UNITED NATIONS  -  26 October 2004 /  www.MaximsNews.com /  Could it be that this Election Day will record a significant change in the presidential voting patterns of Black America?

Could it be that on November 2 nearly one-fifth of African-American voters will cast their ballots for President Bush?

That‘s the surprising possibility that jumps out of the recent National Opinion Poll of Black America conducted by the well-respected Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

In 2000 blacks gave less than 10 percent of their votes to then-Governor Bush—as the Joint Center Poll had predicted—compared to nearly 90 percent for Vice President Gore.

Now, however, the Washington-based think tank reports that 18 percent of African-Americans say they are willing to vote for President Bush.

To be sure, that possible vote is still dwarfed by the 69 percent who declared their intention to vote for Senator John Kerry. 

Nonetheless, such a vote would constitute by far the largest percentage of black votes a Republican nominee for the presidency has garnered since Richard Nixon ran for the White House in 1960. 

And, at least in terms of the political debate, it would certainly shake up a significant part of the nation’s political landscape.

Now for the warning:  Until that vote actually shows up on Election Day, one would be well advised to take the Joint Center’s finding as one more indication of the volatility and uncertainty about the election still coursing throughout the nation’s electorate as a whole.

For example, the 18-percent “possibility” has to be placed against the fact that African Americans rated President Bush not only less favorably than whites, but substantially less favorably than they did two years ago.  

Then, while 59 percent of blacks rated his performance fair or poor, 39 percent rated it excellent or good.  

Now, 76 percent rate it fair or poor, while only 22 percent rate his performance excellent or good.  

Even majorities of blacks who described themselves as Christians or secular conservatives gave the President a fair or poor rating, although by less wide margins.

Slightly more than half of those the Joint Center surveyed were African Americans; but Americans of other backgrounds were also surveyed to provide a comparative perspective on the views blacks’ expressed.

Another example of the volatility that may be lurking behind these stated intentions lies in the gap between blacks’ partisan identification and their actual voting practices in past presidential elections.

That is, in 2000 the Joint Center found that 74 percent of blacks identified themselves as Democrat, 20 percent as Independent, and 4 percent as Republican—but on Election Day upwards of 90-percent of black voters voted Democratic. 

Now, according to the Joint Center, 63 percent of African Americans are self-identified Democrats, 23 percent Independents, and 10 percent Republicans.

Eddie N. Williams, the Joint Center’s president, said that one way to view some of the survey’s findings is as “showing a certain amount of black ambivalence in terms of election year issues that resonate within the black community, and their relationship with Senator Kerry … they have not yet embraced Senator Kerry to the extent that they did former President Clinton and former Vice President Gore.”

This may be true—right now; but, remember that four years ago it was the conventional wisdom right up to Election Day that Vice President Gore had failed to “excite” black voters and was going to suffer a significant defection at the polls.

Another political finding of the survey is that, contrary to another piece of conventional wisdom, young African Americans are now much more likely to identify themselves as Democrats:  71 percent of those 18 to 25 do so, compared to 54 percent in 2002, and 63 percent of those 26 to 35 do so, compared to 56 percent in 2002. 

But this has happened as fewer older African Americans aged 51 to 64; identify themselves as Democratic, although this group as a whole still remains substantially Democratic.

Another important survey finding is that 80 percent of blacks said, obviously remembering the voting controversies of 2000, that they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that their votes on Election Day might not be counted.  

Joint Center officials said they were surprised to find that two-thirds of non-African Americans polled also expressed that concern.

This finding may be the most important indication of the concern and uncertainty that describes the attitudes of many Americans of all backgrounds as our most important symbol of democracy and exercise of democracy approaches.