Vol. 5 Iss. 2: What REALLY Happened with the Black Vote?

Should Postmodern Theologians Probe Statistics?

   By Colleen Birchett

   In the days leading to the recent election, the press was buzzing with rumors that President George Bush had split the African American vote, mostly over the issue of gay marriage. The rumors were in part based on a Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies report suggesting that at least 18% of African American respondents were now pro-Bush. Moreover, the New York Times and the St. Petersburg Times both said that 17-19% of their own respondents were backing Bush. The rumors didn’t stop after the election. Within hours, Washington Post and CNN exit polls said that Bush indeed had captured 10-11% of the African American vote and, in Ohio alone, had gotten 16%. The question is, does this data reflect what really happened?

   In a quest for truth, I examined Ohio election results and Census demographics. I discovered that Ohio African Americans live primarily in six counties and comprise 13-27% of those populations. In such counties, collectively, votes went to Kerry over Bush, by an average margin of 20%. In Cuyahoga County, with the heaviest concentration of African Americans (27%, 665,334 votes cast) the margin was 33% in favor of Kerry! Moreover, in one of these counties that supported Bush over Kerry, the margin was only 8%. These figures run counter to those projected by media exit polls. Perhaps this indicates the need to begin challenging the long-held notion of the African American voting bloc as unequivocally homophobic and to suggest that we have a greater understanding of the connectedness of issues such as racism and heterosexism than these elections polls portrayed.