Delano Squires
Leftist pundits have spent the weeks since November’s election claiming that “whiteness” and racial grievance explain why Donald Trump is headed back to the White House—a hard sell when the president-elect assembled the most multi-racial coalition in Republican history, but it doesn’t stop committed partisans from trying.
Trump’s victory does offer valuable lessons about the role race played in the election.
But neither party is asking the central question: Why is there such a disconnect between the ideological beliefs of black voters and their behavior on Election Day?
Across the electorate, nine in 10 self-identified liberals voted for Kamala Harris, exit polls found, while the same share of conservatives voted for Trump. Moderates were split, with roughly 60% voting Democratic and 40% voting Republican.
Nearly 80% of African American voters identify as either conservative or moderate, and if the connection between ideology and voting was the same for them as for other groups, Trump should have won roughly 40% of the black vote—but he came nowhere close.
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He did just as well (13%) among black voters as in 2020, but lost black conservative voters to Kamala Harris by an 11-point margin, a glaring political anomaly.
The Democratic Party’s success at positioning itself as the guardian of American civil rights—and the bulwark against a return to a time when African Americans lacked them—is a prime reason why black voters are such a political outlier.
Call it the “Selma effect.”
The result has been the fusion of racial identity and political affiliation in a way that makes voting Democratic not just the “right” choice in the minds of progressive pundits, but also the black choice for millions of Americans.
For older African Americans in the Silent and Baby Boomer generations, the Selma effect is an ever-present and powerful reminder of what their lives were like in decades past, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/vote-totals-show-gop-faces-major-hurdle-woo-black-voters-the-selma-effect