LOW BLACK VOTER TURNOUT PREDICTED IN FALL ELECTIONS
USIA
11 September 1998
LOW BLACK VOTER TURNOUT PREDICTED IN FALL ELECTIONS
(Univ. of Maryland Prof. Walters at FPC) (550)
By Julia Burdsal
USIA Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- A University of Maryland election scholar predicts that
this nation's low black voter turnout probably will continue when
African-Americans cast ballots during this fall's congressional
elections.
Ronald Walters, a professor of political science, explained to
reporters at a September 9 briefing at the U.S. Information Agency's
Foreign Press Center that low turnouts by black voters in recent years
reflect their frustration with the political system.
"Blacks have been responding to the political mood -- the more
conservative political culture, and thinking that they have not gotten
as much out of the political system" as others and "therefore, why
vote?" Walters said while discussing this November's mid-term
elections and related mattersŽMDDNŻŽMDNMŻ.
Walters pointed to statistics which reveal that voter turnout by
blacks in the 1992 congressional election was 54 percent, 37 percent
in 1994 and just 25 percent in 1996 -- where it remains today.
Low participation of African-American voters, he said, has inspired a
surge of campaigning aimed at mollifying frustrated black
constituents. He pointed out that the Black Leadership Forum (BLF), an
organization of the top 25 U.S. black organizations, has launched
"Operation Big Vote" with the motto "Lift Every Voice and Vote." The
Forum seeks to elect as many Democrats as possible into Congress to
regain control of that legislative body from the Republicans.
Rather than focus on individual candidates, he said, the forum has
targeted black voters' top priorities: education, healthcare, drugs
and the economy, civil rights and affirmative action, urban and rural
policies, criminal justice, the 2000 census and equal punishment of
drug offenses for both black and white offenders.
"There has been a careful delineation of those places where the black
vote could make a difference in various elections this fall," Walters
commented.
For despite low turnouts in recent years, said Walters, a political
analyst for the Black Entertainment Network (BET) during the 1996
presidential election, there is no question that the black vote plays
a crucial factor in U.S. elections.
Two previous presidential elections, he said, saw the white vote
almost evenly split between Bush and Clinton (1992) and Dole and
Clinton (1996). The black vote, which comprised 10 percent of the
electorate, was heavily in favor of Clinton in each election and was
crucial to his success.
"I think we can see that clearly without the black vote in the 1992
and 1996 elections that Bill Clinton would not have been president of
the United States," Walters said.
There are currently 39 black members of Congress (38 Democratic; 1
Republican) on Capitol Hill. Yet this could change in the future, he
said. Some 34 blacks now running for national office are Republican,
and eight to twelve percent of blacks also are voting Republican now
as well, said Walters.
Despite the low voter turnouts, the black community in America
nontheless has given a good rating so far to the Clinton
administration, Walters said.
It has "appointed more [black] people to cabinet positions than any
other administration in history...and kept affirmative action despite
the assault on it...and done a number of other things that blacks have
felt very good about," he noted.