Why Democrats need to get out the African-American vote

Liberal commentators - on what Mr Trump would call the “Fake News” outlets of CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times - wonder how their nation can function when one of its two polarised camps asserts that the entire political game is rigged.

But Stacey Abrams has a different take. She is the Democrat candidate to be governor of Georgia in next month’s crucial midterm elections.

And she thinks what she sees as the actual suppression of the African-American voters is every bit as important as a make-believe conspiracy against an old white guy populist president.

Ms Abrams fought and lost the 2018 gubernatorial election in her state. But she did not concede quietly. She set up a campaign group which challenged her Republican-run state’s voting rules. These included, for example, a measure which insisted that names on voter registration documents were an “exact match” to those on other IDs, like driving licences. Campaigners believe this provision alone disenfranchised more than 50,000 people, mostly from Democrat-voting communities.

Three weeks ago - after a lengthy litigation - a federal judge ruled that Georgia’s controversial election rules, while “not perfect”, did not violate either the US Constitution or voting laws.

Republicans - in a classic of political whataboutery - accused Ms Abrams of pushing a “Big Lie” about the 2018 elections.

Brian Kemp, her opponent in both 2018 and 2022, doubled down. “From day one, Abrams has used this lawsuit to line her pockets, sow distrust in our democratic institutions, and build her own celebrity,” he said after the case was thrown out. Georgian Republicans last year passed an election integrity law which President Joe Biden called “Jim Crow 2.0” in a reference to 19th century laws that suppressed African American votes and ensured segregation in the Southern states after the abolition of slavery.

Mr Kemp and others bristled at this. Turnout in Georgia, they stress, is up, including among Democratic-leaning ethnic minorities. Early voting in this year’s midterms is at a record high.

Back in 2020 Mr Trump lost the presidency at least partly thanks to a narrow half-a-per-cent win for the Mr Biden in Georgia, on the back of a high turn-out from African Americans.

Ms Abrams, who is African-American, was widely credited with getting out the black vote in 2020. She is not keen to let Mr Kemp and the Republicans off the hook just because large numbers of ethnic minority Georgians are going to the polls.

“Voter suppression is not about turnout,” she said. “It’s about the barriers and obstacles to access. “Voter suppression is when there’s difficulty registering things on the road, being able to cast a ballot and having that ballot counted.”

Georgia - and who gets their vote out there - really matters. These midterms - in this state, and around America - could hinge on how many African Americans, especially women, cast their ballots.

Crucially, there is a rising number of black women candidates, such as Ms Abrams, running for office.

Come November 8, all of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 out of 100 in the Senate, including one that his too close to call in Georgia, will be up for grabs. So too will 39 governorships and many other state and local positions.

It is a key test for Mr Biden, whose party controls the House and, thanks to the casting vote of his ‘veep”, Kamala Harris, the Senate too.

Ms Harris, of course, is the first female of colour to hold her position, to be within a heartbeat of the presidency.

She, like Mr Biden and Mr Trump, is in negative poll ratings. But America’s two big parties are neck and neck among the wider population.

Recent national surveys for Congress put the Democrats and the Republicans in a statistical tie, within a point of each other.

But big picture polls do not take account of a structural bias in the system for the Republicans. In the Senate, each state gets two seats each.

That means giant Democratic “blue” California and New York get the same tally as each of the the rows of much smaller Republican red states in the mid-west and west.

But the House too - where seats are distributed according to population - gives an inbuilt advantage to the Republicans. How come? In most states partisan politicians are allowed to draw boundaries for electoral districts. And such ‘re-districting” - or, let’s be frank, gerrymandering - since America’s 2020 census has created more safe red seats.

Take Georgia. Here Mr Kemp’s Republicans have broken up a district in the suburbs of Atlanta so that it no longer has a big block of Democratic-voting African Americans.

There are 14 House districts in the state. In 2020 six of them were blue. In 2022 - bar, say experts, a miracle - there will be five.

Similar processes have been underway across the US meaning very few seats are actually ‘in play” - or, as we would say in the UK, are marginals - and that Republicans have a clear advantage. Democrats can win. But only if the win big. And the polls are not, as yet, suggesting that will happen.

This is why turnout - especially among communities who lean to the Democrats - is such a big deal.

Andra Gillespie is a professor at Atlanta’s Emory University and specialises in African-American politics. In a non-partisan briefing for journalists organised by the US State Department’s Foreign Press Centers, she stressed the hill Democrats had to climb.

After re-districting, models from polling analysts like 270-to-win show that Republicans are favourites to overturn the Democrats’ current five-eat majority. Why?Because they have a structural advantage in 218 of the 435 districts.

Despite Georgia looking set to lose a ‘blue” House seat, Dr Gillespie stressed the state was increasingly competitive for the Democrats. It is also, she argued, a key case study on the importance of black and ethnic minority turnout.

The state swung to Mr Biden in 2020 - the first time it had backed a Democratic presidential nominee since local peanut farmer Jimmy Carter was on the ballot 40 years earlier.

“People sometimes ask is it a surprise that Biden was able to beat Trump in 2020, and the short answer is no," Dr Gillespie said. “It wasn’t clear that it was going to happen in 2020 or whether it could happen in 2024 or in a future race sometime within the next decade or so, but Georgia races have become tightened over time.

“This is because Georgia is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. There hasn’t been a whole lot of change in terms of the number of African American voters in the state.

“Blacks make up about 29 or 30 per cent of registered voters. Where we have seen a change is actually in the increase in the number of Asian American and Hispanic voters. And so they made up about three per cent of voters 2012. That number is actually closer to 8 or 9 per cent today. “The vast majority of [African Americans] – 90 per cent of them – vote Democratic and we have Asian-American and Hispanic voters who are voting at rates more in the neighbourhood of 60 to 70 per cent Democratic. And when we realise that not all white voters are Republicans, that actually does put Democrats within target distance of being able to win close elections.

“Everybody is going to have to work, and Democrats under the right conditions can actually be able to pull off an electoral victory.”

Georgia delivered for the Democrats in 2020 - both for Mr Biden and for two Senate seats. How? Dems got their vote out when Republicans did not.

And Dr Gillespie stressed - even in this age of presidential tweets and national TV ad campaigns - what really gets people to the polls is a knock on the door.

She said: “At the end of the day, when we’re looking at something that approaches parity, what wins races is voter turnout. And so it is really important, particularly at this stage in an election cycle, for candidates, for parties, for nonpartisan interest groups, to go out and reach voters. They need to be knocking on doors. That’s actually the best way to increase a person’s likelihood of turning out to vote. If you can’t reach them on the doors, then you call them in person, on their phone. If you can’t reach them on the phones, then you send them a text message. “All of these things have been demonstrated empirically to increase voter turnout, and if they don’t happen, then you may be able to expect lower turnout. And it’s actually really important. Historically, minority groups, blacks, Asian-Americans, Hispanic voters, have been less likely to report being contacted by any type of campaign or group to turnout in an elections. So, in part for that reason, it is not surprising that we’ve seen lower voter turnout amongst these groups, particularly Asian-American and Hispanic voters.”

Ms Abrams, the force behind get-out-the-vote campaigns in Georgia, trails Mr Kemp in the polls while a parallel Senate race is too close to call.

Right now the Democrat Congress is investigating one of the consequences of the Trump’s rigged election rhetoric: the January 6, 2020, assault on the Capitol by his supporters. For Dr Gillespie this piece of work is practically on the ballot. Because Republicans - if they win - will likely end the probe in to the violence provoked by the Big Lie.