Blacks May Have Outperformed Whites at the Ballot Box

Pew attributes possible feat to nation's first black presidential candidate and shrinking white voter turnout.

An analysis by the Pew Research Center has found that during Election 2012, African Americans may have voted at higher rates than whites for the first time. Available data suggest that while African-Americans made up 12 percent of eligible voters, they accounted for 13 percent of all votes cast. Paul Taylor, director of the Pew Social and Demographic Trends project, said that this feat indicates that the voting gap between blacks and whites is gradually closing. He said 2008 was the first time the white-black voter turnout had such a narrow gap. Taylor attributes the narrowing of the gap to changes in voter-identification laws, the candidacy of the first black candidate, and the shrinking voter turnout rate among white voters. The Pew report noted that the white voter turnout rate declined by 1.1 percentage points between 2004 and 2008. (Ebony)

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Maine GOP Suspects Election Voter Fraud Because Too Many Blacks Voted

GOP state chairman Charlie Webster says he doesn't know any black people in Maine.

Do you know any black people who live in Maine? No? Neither does GOP state chairman Charlie Webster. Which is why he's crying voter fraud after this past Presidential election's results.

In an interview with a local news station, Webster says:

In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day. Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in town knows anyone who’s black. How did that happen? I don’t know. We’re going to find out….

Listen for yourself:

Update: This morning Webster apologized for his statements. He says he knows a couple of black people in Maine, and actually plays basketball with one every Sunday.

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Suppress This: GOP Vote 'Shenanigans' Drove Blacks to Polls

Blacks in key battleground states determined to vote, exit polling shows

Not only did President Barack Obama trounce challenger Mitt Romney in winning reelection Tuesday, black voters were as, or more, committed in their support for the president than 2008, exit polling showed, with many African Americans spurred on by perceptions of a covert, GOP-backed strategy to keep them from the polls this year.

Both outcomes debunked analysts' projections, with Obama beating Romney by at least 3 percentage points and 126 electoral votes and exit polling showing African Americans making up 13 percent of the electorate nationally, an uptick from 2008's 12 percent, and backing Obama with 94 percent of their vote.

“We worked it!” said Aaron Phillip, pastor of Sure House Baptist Church in Cleveland and a leading faith-based voice in the fight against voting law changes in battleground Ohio, where support for Obama propelled the president into the winner's circle. Phillip helped lead a caravan of black voters to the elections department for early voting.

In Ohio, black voter turnout was even more robust than it was in 2008. "Get out the vote" efforts, coupled with anger over new voter ID laws or attempts at same, helped mobilize many black voters.

“There was a lot of games and shenanigans,” Phillips said in a phone interview. “What really mobilized us was that we felt Republicans were trying to take the vote away from us. It had the reverse effect. It ignited us. If they would have left it alone, who knows what would have happened?”

While overall nationally blacks made up 13 percent of the vote, in Ohio, black voter share increased to 15 percent from 11 percent in 2008. Nationally, the share of Hispanic voters (7 in 10 of whom backed Obama) rose to double digits for the first time in 2012 to 10 percent, while white voter share decreased to 72 percent this year, from 74 percent in 2008.

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Obama campaign officials say national exit polling data was evidence of the power of the minority vote, which GOP nominee Romney clearly struggled to court during the waning months of the campaign.