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African American Shift from Republican to Democrat in the 20th Century

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African American Shift from Republican to Democrat in the 20th Century

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This post calculates the voting shift of the African Americans, who changed their political loyalty from the Republicans to the Democrats. The African American population became a large part of the voting outcomes in the US elections. Once the Democrats realized they pulled the majority of African Americans to vote for their candidates, they began to use different strategies to maintain those numbers for the election. The democrats running the campaigns did not care the skin color of the votes, as long as they were votes for the Democratic party, that helped the Democrats obtain the power of presidency. This mentality of the Democratic higher-ups helped the African American people become more involved politically, which would break down walls to make way for African American Democrats with power within the party.

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A: There was a big move to Democratic voting in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, and another in Lyndon B. Johnson's.

I've had a question for a long time and haven't yet found what I consider to be an unbiased source, or the raw data to do my own analysis.

For how long have the Democrats garnered the black vote? Certainly there was a point during the last century when a majority of blacks started supporting the Democrats rather than Republicans. What has been the voting pattern and what happened to change that pattern?

Blacks mostly voted Republican from after the Civil War and through the early part of the 20th century. That's not surprising when one considers that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and the white, segregationist politicians who governed Southern states in those days were Democrats. The Democratic Party didn't welcome blacks then, and it wasn't until 1924 that blacks were even permitted to attend Democratic conventions in any official capacity. Most blacks lived in the South, where they were mostly prevented from voting at all.

The election of Roosevelt in 1932 marked the beginning of a change. He got 71 percent of the black vote for president in 1936 and did nearly that well in the next two elections, according to historical figures kept by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. But even then, the number of blacks identifying themselves as Republicans was about the same as the number who thought of themselves as Democrats.

It wasn't until Harry Truman garnered 77 percent of the black vote in 1948 that a majority of blacks reported that they thought of themselves as Democrats. Earlier that year Truman had issued an order desegregating the armed services and an executive order setting up regulations against racial bias in federal employment.

Even after that, Republican nominees continued to get a large slice of the black vote for several elections. Dwight D. Eisenhower got 39 percent in 1956, and Richard Nixon got 32 percent in his narrow loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

But then President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawing segregation in public places) and his eventual Republican opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater, opposed it. Johnson got 94 percent of the black vote that year, still a record for any presidential election.

The following year Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. No Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote since.

Footnote: Younger African American voters have been edging away from the Democratic Party in recent years. David Bositis of the Joint Center notes "a fairly long-term pattern of decreasing identification with the Democrats by younger African Americans." Of course, it remains to be seen what the 2008 campaign will bring.

-Brooks Jackson

Bositis, David A. "Blacks and the 2004 Democratic National Convention." Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Table 1, Presidential vote and party identification of black Americans, 1936-2000; p. 9.

Bositis, David A. "The Black Vote in 2004," Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2005.

Apple Jr., R.W. " G.O.P. Tries Hard to Win Black Votes, but Recent History Works Against It." The New York Times, 19 Sept. 1996.

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Blacks and the Democratic Party - FactCheck.org

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Q: When did blacks start voting Democratic? A: There was a big move to Democratic voting in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, and another in Lyndon B. Johnson's. FULL QUESTION I've had a question for a long time and haven't yet found what I consider to be an unbiased source, or the raw data to do my own analysis.

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This image represents a clear opposition the whites had when it came to blacks voting in the election.  By allowing the blacks to vote in the primary election, that puts them at a disadvantage because that meant that there was a possibility that blacks would vote people into power that might actually benefit them.  To prevent this from happening, this is how the white primaries came about.  Although congress put laws in place to allow blacks to vote, white southerners used every avenue they could to prevent it from happening; white primaries, voting taxes, literacy tests, etc.  The voting taxes and the literacy test didn’t blatantly discriminate against blacks but the system was set up to minimize, if not eliminate, the number of blacks that could vote.  In order to register to vote, you needed to pay the tax which most blacks couldn’t afford, so if you can’t register to vote, then you surely can’t vote a fair political representative into office.  Same can be said about the literary tests.  The tests we’re not exclusively only for black people, but the system was set up to eliminate blacks from the election process.  There was a “grandfather clause” that made an exception for most whites, but it was simply another road block that ultimately excluded blacks from the election process.  All of this was done in an effort to allow whites to remain in power.  They were aware that congress mandated that blacks should be able to vote, but they still did everything in their power to prevent it from happening so that the states wouldn’t be “punished”.  With every two steps forward that the blacks made,  whether it was through equal rights bills passed through congress or the simple uplifting of the race from within,  the whites managed to make them take five steps back.

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Negroes fought for years for equal political rights that they would still be denied but it wasn’t because the problem wasn’t brought to the state's attention, when the dilemma was brought to light the Democratic committee avoided the issue. The State’s did not make a decision in fact the left the decision making up to the election judges in each case. After the Texas Election laws were ruled unconstitutional. States were left to make the decision as to who was able to vote and Negroes were still not able to vote, even with Negro committees appearing in front of the States. Negros eventually were able to vote bit still not in the primaries southern white Americans did everything in there power to keep Negroes from making decisions that could effect the greater good of america. This article shows that no matter what Negroes tried to door how they addressed the situation the committees would just push the problem off to the side and hope the problem would solve itself.

The problem with that is that when committees need something from the negro community, they won't hesitate to use the negro community for  their own advantage. With the committee's meeting over and over again about the same topic and still couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation as to why the Negro community couldn’t vote primary is an outrage at least give a straight up answer as to why they are not allowed. As for the Democratic committee to deny Africans to be able to vote in the primaries is confusing to me, I see a strong community of large numbers wanted to vote primarily Democratic, why would you turn that down when it’s beneficial to your party? The negro community was the called upon by the democratic party to vote in their favor because they faced losing the election to the Republicans so they were urged to vote, This was a prime example of how African Americans can help but they can only help if you let them so again the committees meet and again the same results, They were turned down after they were encouraged by members of the Ferguson's campaign and also denied by members from the same party. After numerous attempts to try and progress with Negroes being able to vote in primaries some judges in different counties  finally allowed Negroes to vote in primaries with large numbers on the other and the fate still remained the same not being able to vote.