Presidential elections are rare events, and Republicans tend to do better with the black vote when not running against a charismatic Black opponent or kicking off their campaign by giving a speech on states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
I was just rewatching NBC News' Election Night Coverage from 1980, and it was mentioned by one of the anchors (Tom Brokaw) that "just about the only group" that Carter was doing well with that night were black voters. Carter won blacks 83-14-3% in 1980, performing better among them then he had in 1976, when he carried them 82-16% over Gerald Ford. Carter's improvement among black voters was probably a factor in keeping his losing margins so close throughout much of the South-especially in states like Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina-that year. And in 1984, Walter Mondale improved even further among black voters, winning them over Reagan 91-9%.
And yet they got blown out, while Gore and Hillary both won the popular vote with less.
Tells a lot about demographic shifts huh?
This is correct. According to exit polls, Reagan won the white vote 56-36-8% against Carter and Anderson in 1980, and 66-34% against Mondale in 1984. In other words, in the 1980 election, he got about the same percentage of the white vote as Trump did against Clinton in 2016, and by almost the exact same margin (Trump won whites 56-37% over Clinton). Yet, while doing only slightly better than Trump among black and Hispanic voters, Reagan won by nearly 10% and carried 44 states, while Trump lost by 2% and barely eked out an Electoral College majority. The demographic changes-especially in Reagan's home state of California, which he won by 17% in both 1980 and 1984, have been massive.
Nevertheless, the black vote was already critical for Democrats by that point-without it, Carter would have lost Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina in 1976, and probably would have lost Alabama and North Carolina as well-to say nothing of Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri. And that would have cost him the election. And in 1980, Reagan would have won all of the Southern States he carried by more without the black vote.
