"In close elections, Democrats can maximize the advantage of strong minority support only when those voters turn out in strong enough numbers."Įlection cycle after election cycle, give or take a few points, about 90 percent of Black voters back Democrats, said Gillespie, who studies Black political behavior. "Just as in 2016, the presidential race is being decided in states where the robust or anemic turnout of people of color will determine the outcome of the election," Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science and director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, said in a statement. But Black voters have consistently proven essential in determining election outcomes and, when Democrats fail, these often disregarded voters appear to top many lists of those who are blamed. While some Democrats, like centrist Bill Clinton, have been able to attract a few more white voters, members of the group have remained a sort of elusive, most-sought voter. Many white voters simply fled the Democratic Party after President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, with a bipartisan collective in Congress pushed through landmark equity-building legislation, and President Richard Nixon coalesced white Republican political support with his " Southern strategy." But Biden held 87 percent of the Black vote, performing better among Black voters than any other demographic group.Īnd, much like almost every other Democrat since the 1960s, Biden won about 42 percent of the white vote. He stood just outside Detroit's TCF Center, where Wayne County election officials tallied votes.Īccording to exit polls, Trump claimed about 18 percent of the vote among Black men and 8 percent among Black women, increases over his performance among both groups in 2016. Steve Bland Jr., pastor of Liberty Temple Baptist Church, spoke to MSNBC. If Brown's was the voice that may have reset the understanding of anyone watching BET or listening to CBC/Radio-Canada on election night, for others the truth about the election and how it was won arrived the next day in the poetic language of the Black church pulpit, when the Rev. A surge in early and mail voting and other measures taken by Georgia's Republican secretary of state prevented a repeat on Election Day. In Georgia during the primary season, many voters, particularly Black voters, waited eight hours or more to participate. In the weeks before the election, about 63 percent of Black voters and 73 percent of white voters told Pew Research Center pollsters that they were "extremely motivated to vote in the General Election." About 54 percent of Latino and Asian voters said the same. Don't ask me why Black voter turnout is consistently low when nothing could be further than the clear and obvious truth." When the interview ended, Brown turned to say: "She wasn't ready for that. The fact that we have matched and topped white voter participation and done that while going through voter suppression in new and old forms every year, we are extraordinary. Eduardo Munoz / Reutersīrown said: "The fact that we have caught up with white voters, white women in particular, who have historically reaped all the benefits of voting and even any slight level of political engagement, who can't get pollsters and parties to stop targeting them, to me says that we are extraordinary. People march and celebrate after Joe Biden was projected to have won the presidential election Saturday. Biden - who would not have been the Democratic presidential nominee without Black voters in South Carolina - reached 270 Electoral College votes in large part because of Black voters in these cities. In fact, once the vote counts from Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta started to near completion, Trump's lead in their respective states disappeared. The Black people who make up 39 percent or more of the population in those areas chose Biden, with some exceptions. Instead, it was decided in racially diverse urban centers and increasingly diverse suburbs in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. After a Google Hangout with the field directors they had hired to register, engage and boost voter participation around the country, Brown sequestered herself in a bedroom, resting her body in a hotel chair, her tired feet - by then stripped to the socks - on the bed.īetween bites of food and watching election returns turn bits of the national map red or blue, Brown juggled calls, internet video sessions and texts, in each countering the conventional wisdom with journalists, political operatives and others that the election would come down to Donald Trump's mythical all-white suburbs filled with stay-at-home moms or Joe Biden's ability to convert them.