In Virginia, good signs for Democrats in maintaining black vote post-Obama

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One of the most interesting results from Tuesday night’s elections was this: Virginia’s Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, did about as well among African-American voters as Barack Obama did last year.

In 2012, about 20 percent of voters in Virginia were black, and Obama, according to exit polls, won about 93 percent of their votes. On Tuesday, according to exit polls, blacks were again 20 percent of the voters, and McAuliffe won 90 percent.

To be sure, the overall number of voters were much smaller in the governor’s than in the presidential race in 2012. But one of the reasons Democrats struggle to win elections in midterms or off-years is that black turnout tends to drop much more than white turnout. For example, blacks were 20 percent of the vote in Virginia in 2008, but dropped to only 16 percent of the Virginia electorate in 2009, when the party lost the Virginia governor’s race. McAuliffe, like Obama, not only won nine of every ten voters, but had a strong operation that ensured that about one in five of voters in the state was black.

That bodes well for Democrats in 2014 and ultimately 2016. The Obama era has NOT been unique in terms of blacks overwhelmingly supporting Obama.  The president, like most other Democrats of the last three decades, has won about 9 of every 10 votes of African-Americans. But blacks have turned out in higher numbers than ever for him. Eleven percent of the electorate was black when John Kerry ran in 2004. Inching that number up to 13 percent, as Obama has done, effectively wins him two more percentage points in the popular vote.

If white Democrats like McAuliffe can replicate Obama’s turnout, that bodes well for the party in the future.

At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge what happened in New Jersey. Support for Democrats among blacks is not automatic. Chris Christie, a fairly conservative Republican, won 20 percent of the black vote. If a Republican were able to do that in a general election, he would easily win.