Black Voters, Newly Energized, Flock to Polls and Back Kerry
Tron Nick
Kerry overpowers Bush on Black vote - 90% of African American Voters Reject Bush
Republicans' hopes that President Bush would improve his standing with black voters came to little or nothing Tuesday. Bush was doing as poorly with blacks as he did in 2000, getting only about one in 10 of their votes, exit polls indicated. His performance with black voters in 2000 was the worst for a Republican presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater got 6 percent in 1964 in his race against Lyndon Johnson. Lynn Roberts needed no encouragement from the get-out-the-vote workers in her neighborhood at midmorning on Election Day. "I want Bush out!" she yelled across shady Huron Street before the workers, promoting Democratic candidates, could reach her. "I already voted. I don't play around. This morning I was No. 87." Ms. Roberts, who said she had checked the digital reader on the optical-scanning voting machine to see that hers was the 87th ballot cast at her precinct in Jacksonville on Tuesday, was just one of thousands of newly energized and mobilized blacks who voted here and across the country, including many in Florida who felt they had waited four years to have their votes counted at last. Nationwide, blacks went to the polls in large numbers and voted overwhelmingly for Senator John Kerry. They were prompted by vast get-out-the-vote drives, big increases in minority voter registration, new early voting periods and political passions kindled by issues from war to tax cuts. And still others saw themselves as part of a new crest in a civil rights struggle not yet complete four decades after federal voting rights laws were passed.[more] and [more] and [more]
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Poll which claimed that Bush's support from African Americans had doubled was Wrong. [more]
Record turnout highlights nation's divisions [more]