Southern Black Vote Is Coming Out Early

8:07 pm EST October 23rd, 2008 | Politics | 6 Comments

The beginning…

There have been predictions all year of a record black turnout for Obama. The first actual figures suggest that wasn’t just talk:

_ In North Carolina, blacks make up 31 percent of early voters so far, even though they’re just 21 percent of the population and made up only 19 percent of state’s overall 2004 vote.

_ Roughly 36 percent of the early voters are black in Georgia, outpacing their 30 percent proportion of the state’s population and their 25 percent share of the 2004 vote.

No one but the voters can be sure how they voted. And John McCain’s campaign officials note that the Obama camp has put much more effort than they have into early voting. But the numbers are still notable.

Democrats are outvoting the GOP by a margin of 2.5-to-1 in North Carolina, where early voting has been under way for a week. That’s roughly double the margin from 2004.

More than 210,000 blacks who are registered as Democrats have cast early ballots in the Tar Heel State _ compared with roughly 174,000 registered Republicans overall. Four years ago, the number of GOP early and absentee voters was more than double that of black Democrats.

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6 Responses to “Southern Black Vote Is Coming Out Early”

  1. Parthenon says:
    October 24, 2008 at 12:44 am

    This is a startling step forward for our country. My grandmother (passed on a few years back) could remember meeting a grizzly old civil war vet when she was a tiny kid. And just a few lifetimes later… If me and all my whiteness feels honored to cast this vote, I can only imagine how it must feel for an African-American.

    /cheese

  2. Longdeshizi says:
    October 24, 2008 at 1:33 am

    Another incentive for these people to vote early is the chance to avoid election day suppression shenanigans. Hopefully early voting can render “october surprises” and election day stunts obsolete.

  3. kjj83 says:
    October 24, 2008 at 7:43 am

    Oliver, do you still think NC will go red? Just wondering.

  4. Bruce Henry says:
    October 24, 2008 at 11:14 am

    I live in the Raleigh area, which is slightly more cosmopolitan than other areas, but I feel good about NC. Some folks I would have thought of as the reddest of rednecks have recently “come out” as Obama folks.
    And Andy Griffith’s and Opie’s endorsements didn’t hurt, either.

  5. Bruce Henry says:
    October 24, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Another good sign is that Liddy Dole’s ads are now about the theme that if her opponent, Kay Hagan, is elected Senator, the eevil liberals will control all three branches of government. That seems to me to be an admission that Gramps and Barbie are losers.

  6. The Reality-Based Dave says:
    October 24, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    “Another incentive for these people to vote early is the chance to avoid election day suppression shenanigans.”

    Exactly! They remember the looong lines caused by too few machines for the number of people trying to vote.
    Vote early! Faster! More!