AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTE
OVERWHELMINGLY DEMOCRATIC   

Most African Americans will vote Democratic in the Fall election. That is the conclusion of polls and research conducted at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the nation's leading think tank on African American issues.

Although the campaign is still underway and viewpoints might change, David Bositis, the Center's principal researcher, says support among African Americans for Democratic nomineee, Vice President Al Gore, remains strong essentially because of African Americans' support of the Clinton administration.

In recent polling among African Americans, 77 percent gave Clinton an excellent rating compared with 27 percent for the Republican-controlled Congress. "Al Gore is Clinton's chosen successor. That's why blacks are supporting him. The vast majority of African Americans think Clinton has been the best president since Lyndon Johnson and so they are supporting his man," Bositis noted.

Most African Americans are telling pollsters they are doing better economically, which Bositis says is another reason for supporting Gore. In both 1998 and 1999, for the first time ever, more blacks than whites indicated they were financially better off than the previous year, according to Joint Center research. "Black poverty and unemployment are at record low levels," Bositis noted. Among the other reasons African Americans hold a high opinion of the Clinton-Gore administration, Bositis cited "a large number of African American appointments to government, defense of affirmative action, the president's race initiative and trade with Africa." African Americans have given overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party since 1936 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was reelected president in a landslide victory. Before Roosevelt, African Americans voted primarily for the Republican Party because President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and was revered as the president who "freed the slaves," had been a Republican.

Although there is nothing to suggest that African Americans are about to bolt the Democratic Party in large numbers, Joint Center analysts do say there is increasing evidence they are becoming more conservative, but only on some issues.

In a Joint Center/Home Box Office study completed a few years ago, as many as one-third of African Americans surveyed identified themselves as conservatives, contrary to the conventional wisdom that they are almost all liberal. Leading conservative columnists seized upon the study as evidence that African Americans are increasingly mirroring a conservative trend among whites. But Bositis, who headed the study, said it was misinterpreted in two fundamental respects.

"First, voters are quite capable of holding both liberal and conservative attitudes, depending on the issue. The fact that one-third of African Americans identify themselves as conservative does not mean they are conservative on all issues. In fact, a breakdown of the data indicates that, on most issues, even African Americans who identify themselves as conservatives are, in fact, still mostly liberal," he said. African American voters are becoming more conservative on some social issues. "For example, 48 percent now favor capital punishment," Bositis added. "But the point is that even on this issue, where blacks are most conservative, the figure is far lower than for whites, 85 percent of whom favor capital punishment," he noted.

In addition, Bositis said that attitudes don't automatically "translate into voting behavior. An individual may identify himself as conservative, but vote for a liberal candidate," Bositis said. "Clearly, one-third of blacks are not voting conservative, even though they say they are conservative," he added.

Results in recent elections support Bositis' conclusions. In presidential elections, for example, African Americans have consistently and overwhelmingly voted for the more liberal candidate -- in all cases in recent history, the Democratic candidate.

The Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress, reports that in 1976, 83 percent of African Americans voted for Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford; in 1980, 83 percent voted for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan; in 1984, 91 percent voted for Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan; in 1988, 89 percent voted for Michael Dukakis over George Bush; in 1992, 83 percent voted for Bill Clinton over George Bush, despite a concerted Republican Party campaign, led by then-Republican National Chairman Lee Atwater, to attract more African American voters; and, in 1996, 84 percent of African Americans voted for Clinton.

Asked if any of the data compiled by the Joint Center would indicate a trend away from preponderant support for liberal and Democratic candidates in the primaries and in the general election, Bositis said, "No, not at this time. My prediction would be, based on our research, preponderant support for Gore."

According to Bositis, the attitudes of African Americans and voting behavior "are rooted in their experience. Many more blacks than whites perceive racism as still a problem, and blacks are still disproportionately represented in the lower economic strata of society. So long as that continues to be the case, blacks will likely remain attracted to more liberal candidates." African Americans comprise about 12 percent of the U.S. population and are a significant voting bloc in numerous states, particularly in the South.