Red or Blue?

Why Whites and Blacks Vote Differently in the United States

Graham Wall
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Introduction

The literature reveals that there is a general chasm between who blacks and whites vote

for in the United States. In order to explain this difference, I will be considering three factors that

help to explain why this difference exists: religion, food assistance, and geography. In the first

section of the paper, I will be considering voting differences in the 2008, 2012, and 2016

American presidential elections between whites and blacks. Secondly, I will be making reference

to two religous groups, Evangelical Protestants and Historically Black Protestants, in which I

will be focusing on the values of these groups and responses to Donald Trump’s executive order

on immigration. Third, I will be considering the Democratic and Republican stances on food

assistance and how reliance on this assistance differs between whites and blacks. Fourth, I will

be evaluating how many whites and blacks vote percentage wise and whether or not geography

affects political preference. I am arguing that any difference in preference for the Democrats or

the Republicans as it occurs between whites and blacks is caused by religion, food assistance,

and geography.

Exit Poll Results

I would like to begin this section with a clarification; when I say that, for example, x

number of whites voted for y, I am technically saying that x number of white voters voted for y.

This is to avoid the interpretation that these numbers are in relation to the whole of American

white and black populations, and because ‘voters voted’ sound awkward, I am going to refrain

from such wording.

According to the 2008 exit polls courtesy of CNN, McCain was the majority vote among

white men at a rate of 57%, while Obama received 41%, and others only 2%. 53% of white

women voted for McCain, 46% voted for Obama, and 1% voted other. Regarding black men,
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95% voted for Obama and 5% voted for McCain. Similarly, 96% of black women voted for

Obama, 3% voted for McCain, and 1% voted other. As a whole, 55% of whites and 4% of blacks

voted for McCain, 43% of whites and 95% of blacks voted for Obama, and 2% whites as well as

1% of blacks voted other (CNN 2008).

The 2012 exit polls rendered similar results. 62% of white men voted for Romney, 35%

voted for Obama, and 3% voted other. 56% of white women voted for Romney, 42% voted for

Obama, and 2% voted other. For black men, on the contrary, the majority of votes went to

Obama at a rate of 87%, while only 11% of votes went to Romney, and 2% to others. Black

women were even more likely to vote for Obama at a rate of 95%, while 3% went to Romney

and 1% to others (CNN 2012).

As for the 2016 exit polls, 62% of white men voted for Trump, 31% voted for Clinton,

and 7% voted other. White women voted for Trump at a rate of 52%, while 43% of votes went to

Clinton and 5% to other. 82% of black men voted for Clinton, 13% for Trump, and 5% for other.

More black women, once again, voted for the Democratic Party, as 94% of their vote went to

Clinton, 4% to Trump, and 2% to other (CNN 2016).

What we can gather from this information, then, are a few insights. First, these exit polls

reveal that although there is not a significant difference regarding who men and women of the

same race vote for, white men are more likely to vote for a Republican candidate than white

women and black men are less likely than black women to vote for a Democratic candidate.

Without considering gender, white voters are more likely to vote Republican and black voters are

more likely to vote Democrat.

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How Religion Influences Immigration Attitudes

Now that I have outlined the differences in voting among whites and blacks, I would like

to consider how religion, Christianity in particular, influences attitudes about immigration. The

first task, then, is to delineate between which Christian groups whites and blacks generally

belong to. As Pew Research Center (2014) points out in the “Evangelical Protestants” and

“Members of the Historically Black Protestant Tradition” sections of their Religious Landscape

Study, many whites in the United States are Evangelical Protestants, as they make up 76% of this

denomination, while many blacks are Historically Black Protestants, as they make 94% of this

collective. I would also like to note that 6% of Evangelicals are black and, quite surprisingly, 2%

of whites are Historically Black Protestants (Pew Research Center).

A question worth asking at this point is: how do these denominations differ in their

values? Starting with immigration, a recent hot topic in the United States has been Trump’s

executive order on immigration. This order, published on January 27 of this year, placed a

temporary travel ban on those wanting to enter the U.S. from Muslim-majority countries such as

Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen (NPR 2017). As Gregory A. Smith (2017)

notes, 76% of American white evangelicals approved of this policy, while only 10% of American

black Protestants were in favor. This difference may be understood when making reference to the

Religious Right for a number of reasons. First, white evangelicals have been central to this

movement, in addition to Christians of other backgrounds. This was made evident through the

plethora of votes George W. Bush received from white evangelicals in the 2000 and 2004

presidential elections (McVicar 2016). Second, the Religious Right has had a history of distrust

for certain non-Americans, particularly, by affirming a strict foreign policy in relation to the

Soviet Union (McVicar 2016). While these views certainly do not hold true for all white

evangelicals in the United States, I believe this information puts into context why so many
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individuals from this group are in favor of Trump’s policy.

But what explanations are there for why black Protestants were significantly less in

favor? The most obvious reason, it seems to me, is one of intuition: there is a good chance that

black Americans, otherwise known as African Americans, have either entered from outside the

United States themselves or have family members that were/are immigrants. Mary Mederios

Kent (2007) notes that from 2001 to 2006 one fifth, if not more, of population growth among the

black community in the U.S. was due to immigration (3). For Historically Black Protestants in

particular, in 2014 it was discovered that 7% were immigrants, 3% were second generation

immigrants, and 90% were immigrants of the third generation plus (Pew Research Center 2014).

Food Assistance among Whites and Blacks

Welfare programs and their effect on society is a sensitive topic. In this section, I have no

intention to argue for either side, but to simply outline how general welfare use among whites

and blacks affects how they vote. In particular, I will be looking at food assistance among whites

and blacks. But before looking at this, I would first like to mention how the Republican and

Democratic Parties approach welfare in general.

According to the Republican Party Platform 2016, hardworking Americans are the

greatest asset to the economy (7). The document also states that it is the party’s first priority to

create jobs and that this is central to all sections discussed in the platform, including welfare

reform (2016:7). As well, the Democrats are explicitly mentioned in the section entitled

‘America’s Natural Resources: Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment.’ Though this might

sound unrelated, the Democrats are, on the one hand, charged of propagating irresponsible farm

policy, and on the other, that their interest in expanding welfare distracted them from farm policy

proper (2016:18). The most important mentioning of welfare in the document is on page 32,
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where it is written that welfare should be a benefit and not an entitlement, or rather, that under

progressivism the poor are caused to rely on the government and thus be trapped in poverty

instead of finding the opportunity to rise above their socioeconomic condition (2016).

Interestingly enough, the term ‘welfare’ only appears once in the 2016 Democratic

platform. However, a section entitled ‘Ending Poverty and Investing in Communities Left

Behind’ is included. The claim is made that Democrats have a commitment to ending poverty

and that by means of a national strategy, all levels of government will be involved (Democratic

Party Platform 2016:18). In particular, the 10-20-30 model or something similar, in theory,

would have been implemented. This model takes 10% of program funds to communities where a

minimum of 20% of residents have been living below the poverty line for at least 30 years.

Another noteworthy part of the plan is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),

which is an anti-hunger program that intends to help poor families acquire food (2016:18). I

should like to point out here that this is the program criticized in the Republican Platform, when

it was stated that the Democrats had spent too much on welfare (Republican Party Platform

2016:18).

Now that I have outlined what these parties believe, I would like to direct focus back to

race, particularly, a comparison of food stamp usage between whites and blacks. Rich Morin

(2013), writing for Pew Research Center, notes that the fact tank did a study in late 2012 which

showed that 31% of blacks were food stamp recipients at some point in their life while only 15%

of whites were. As well, 22% of Democrats had received food stamps at some time, compared to

10% of Republicans. This difference was even more pronounced when those surveyed were

asked if others in their household had ever needed food stamps. 31% of Democrats gave an

affirmative reply compared to 17% of Republicans (Morin 2013). Given these statistics, it comes
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to no surprise that more black Americans vote for the Democratic Party; according to this data,

more blacks are food stamp recipients, and so, it makes sense that many from this population

would support a Party that is in favor of SNAP.

Number of Votes, Geography, and Political Preference

In this last section, I would like to emphasize how race and residence affects voting and I

will be asking two questions: 1) is there a significant difference in how many white Americans

vote compared to how many black Americans vote and 2) does geography (homeless shelters in

particular) affect political preference?

To answer the first question, I will be referring to Michael P. McDonald’s CPS Turnout

Rates chart (2014). McDonald, an associate professor at the University of Florida, took the

Census Bureau’s CPS data from 1986-2014 and corrected both over-report and non-response

errors. For my purposes here, I will only be looking at the years 2008 and 2012 since those were

the years discussed earlier in the paper. In 2008, 65.2% of the white population and 69.1% of the

black population voted. In 2012, these numbers were similar as 61.8% of the white population

voted compared to 67.4% of the black population (McDonald 2014). Therefore, in both years a

higher percentage of the black population voted, and since there is not a significant difference in

how many whites and blacks voted percentage-wise, the issue of non-voting does not appear to

be a racial issue. So, any hypothesis about the black population at large being more obstructed

than white voters in terms of voting opportunity seems misguided to some extent.

At this point I would like to address the second question: ‘does geography affect political

preference?’ To answer this question, I would like to focus on the sub-topic of homelessness.

Though homelessness can happen to people of any race, the literature indicates that it is more

prominent among blacks compared to whites in the United States. Considering the sheltered
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homeless population, it was estimated in part two of the 2014 Annual Homeless Assessment

Report to Congress that blacks comprised 40.6% compared to 40.1% of whites (Solari et al. 1-9).

This does not sound particularly concerning at first, but this needs to be placed into context by

considering white and black populations as a whole. In 2015, it was estimated that 77.1% of the

U.S. population was white while only 13.3% was black (U.S. Department of Commerce).

Thinking back on some of the previous information I provided, particularly, that more blacks

vote for the Democratic Party and that said Party expresses strong statements about ending

poverty in their platform, I think it is safe to conclude here that geography does affect voting

preference.

Notice, too, what this means with respect to the first question: ‘is there a significant

difference in how many white Americans vote compared to how many black Americans vote?’

Though I did conclude before that black people as a whole did not have a ceiling over that head

that stopped them from voting, I wonder what homelessness means in relation to how many

people vote? Perhaps more would vote if they were not as many blacks in homeless shelters? As

Ruth, Matusitz, and Simi (2017) mention, there technically are policies in every state that allow

the homeless to vote; however, there are numerous obstacles that are difficult for the homeless to

overcome, including ID requirements and residency, the authors mention citing National

Coalition for the Homeless, 2010 (2017:63). What this means, then, is that geography affects

both who one votes for and whether or not they will vote at all, at least, in term of the sheltered

homeless.
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Conclusion

In the first section, by focusing on how American whites and blacks voted in the 2008,

2012, and 2016 presidential elections, it became evident that whites have consistently been more

likely to vote Republican while blacks have consistently been more likely to vote Democrat. In

the second section, when I discussed which Christian groups blacks and whites belonged to and

what values they had, I first pointed out that many whites comprise Evangelicalism while many

blacks comprise Historically Black Protestants. Here I also made a connection between the

Religious Right and Evangelicalism, which gave evidence as to why many white Evangelicals

were in favor of Trump’s immigration policy. I argued that blacks, on the other hand, were

generally not as enthused because of a history of immigration. In the third section, which focused

on food assistance, I outlined that the Democratic Party was more in favor of it compared to that

of the Republicans and that more blacks and more Democrats received food stamps at some

point compared to whites and Republicans. Finally, in the fourth section I noted that a higher

percentage of the American black population voted than that of the white population, and that the

high proportion of black homeless shelter uses makes sense of why so many blacks vote for the

Democratic Party, since as I outlined earlier, this party puts an emphasis on ending poverty. As

well, I pointed out that the difficulty of access that homeless persons have could be the cause of

some lost votes. It is for these reasons relating to religion, food assistance, and geography that I

believe there is a general difference in who whites and blacks vote for in the United States,

particularly, why more whites vote for the Republican Party and more blacks vote for the

Democratic Party.
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