African American Voters are moving independent

[Nambe]

New York (Barutiwa News Service)

In November, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the country's pre-eminent African-American think tank and policy center, released the results of it's 2002 opinion survey.

-- In 2002, 63% of Blacks identify as Democrats, down from 74% in 2000. The number of independents has risen from 20% to 24%. Among 18-25 year olds, 34% now identify as independent.

Ride Don’t Drive It’s Global Cool

[undergroundrailroad]

1. Nambe, thanks for posting.

These numbers are staggering and I am not surprised.

Thanks again,


Undergroundrailroad

[Dan]

2. Not a bad thing...

If the Democratic party continues to promote GOP-lites as their representatives..

But ultimately, it comes down to choosing between the worse of two evils.... I suspect that the Democractic party has few worrries.

What scares me is if the Karl Rove machine is successful in destroying the Democratic party as a functional political entity - then what choice do traditional Democrats have for presentation.
We effectively become a group of like-minded people without representation in George Bush's new America. What do we do?

[newyawker99]

7. Hi Dan!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Robbien]

3. Note that this was taken in 2002

Since then some obvious changes have been happening in the democratic party. Remember six months ago many around here were disgusted that the democratic party lost its cahones.

[Upfront]

4. Not to offend

but thanks to Howard, Dennis, Levin, and Byrd. We have our balls back! Ya!!!!!!:toast:

[are_we_united_yet]

5. I hope I can meet the five sentence min.

I don't dislike Lieberman the man but his politics and those of a similar mindedness are what drive me away from Democratic candidates.

I can't tell if he actually thinks the war in Iraq was a good thing or he's strategically capturing votes.

In any event it doesn't surprise me as it is becoming difficult to ally with Democrats other than Kennedy, Levin, Byrd etc.

[AP]

6. More accurately, indentification is independant, but voting Democrat

more solidly than ever. This matches a trend in the broader public, which that book, the Emerging Democratic Majority set out. The public is swinging Democratic (which is why Republicans have to take such extreme measures to 'win' elections these days). I think it's pretty obvious why party identification is on the wane, regardless of voting parties. It has been a long time since FDR and JFK made people love the Democratic Party, and people don't live in cities where the party machines actually touched everyone's day to day life. Times have changed.