"I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I'm the nominee, goes up 30 percent around the country, minimum."Obama noted that in Mississippi, blacks make up more than a third of the state's population, but make up a smaller share of the electorate.
"If we just got African-Americans in Mississippi to vote their percentage of the population, Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state," Obama said. He said Georgia would also turn Democratic and South Carolina would be in play.According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation by this non-math major, if black voters voted their percentage of the population, Democrats would still be about 170,000 votes short of the regular Republican general election margin, all other factors held constant.
Same thing in Georgia: the Dems would be 325K votes short and in South Carolina -- well, the Dem tally would decline because African Americans vote more than their percentage of the population would indicate.
So -- the first column shows the Bush margin over Kerry in '04. The second shows the total number of Democratic voters if black voters voted their percentage and all voted Democratic. The third figure is the difference of the first minus the second -- the GOP margin over the Democratic candidate under these conditions...all other things being equal.
BUSH MARGIN CHANGE IF PERCENT GOP WITH CHANGE
Georgia 548K 223K 324K
Mississ. 226K 53K 173K
S.C: 276K -16.9K 293K
Sources for this were the percentage of African Americans per state from the U.S. Census and the '04 exit polls' estimates for the percentage of African American votes in the election. .
Now -- increasing African American turnout in other states may well yield benefits. But remember that Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts have, in past cycles, almost entirely been focused on squeezing every possible African American vote out of a state.
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Obama is probably wrong (indulging in wishful thinking) about Mississippi, South Carolina, and Georgia (I live in Atlanta, a bit of a blue island in a red state). But he's right about the big picture, because of Florida. That is where any significant increase in black voter turnout would be likely to deliver the state to the Democratic nominee.
I haven't decided who to back in the Democratic primary, so this isn't intended as an Obama endorsement; but he makes a fair point, because of FLORIDA.
Posted by BPJ | August 24, 2007 11:04 AM