Black Voters Still Hold The Keys To The 2020 Democratic Nomination

There has been a lot of talk about the next Presidential nominee on the Democratic side must appeal to the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. There hasn’t been a lot of talk about Black voters, especially in the southern states. Black voters in the Democratic primary gave 75% of their votes to Hillary Clinton, but almost nobody in the media is talking about why they are an important bloc for Democrats in 2020. Instead, it is more of the same — white working class and Sanders voter pundit talk.

The truth is that Black voters still hold the key to the Democratic nomination in 2020. Just look at the southern states. Clinton won Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama by 50% or more. Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina were also blowouts in Clinton’s favor. In Tennessee and Texas, Clinton won by 30%. Those are all states where the Democratic share of Black voters is particularly high.

But the Black voter phenomena isn’t confined to the south. In fact, the more diverse a state was, the lower the odds Sanders would win. A Washington Post piece by Philip Bump during the primary season actually plotted the trend — the higher the percentage of Black Democrats in the state, the bigger the margin of the Sanders loss:

This trend is a significant one, and one that has been largely ignored. It is also one that has continued into 2017. In the 2017 Virginia Gubernatorial primary, Sanders endorsed Tom Perriello, while the “Democratic Establishment” endorsed Ralph Northam (who won the nomination). Analysis from the Washington Monthly found that Northam outperformed his statewide average significantly in 8 out of 10 of the Blackest county groups in the state:

If Sanders and the candidates he endorses lose Black voters at these numbers, it is difficult to see how he has a path in 2020. Let’s take a hypothetical Sanders vs. Kamala Harris matchup. Say Harris wins Black voters at near Clinton numbers, and picks up the traditional establishment Democratic support. If Harris wins Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas on the strength of people of color, the race gets really tough for Sanders. Then add in Harris’s home court advantage in California, along with a neighboring state like Arizona (sort of how Sanders won Vermont and New Hampshire in 2016 based on geography). At that point, all Harris would need to do is win a New York or Pennsylvania for the nomination. The numbers would probably be insurmountable, similar to 2016.

The only way for team Sanders to counter this is to change the Democratic nomination rules. There have been whispers that the Democratic Unity Commission, established at the 2016 summer convention, is talking about making changes to the 2020 nomination process. To be more specific, there are rumors Bernie-backed members are trying to pressure the commission to put more emphasis on caucus states (lower turnout, less people of color, fewer elderly, less accessible to working people and the disabled) then on primaries. The majority of Sanders wins came in caucus states, where the turnout was lower and the electorate was whiter.

A good example is Washington state, where Sanders won the low turnout caucus but Clinton won the higher turnout primary. The Washington state Democratic Party only honored the results of the caucus. The Sanders faction could be pushing the DNC to have more Democratic state parties hold caucuses, and honor their results over the state run primaries. This would be a move to stack the deck in Bernie’s favor, by making it harder for people of color, the elderly, and working class people to vote in the Democratic primary.

Caucuses take hours, and voters can be shouted down, intimidated, and pressured to change their vote by large crowds. It simply isn’t an inclusive, democratic voting process. I don’t believe that the DNC is going to end up changing the nomination rules for 2020 in a significant manner. There are enough Democrats on the commission, in the DNC, and loyalists who are vocal on social media that will fight against rule changes meant to favor Bernie Sanders. But it is important to know that these rumors are out there. I believe that the only way Sanders could win the 2020 Democratic primary would be to change the rules to a caucus based system that made it harder for people of color to vote. Otherwise, Black voters are likely going to decide the Democratic nomination. Again.

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