Signs of trouble for Democrats seen in low early turnout by black voters in North Carolina

by WorldTribune Staff, November 4, 2016

Democrats were no doubt alarmed when CNN reported on Nov. 2 that in early voting “African-American turnout has dropped in North Carolina, Florida and Georgia” and the GOP “has improved its standing in Florida, Iowa and North Carolina.”

An online New York Times headline read “Black Turnout Soft in Early Voting, Boding Ill for Hillary Clinton.”

Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Writing for The Harvard Law Record on Nov. 3, Amos Jones said: “Nowhere is the Democrats’ desperation for black votes more visible than in North Carolina. Here, because 22% of residents are African American and the state swings, just a sliver of this demographic has the power to decide presidential contests.

“Presumed to be solidly for Clinton, blacks nonetheless can make the difference either by voting Republican or by simply staying home. That’s why a presidential or vice-presidential candidate has held major campaign events in this state practically every day in recent weeks.”

Trouble with the minority voting block that Democrats rely so heavily on was brought to light in an Oct. 20-22 Remington Research Group poll of 1,997 likely Pennsylvania voters, where Republican nominee Donald Trump had 29 percent of the black vote, and 30 percent of the Latino vote.

“If this trend holds elsewhere, then Hillary Clinton will certainly lose this election,” Jones wrote.

“Attempting to put out this fire of black malaise, First Lady Michelle Obama showed up at Wake Forest University for a rally with Clinton on Oct. 27 in Winston-Salem. Clinton then headed on to surprise the campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in nearby Greensboro, reportedly now the country’s largest historically black university.”

Jones went on to ask: “Why can’t Clinton – whom Obama has openly declared among black audiences to be the fulfillment of his own legacy – close the deal to defeat Trump?”

“It may be because so many black voters sense that Obama has led their party into territory that is counterproductive, if not hostile, to black interests and values – especially those of black Southerners, who are more conservative than those in all other regions of the country.”

“I am done with the Democratic plantation,” declared a black Baptist minister, from the South but living and voting in Pennsylvania, whom I interviewed this week, Jones wrote. “Whatever good intentions my former party had, their time is up; Obama was the last straw.”