Serving Bread

Republicans definitely have a steep hill to climb to get any significant portion of the black vote (especially on the presidential election level). With Obama in the race, the McCain gang has to do some convincing that the Republican platform is superb to that of the Democrats in addressing issues near to the hearts of Black voters and communities.

Well, the Republicans are hurting. They are hurting pretty bad. Jay Leno caught on,

I gotta admit, she looked very comfortable at the podium ’cause it’s kinda like Alaska: you look out on that convention floor, nothing but white as far as the eye can see.

I don’t know if you noticed this, but at the GOP convention, the cameramen are desperately trying to find minorities in the audience they could zoom in on, ’cause this is what they do. Finally, after an hour, they found one. It was a Presbyterian standing in a group of Methodists.

Those jokes have more truth to them than the Republicans would like. Here are some statistics for you from The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (I highly recommend downloading and perusing the free pdfs outlining their research of Black voting patterns):

• There were nearly twice as many black delegates at the 1912 convention than the 2008 convention. There were 65 black delegates then compared to 36 this past week. With less total delegates, Blacks made up 6% of the delegates in 1912, while they only made up 1.5% of the delegates in 2008.
• Incidentally, there were 167 black delegates (the most ever at a Republican convention) in 2004, making up 6.7% of the total delegate count. (Remember the ‘we’re a big tent’ campaign?)
• In contrast, the democrats had 1079 black delegates (24.3%) in Denver.
• Republicans had more black delegates at most of the conventions in the 20th century. The shift in favor of the Democrats happened beginning with the 1952 convention when the Democrats began to outnumber Republicans with Black delegates. And then it significantly took off in 1968 (the first convention after the signing of the Civil Rights Act).
• If the Republicans had nominated Mike Huckabee, things might have been a little different. In all of the elections for statewide offices in the past ten years, he has earned more of the black vote compared to any other Republican. In 1998, he earned 48% of the black vote.