The Black Conservative Voter Is Not A Token. The Press Is Still Reporting As If The Voter Is.

The Findings That Have Been In The Data For Years

The Pew Research Center's longitudinal data on Black American voter attitudes contains a set of findings that have been visible in the data for at least a decade and that the press has consistently underreported. The findings are not principally findings about the headline partisan-identification number, which remains substantially aligned with the Democratic Party. The findings are findings about the substantive policy positions that Black American voters hold across a range of issue categories, including positions that diverge meaningfully from the conventional press characterization.

On educational policy, approximately 71 percent of Black American voters in the most recent comprehensive survey support school choice mechanisms including charter schools and voucher programs. On crime policy, approximately 68 percent want stronger police presence in their neighborhoods rather than reduced presence. On family policy, approximately 73 percent identify the stability of two-parent households as a substantial contributor to community-level outcomes. On economic policy, approximately 64 percent support reduced corporate tax rates as a strategy for community-level economic development. The literature is clear on each of these findings.

What The Press Coverage Looks Like

The press coverage of Black American voters has, across the trailing decade, treated the voters as a population whose policy preferences are organized principally around racial identity politics and around a narrow set of progressive policy positions. The treatment does not reflect the polling. The treatment reflects, in my reading, the editorial assumptions that the press has carried into its coverage of the population and that the press has not adjusted in response to the consistent polling evidence.

The press treatment also affects the candidate coverage. Black conservative candidates, when they emerge in primary or general elections, are routinely covered in framings that emphasize their distance from the imagined consensus of Black American voters rather than coverage that engages with their policy positions on the merits. The framing has the effect of marginalizing the candidates. The marginalization has the further effect of discouraging the candidate population from emerging in the first place. The cycle is the cycle the press has, in its editorial choices, helped to maintain.

The Soft Bigotry Is Still Bigotry

The soft bigotry of low expectations is still bigotry. The press treatment of Black American voters as a population whose policy preferences are assumed rather than measured is a form of the same bigotry that the polling evidence has, across two decades, consistently rebutted. The voters have made their policy positions clear in the polling. The voters have made their voting choices in the elections. The voters have, in increasing numbers, supported candidates whose positions align with the policy preferences the polling documents.

The Republican Party's electoral share of the Black American vote has, in the most recent presidential cycle, exceeded 15 percent for the first time in two generations. The 15 percent number is small relative to the share that would correspond to the policy alignment the polling describes. The 15 percent number is also large relative to the share the party has received in the prior generations. The trajectory is in a direction the conventional press analysis did not predict and has not yet adequately characterized.

What The Empirical Record Shows

Consider this. The empirical record on the relationship between policy preferences and voting behavior in the Black American electorate shows, across multiple methodologies, that the policy preferences identified in the polling do not translate into the voting choices the preferences would predict. The translation gap is the gap the press has the most difficulty engaging with on its merits. The gap is the consequence of the partisan information environment that the voters have operated within for two generations and that has organized the voters' partisan identification independently of the voters' policy positions.

The translation gap is closing slowly. The closing is the consequence of several factors. It is the consequence of changes in the partisan information environment, including the diversification of media outlets that have engaged Black American voters across the political spectrum. It is the consequence of the candidate pipeline that has produced a more diverse set of Black American conservative candidates over the trailing decade. It is the consequence of generational change within the Black American electorate, with younger cohorts showing weaker partisan attachment than the older cohorts have shown.

The Generation Gap Inside The Electorate

The generation gap inside the Black American electorate is the gap that decides the next decade of voting patterns. Black American voters under 35 show, in the available polling, weaker partisan attachment to the Democratic Party than Black American voters in the 50-to-64 cohort. The younger cohort shows higher rates of identification as independent or as Republican-leaning than the older cohort. The shift is small in absolute terms and is consistent in direction.

The implications of the shift, if it continues across the next two presidential cycles, are substantial. The Republican Party's share of the Black American vote could, on the trajectory the data suggests, approach 20 to 25 percent by the early 2030s. The share would still be a minority of the population's overall vote. The share would also be the largest the party has received since the Civil Rights era realignment of the 1960s. The implications for state and federal electoral outcomes would be material.

What I Will Tell My Students

What I will tell my students, when we cover the Black American voting data in the seminar on race and political behavior this spring, is what I tell them about every empirical literature we examine. The data is the foundation. The political narrative is what gets built on the foundation. When the political narrative diverges from the foundation, the divergence is the analytical question that requires examination, not the answer that requires accepting on its own terms.

I refuse to be patronized. My parents came from Nigeria. They did not come here to be victims. The Black American voters whose policy preferences the polling documents are not being treated by the press as voters whose preferences carry equal weight in the political conversation. The treatment is the treatment that deserves the most direct critique. The voters have been telling us what they think. The press has been telling us what the press wants us to think the voters think. The two stories diverge. The data is the data.