Winning the Race: Black Voter Turnout in the 2008 Presidential Election

Abstract

Estimates of voter turnout indicate that African Americans cast ballots at unprecedented rates in the 2008 presidential election. Given the presence of the first Black major party presidential nominee, this should be no surprise. But were heightened interest, efficacy, and a sense of racial identity due to the candidacy of Barack Obama the main factors contributing to the surge in Black voter turnout? Using data from the 1984 and 1996 National Black Election Studies and the 2008 American National Election Study, which contains a stratified random over-sample of blacks, we argue that party mobilization was a critical force in boosting Black turnout. Attitudinal factors, in contrast, appear to have been less robust in this election than one would assume. Based on estimates of voter turnout in the 2008 election, the downward trend in voting since the 1960s appears to have reversed itself. 1 Overall, voter turnout among eligible voters was estimated to be 63.6 percent, the highest it has been since 1968 (Lopez and Taylor 2009). Contributing greatly to this boost was the highly mobilized Black electorate. Black voter turnout in 2008 was 65.2 percent-an all-time high-with about 15.9 million Blacks casting ballots. In fact, for the first time in history, Black voter turnout almost matched White voter turnout (66.1 percent), even without controlling for socioeconomic status (Lopez and Taylor 2009).

The Intersection of Redistricting, Race, and Participation

“…In addition to the literature on municipal politics (see Gilliam 1996;Gilliam and Kaufmann 1998;Kaufmann 2003;Kleppner 1985;Nelson 1987), Tate (1991) found that shared identity and the presence of mobilizing agents like the black church increased black participation when Jesse Jackson sought the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. And with the help of party and candidate outreach, the 2008 presidential campaign saw African Americans mobilized to support Barack Obama (Philpot, Shaw, and McGowen 2009). Likewise, black rolloff rates are substantially lower in campaigns involving black candidates, when black politicians hold powerful positions in government, or when elections touch on racerelated issues (Herron and Sekhon 2005;Vanderleeuw and Engstrom 1987;Vanderleeuw and Liu 2002;Vanderleeuw and Sowers 2007).…”

“Race Matters” in the Obama Era

“…More specifically, communication scholars have generated scholarship based on particular speeches (e.g., Frank, 2009;Rowland & Jones, 2007;Terrill, 2009), his use of social media (e.g., Harris, 2010;Ng, 2010), celebrity endorsements during Obama's election (e.g., Kuehl, 2010;Pease & Brewer, 2008), persistence of rumors regarding his authentic self (e.g., Hollander, 2010;Spicer, 2010), and what his election means to the United States (e.g., Darsey, 2009;Rowe, 2010). This growing body of literature joins other research that explicitly engages the politics of race that surround Barack Obama's election as the forty-fourth U.S. President (Cooper, 2010;Lee & Morin, 2009;Pasek et al, 2009;Philpot, Shaw, & McGowen, 2009).…”

North Carolina Election Reform Ten Years After the Help America Vote Act

“…That is an especially important topic to study in the 2008 election, given the widely held view that the Obama campaign's mobilization techniques-including in African American communities-were second to none.^ The 2008 election included significant onthe-ground get out the vote (GOTV) mobilization for Obama in states such as North Carolina. Yet scholars such as Philpot, Shaw, and McGowen (2009) found that nationally, African Americans who voted were more likely to vote on Election Day than at some time before Election Day. Further, Alvarez, Levin, and Sinclair (2011) fmd that African Americans were not more likely than whites to vote early in person.^ Examining voter registration history in North Carolina, Kropf (2012: 16) found that African Americans were most likely to vote early in 2008:…”