ipl-logo

African-American Voting Behavior

1911 Words8 Pages

Voting Behavior: America’s Diverse Demographics
Ashley Colagiacomi
Palm Beach State College

Abstract
The most interesting question about elections is not who won the election, but why they were elected. One has to consider the source of the person voting, and what has made them who they are, which leads to their political values. One also has to analyze how voting patterns change over time, and due to what cultural reasons. The United States Census, and many other organizations keep track of demographic information of voters. This helps political scientists come up with predictions for where American politics is moving. By understanding voter behavior, political scientists try to conclude key-factors in finding why people vote …show more content…

African-American voting rates were severely low due to extreme discrimination until the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept blacks from voting. Eventually civil rights protests and litigation abolished many of the barriers blacks faced when trying to vote. Today, African-American citizens vote as often, if not more than white people who share similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and are the most involved minority in the American political process. Blacks indicated one of the highest levels of voter registration and participation in elections with a sixty-five percent turnout, compared with sixty-six percent of white voters …show more content…

A great example of this are the christian right,who believe in many of the republican conservative ideas, voting seventy-seven percent republican. The christian right was formed around the white evangelical protestants conservative viewpoints. Voters who a part of the christian right or white evangelicals believe that prayer should still be incorporated in schools, they are against the legalization of homosexual marriage, and against contraception and abortion. About fifteen percent of the electorate supports the christian right. The christian right has one of the highest voter turnout rates of all religions because they strongly believe in their viewpoints. Republicans are the party of white evangelical christians. Meanwhile, democrats are comprised of a mix of religious minorities and the religiously unaffiliated, voting seventy percent democratic. The widening divide over religious and moral values continues to separate the republican and democratic parties. During the 2012 election, sixty-nine percent of people who attended church weekly voted republican, compared to only forty-one percent who do not attend church. Although blacks and hispanics who attend church weekly still tend to vote more democratic. Public Religion Research Institute reports that eighty-eight percent of black protestants and sixty-five percent hispanic catholics support democratic candidates

Show More
Related
1671 Words | 7 Pages

Chapter 4: The Statistics Behind Stealth Campaigns The battle between Christian Right politicians and anti-Christian Right politicians has been a long one, most distinguishably beginning in the 1920s with the clash between evolutionists and anti-evolutionists (pp. 3). While this issue is still in debate, modern day attention is being drawn to “stealth campaigns” – that is, as paraphrased from page 83 of School Board Battles, Christian Right political candidates’ downplay of their connections to Christian coalitions and exaggeration of their moderate viewpoints to the public, all while organizing voters in conservative churches. The subject is controversial and one of the main topics discussed in Melissa Deckman’s book, School Board Battles.

Read More
1382 Words | 6 Pages

For instance, Flentje and Aistrup form the idea of the Republican Party being split into two camps, the moderate Republicans who they deem as having some characteristics of egalitarianism, hierarchy, and individualism; and the Polar Alliance Republicans who an extreme preference for hierarchy and individualism but almost no sense of egalitarianism. This, of course is based almost entirely on personal observation as it would be difficult to use quantitative statistics to draw this

Read More
513 Words | 3 Pages

1. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the chairmen of SCLC since he was one of the founders. He was also the face of the Civil Rights Movement and SNCC did not appreciate the way which SCLC used MLK’s image as a base for their income. They also had different approaches to the way which they wanted to tackle the issues. Most of the members of SNCC were students which gave them a different perspective than the members of SCLC.

Read More
797 Words | 4 Pages

Before the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment they were not recognized as US citizens, therefore they were not allowed to vote or serve in Senate or in Congress. After the Amendments were ratified, they gained the right to vote. To protect their right, the government made a law that if the South denied blacks the right to vote, they would be punished. In the government, African-Americans started to run for political positions. Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first ever African-American to serve in the US Senate when he was elected to the US Senate to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era.

Read More
504 Words | 3 Pages

Peaceful resistance to laws positively affect a free society. Throughout history, there have been multiple cases of both violent and peaceful protests. However, the peaceful protests are the ones that tend to stick with a society and are the ones that change the society for the better. In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter about just and unjust laws while he was in Birmingham jail for peacefully protesting. King came to Birmingham because "injustice is here".

Read More
381 Words | 2 Pages

Party strength is a measure of the ability of a party to get people to vote for its candidates. The post-World War II shift in party strength was part of a massive shift in policy over time. Scholars saw Republican politicians increasingly excel at getting elected at the local level (Lublin 2006), to offices in the state (Hayes and McKee 2007), and federal governments (Black and Black 2002, 1992; Shafer and Johnston 2006). It is difficult to see how the Republican Party would have become the majority in Congress in 1994 without the increased voting strength in the South. This marked a dramatic shift in national policy.

Read More
69 Words | 1 Pages

On august, 6, 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed a law that made it easier for African Americans to vote in the US elections. Up until that time, some community’s attempted to discriminate against black people and members of other minority group. They required voters to take written tests or pay special taxes four the write to vote The Voting Rights Act of 1965 put an end to voter discrimination.

Read More
730 Words | 3 Pages

The majority of the African Americans also agree with the conservative point of view on immigration, illegal, school choice, and supporting the emerging business (Bouie, 4). As such, they tend to vote for them on major

Read More
56 Words | 1 Pages

Republicans and Democrats both have strong opinions on certain issues like abortion, immigration and the death penalty. Sometimes they agree on some of those issues and other times their opinions could not be any more different. For example, the death penalty is strongly supported by the Republicans but most Democrats feel that it should be illegal.

Read More
136 Words | 1 Pages

The model that I found the most compelling in the Big 3 was the Michigan Model. I don’t think you will ever come across a voter who admits or believes that they do not base their voting decisions on politics on democracy. However, this model proves that when an American votes, their decision does not come from a strong understanding of politics or democracy. I found the results from The American Voter very interesting because it showed that during the 1960s, where politics was very exciting, a significant number of people remained ignorant and uneducated about politics. Taking this model into account, I would say that the process behind people’s vote choice is not sophisticated.

Read More
1821 Words | 8 Pages

Even though the government adopted the Voting Rights Act in 1965, African Americans’ suffrages were still restricted because of southern states’ obstructions. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was important for blacks to participate in political elections, but before this act was passed, there were several events led to its proposal. The government gave African Americans’ the right to vote by passing the 15th Amendment, but in the Southern States, blacks’ suffrages were limited by grandfather clauses, “poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions” (ourdocuments.gov). As times went on, most African Americans couldn’t register their votes.

Read More
940 Words | 4 Pages

The United States currently faces a severe problem with one of their governmental processes. In the democratic system of the United States, politicians are elected by voting from the citizens, in most cases. The problem the United States is facing is that people are no longer voting in elections for officials. This problem is discussed in the article, “In praise of low voter turnout”, written by Charles Krauthammer. The main idea behind this article is that voters are no longer interested in politics, as they were in previous generations.

Read More
764 Words | 4 Pages

Lastly, they strongly believe that the government should provide taxpayer funded abortions for women who cannot afford them ("Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs"). On the other hand, Republican views on abortion are opposite of the Democratic view. They believe that the human life begins at conception; disagreeing with the Democratic belief that a fetus is not a human life. Republicans biggest belief is that abortion is murder ("Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs"). Everybody hears about their party not agreeing with some of the views their party believes in, but not many people have heard about an elected official not agreeing and

Read More
1151 Words | 5 Pages

America is regarded highly in the world, due to its economic, political, as well as social development. As countries mature politically, voter turnout is expected to increase. This is the case for most industrialized nations who experience an average voter turnout above 70%. However, it is troubling to see that America still lags below 60% in voter turnout. Viewed as one of the healthiest democracies in the world, the United States is always referred to as an example that other countries should follow.

Read More
2506 Words | 11 Pages

Finally, it will be argued that the modern political party system in the United States is a two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. These two parties have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and have controlled the United States Congress since 1856. The Democratic Party generally positions itself as centre-left in American politics and supports a modern American liberal platform, while the Republican Party generally positions itself as centre-right and supports a modern American conservative platform. (Nichols, 1967)

Read More

More about African-American Voting Behavior

Related Topics

Open Document