Early Voting Data Shows African American Turnout Dropping

A blizzard of early reports show that early voting by pro-Democratic African-Americans has dropped significantly compared to 2012, giving a boost to Donald Trump’s prospects in critical swing-states, such as North Carolina and Ohio.

In North Carolina, early voting by African-Americans is sharply down, so “you will see a very heavy push in this state for the African-American vote by Hilary Clinton to try to make up some of deficit,” said Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, in Salisbury, N.C.

{snip}

Nationally, “African-American enthusiasm has dipped compared with that in 2012,” according to the New York Times. That’s “a surprising and disquieting development for Democrats who believed Trump’s racial appeals and flirtations with the birther movement would generate more urgency,” the Times reported. For example, in the two Virginia districts with the largest percentage of African American adults, early voting has dropped by more than 50 percent, the Times said.

In Ohio, the decline of early voting in heavily Democratic African-American districts is causing worry for Democrats–and a shift of resources into the low-turnout areas. {snip}

In Florida, “the bad news for Clinton/good news for Trump is that African-Americans and millenials are voting considerably lighter–so far–than four years ago,” the Tampa Bay Times reported Oct. 31.

Daniel Smith, a political science professor in Florida noted the rising level of early voting among whites and Hispanics, compared to to African-Americans.

In North Carolina, “white voters are currently 72 percent of all absentee ballots cast, with black voters being 22 percent and all other races 6 percent. This represents a steady continuation of the trends that we have seen, with white voters over-performing their 2012 numbers and black voters under-performing their 2012 numbers,” Blitzer said at his blog, Old North State Politics.

{snip}