Tom Schaller has a solid column in the New York Times today arguing exactly the opposite of what the paper has suggested repeatedly — that Obama can win deep red states in the old Confederacy by inspiring and mobilizing unprecedented African-American turnout.
In his piece “The South Will Fall Again,” he dispels two popular myths about the region: the first is that black turnout in the South is chronically low, and the second is that Democrats run better in Southern states with large populations of African-Americans.
On the first myth, he points out “In the 11 states of the former Confederacy, African-Americans were 17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004, analysis of Census Bureau data shows.” Tough to argue that with that.
On the second myth, he explains how “the more blacks there are in a Southern state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.” This is why Deep South states such as Alabama and Mississippi, which have among the highest populations of African-Americans, are so reliably red and border states with fewer blacks tend to be historically more competitive.
Looking at Schaller’s argument, J-Mart takes it a step further and writes that “It’s not a coincidence that Virginia, Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas have the fewest blacks in the historic states of the Confederacy and still retain a healthy two-party system or prosperous Democratic party.”
He adds, “Yes, this is in part because of transplants to the first two states. But it’s also because, as [political scientist V.O.] Key wrote a half-century ago, fewer blacks lead to less partisan polarization.”
Schaller’s arguments are strong because they are grounded in numbers.
For example, in Mississippi, the state with the highest percentage of African-Americans, he explains that even if Obama boosted black turnout by five percent, and then got another five percent of the share of black votes, he would still need to increase his share of the white vote to 21 percent from Kerry’s 14 percent if he were to reach a majority.
“It strains credulity to believe that he will attract three white voters in Mississippi for every two that Mr. Kerry did,” writes Schaller.
But while Schaller’s arguments are sturdy because they’re rooted in numbers, they’re also vulnerable for the same reason.
By relying solely on numbers, we tie arguments solely to the past and ignore the events in the present or the landscape of the future. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com does a great job of incorporating up-to-date demographic data into his analysis, but even up-to-date data are strictly quantitative and are blind to qualitative trends on the ground.
How can you explain the recent election in Mississippi’s First, where Democrat Travis Childers won in a district that is 26 percent black?
A lot of that election had to do with the poor state of the GOP brand, but the value of a candidate walking into a hostile community and asking for votes should also not be underestimated.
One of the most vocal proponents of Democrats fighting to scramble the unfriendly data in the South is Mudcat Saunders, who regularly gives reporters choice quotes about how the party elites — “the Harvards” — have left rural Dems up the creek.
I generally think Mudcat’s rhetoric is a little overzealous, but I do think he has two solid arguments. The first is that when a Democrat takes one vote from a Republican in a red area, it’s really a “two-fer” — One fer the Dems and one less fer the GOP. So the ROI is double.
The second point is that Democratic candidates attempts to win over Southern, white voters often pay real dividends. When Mark Warner ran for governor in 2001, he hired Mudcat as a rural strategist and Sherry Crumley, a legendary outdoorswoman from southwest Virginia, to chair “Sportsman for Warner.”
In an interview with Sherry in 2006 when I was still at National Journal, she told me that she would often be driving through the hills with the candidate and see a gun or fishing store. Warner would ask to stop, and would walk in and quickly tell everyone, “I’m Mark Warner; I’m running for governor. Some people are going to say I’m going to take you’re guns and just want to tell you that it’s not true.”
Warner ended up winning southwest Virginia on his way to the Executive Mansion, even though the numbers there were daunting.
So while it’s tough to argue with cold, hard data, I think it should be part of the equation but not the guiding principle.
Black Population in the South
Los Politico
2 July 2008 at 9:18 am
SW VA is Appalachia, look at the map you include– no black population there. So that’s kind of a non sequitor point.