of name recognition/awareness. It shocked me that (apparently) almost half of black primary voters didn't even know who Bernie Sanders was - especially considering that unlike white and Latino voters, almost all likely black primary voters would be pulling a Democratic ballot.

But perhaps equally surprising was what the math suggested. If you assume that pretty much none of the black voters who had "no opinion" of Sanders voted for him, then Bernie would have had to win close to half of black voters who did have an opinion of him. That's a pretty significant accomplishment given the general narrative - and a very huge gap between the two groups of black primary voters.


EDIT: for the record and as a former Bernie delegate & supporter, this PPP poll was what thoroughly convinced me that Bernie did not have a pathway in the primary (and SC really hammered it home for me). When you lack name recognition among nearly half (or anywhere close to that) of a group that comprises 20-25% of the electorate - and you're squaring off against someone with universal name recognition - there's no way to make up that kind of margin. Bernie needed at least 35% of the black vote (assuming whites were as polarized as they were in '08; they weren't) to have a chance and there was just no pathway with those cold, hard figures present.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ I think it's also worth noting that black primary voters are anything but a monolith and the exit polls/performance we saw in 2016 suggests huge discrepancies built largely around 1) age and 2) region.

The South is home to half of black Democratic primary voters: obviously Sanders got walloped among this group overall. However, among those under the age of 35, the margin appeared to be much tighter (i.e. losing by 20 points or so instead of 60+).

Outside of the South is the other half of black primary voters, and here, Sanders did much better. It's pretty much certain that Sanders won black voters under 40 outside of the South. Even along the periphery (MD is the perfect example), there's evidence to suggest Sanders won the black youth vote.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Bernie couldn't have done that bad with blacks in the most diverse city in the country, Oakland, since he did win it. Meanwhile Hillary landslided the mostly white Piedmont that it surrounds.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Bernie couldn't have done that bad with blacks in the most diverse city in the country, Oakland, since he did win it. Meanwhile Hillary landslided the mostly white Piedmont that it surrounds.

What? LOL.

[NOVA Green]

People of Color understand the consequences of going against the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders ran a smear campaign trashing the party, saying how corrupt Hillary is, how Obama should've been primaries back in 2012, that political correctness is bad and we need to pander racist blue collar folks. Sanders is a white leftist that doesn't understand that POC don't want to be told they are stupid for voting against their interests, nor be attacked on Twitter because they are #withher. They have a rightful skepticism of white populism, be it Trump or Bernie.  If Bernie wanted to win over POC voters he should better communicated by not be so damn condescending.

Sir, your posts appear to be that of yet another White person trying to interpret how "People of Color Vote", devoid of any real data or analysis as a "White Dude" compared to most other posts on this thread.

Looking through your extremely recent posting history appears to be a series of one-line responses posted from your smart phone, and most recently over the past 3-4 weeks a series of Anti-Bernie diatribes.

My sincere apologies if you are a "PoC", and not a White "Clintonista" late to the Party, at a point where the Atlas "Democratic Primary Civil Wars" have essentially been resolved for the most part.

OneJ_  who is a well established poster on Atlas, and might have quite a few insights into "Black Voters" in the Southern States, and likely in other heavily African-American communities in the Central Atlantic and Midwest, for some odd reason (idk why )  has some of the best insights on this thread posted thus far....

Anyways--- welcome to Atlas, and be prepared to back up your statements with actual data...

This is a rough neighborhood  and btw not sure why your Atlas screen name is after a President that expanded American Imperialism, and definitely was NOT a friend to African-Americans in the Plantations of the "Slavery Belt" of the Southern Colonies....

President Monroe was yet another Slaver scumbag, like most of the first wave of American Presidents, and although his Presidency is complicated in the early days of the Republic on many issues, he certainly wouldn't be a flag I would want to fly as part of my screen name and avatar.