[99 44/100% pure]

I didn’t have time to reply to Hubris Boy before taking off for the weekend, but I was sure I’d see some refutation of some his more specious statements upon my return. I know that HB has a sterling reputation for having some solid data behind his points, but I’m afraid cognitive dissonance may have obscured some of the information which informed his most recent post re. black voter turnout and voting trends, insofar as they affect party politics, both nationally and in the state of Maryland.

Heh. Like there was any chance of that [Republicans getting more than 9% of the vote in a national election] even before the recent unpleasantness with Mr. Lott?

Well, as it happens, the Republican party has already received more than 9% of the vote in a presidential election, in fact, in every presidential election from Carter in ’76 through Clinton in ’96, 9% or more of voting blacks have voted for the Republican candidate.

Let's face it: blacks are only, what... 11% to 12% of the total US population? And if current trends in immigration and in the birth rate among Hispanics remain constant, that percentage will decline . . . . It's the Hispanic vote that causes pollsters and political strategists to wake up screaming and drenched in cold sweat.

In 2000, blacks made up 12.3% of population, but 12.9% of the eligible voters. But HB is right; the hispanic population is growing at a much faster rate. While they currently vote at a lesser rate than both blacks and whites, they vote Republican far more frequently than blacks, so Republicans ought to be able to capitalize on this demographic trend, rather than running scared.

For reasons I'm not sure anybody understands (and for our purpose here they really don't matter), blacks just don't vote in large numbers.

While the overall rate of voter participation (in presidential elections) is steadily declining, the rate for whites is declining at a much faster rate than that of blacks.

As to why blacks don’t vote at the same rate as whites, a concise chronology might help to illuminate:
Nearly universal inability to vote during slavery era;
General inability to vote during reconstruction era;
Extreme difficulty voting during Jim Crow era;
Post-segregation impediments such as grandfather clauses, poll taxes and literacy tests.

I would wager that had the majority of whites in this country been subjected to these conditions, they would currently be less politically organized and would vote at lesser rates, as well.

Last month, the local "black establishment" down here worked itself into a frenzy trying to get Bobby Kennedy's daughter elected governor of one of the most solidly Democratic states in the nation. And they couldn't crack the nut. Maryland has a shiny new Republican governor for the first time in over 30 years.

and

To the extent that there is a monolithic "black vote", that vote is firmly in the hip pockets of the Democrats. The Democrats know that, and so do the Republicans. And you know what? The Republicans don't care.

HB, you and I both know that Republican Ehrlich won the election because his opponent, Kennedy-Townsend, was an unparalleled doofus. What you fail to note is that the Republican party had the savvy to run the first ever black candidate for Maryland lieutenant governor on their ticket. As a result, the 3 majority black/Democratic jurisdictions in Maryland voted republican 29% in 2002, as opposed to 22.3% in 2000. In fact, Maryland will soon swear in its shiny new Republican governor precisely because they saw that the “black vote” was not guaranteed to the Democrats, and they did care. A lot. And, if they’re smart, they’ll continue to care; they’ve probably maximized their return on the white vote and get greater marginal utility out of campaign dollars by targeting blacks and hispanics.

Sorry to drone on, but voter demographics happens to be a hobby of mine.

Thanks for listening.