The Black Vote

Before the election, some were predicting that Bush would get 15%-18% of the black vote. As it turned out, Bush won 11% of the black vote, up from 9% in 2000.

This is actually somewhat surprising. After all, I've seen endless stories saying that the black community especially resents Bush because they think they were cheated in Florida in 2000; that blacks resent the fact that Bush has refused to meet with the NAACP; that blacks resent the war in Iraq; that blacks were getting angry over supposed Republican plans to keep blacks from voting. On and on, reason after reason why the black community hates Bush more than ever.

And yet, Bush apparently won the black vote by a higher margin than in 2000. In fact, there were apparently some 22% more blacks who voted for Bush yesterday (11 is 22 percent more than 9).

I'd be curious to see those figures broken down by state. Were blacks more pro-Kerry in Florida? Or not? Where and why were there any regional variations?

This article, for example, recites all of the above reasons why the black community dislikes Bush. Then it concludes with this, about Ohio:

In Ohio, the legal struggle over Republican efforts to challenge votes continued throughout Tuesday, with the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to overturn a lower court ruling allowing GOP challengers to be present.

The controversy stoked resentment in the swing state's black community, and may have had the unintended effect of increasing turnout. The black vote in Ohio accounts for about 9 percent of the total, and exit polls indicated that roughly 84 percent were favoring Kerry.

Well, if exit polls indicated that only 84 percent favored Kerry in Ohio, that means that about 16% favored Bush -- meaning that the proportion of blacks who supported Bush in Ohio was about 1.5 times the national average.