Obama's Southern Strategy: D.O.A?

The South Will Fall Again
By THOMAS F. SCHALLER
Washington

THE interim between the primaries and the parties’ nominating conventions is, according to ancient writ, a fertile period for presidential campaigns to talk about how they plan to expand the political map in the fall. This year is no different. Barack Obama’s strategists are suggesting that the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party can parlay increased turnout among black voters into a string of victories in the South.

Given that roughly half of all African-Americans live in the 11 former Confederate states, the idea seems intuitive enough. It’s also wrong. Prying Southern electoral votes away from the Republicans is not so simple.

According to news reports, the Obama campaign is agressively pursuing southern votes, particularly in the African-American community. Author and University of Maryland political science professor Thomas F. Schaller concedes that Obama's approach is a losing proposition based on what he calls the two myths about the Black vote.

First, contrary to popular belief, the Black vote turnout in the South is NOT low.

In the 11 states of the former Confederacy, African-Americans were 17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004, analysis of Census Bureau data shows.

And when socioeconomic status is held constant, black voters go to the polls at higher rates than white voters in the South. In other words, a 40-year-old African-American plumber making $60,000 a year is, on average, more likely to vote than a white man of similar background.

Myth number two will come as a kick in the head to liberals. Contrary to conventional wisdom, liberal presidential candidates do not do better in Southern states with large Black populations.

In fact, the reverse is true, because the more blacks there are in a Southern
state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.

Take Mississippi. It has the nation's highest percentage of Blacks in its population, but

Four years ago, President Bush beat John Kerry there by 20 points. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Mr. Obama could increase black turnout in Mississippi to 39 percent of the statewide electorate, up from 34 percent in 2004, according to exit polls. And let’s assume that Mr. Obama will win 95 percent of those voters, up from the 90 percent who voted for Mr. Kerry four years ago.

If that happened, the black vote would yield Mr. Obama 37 percent of Mississippi’s statewide votes. To get the last 13 percent he needs for a majority, Mr. Obama would need to persuade a mere 21 percent of white voters in Mississippi to support him. Sounds easy, right?

But only 14 percent of white voters in the state supported Mr. Kerry. Mr. Obama would need to increase that number by 7 percentage points — a 50 percent increase. Mr. Obama struggled to attract white Democrats in states like Ohio and South Dakota. It strains credulity to believe that he will attract three white voters in Mississippi for every two that Mr. Kerry did.

According to Schaller, Obama's predictions regarding an increase in the turnout of Black voters naively does not consider a rise in the White vote turnout. Georgia and North Carolina are not in play for the same reasons Mississippi isn't. Virginia is a different story, however.

The demographic makeup of the electorate in Virginia is unlike that of any other state in the South. The black population in Virginia is, as a percentage, among the lowest in the region. And during the last two decades, the state has also experienced a huge influx of upscale non-Southerners, who have taken over the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia. (Florida is a perennial target for similar reasons. With a relatively small black population, a big Hispanic voting bloc and a large contingent of relocated retirees from the North, it is the least Southern of the Southern states.)

And here is Schaller's epiteth for the Obama campaign's Southern strategy .

In the rest of the South, Mr. Obama cannot overcome reality. Even if unprecedented numbers of black voters turn out to vote for him, the white vote will serve as a formidable counterbalance. Mr. Obama should not hope to capture states in the country’s most racially polarized region.