1972 black vote

[Alben Barkley]

An election survey from 1972 reported George McGovern received 87% of the black vote:

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/12/archives/survey-reports-mcgovern-got-87-of-the-black-vote.html

If that were true, he would have been roughly on par with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, etc. with the black vote. Of all elections since the Voting Rights Act was passed, he only would have done significantly worse with the black vote than Barack Obama, and significantly better than Jimmy Carter.

Yet despite this, Nixon won several black-heavy counties in 1972, both rural and urban, that have not been won by a Republican since. And even in some he lost, he came closer to winning than any Republican since.

How can this be?

Was the exit poll simply wrong? Were there still lingering remnants of Jim Crow suppressing turnout in the black belt? But even if that explains his underperformance in the black belt, how does it explain that McGovern also did so poorly for a Democrat even in Northern urban counties? Was the white vote just so overwhelmingly for Nixon that even in places where whites were a minority, it canceled out the black vote for McGovern? But if that was the case, why was it not also in, say, 1984?

Ultimately the only way it seems to add up is if the exit poll was wrong, and Nixon in fact did significantly better with the black vote, perhaps the best for a Republican since himself in 1960 at least. I also don’t really buy that Ford did considerably better four years later because Jimmy Carter was a white Southerner or something. In part because Carter did much better in many of those same black-heavy places McGovern did poorly in.

[Calthrina950]

According to this table, also from the New York Times, Nixon garnered 18% of the black vote in 1972. McGovern was considered to be a radical even by many black voters, especially in certain rural areas of the South. Black turnout, moreover, was not that impressive in 1972, and one has to remember that registration rates throughout much of the Deep South were still relatively low, given that less than a decade had passed since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. I also think there was some residual Republicanism among older black voters, although Nixon obviously did far worse among them than in 1960, when he got 32% of the black vote against Kennedy.

[TheReckoning]

      One thing that’s important to remember is that at this time, the Southern black vote was less heavily Democratic than the Northern black vote. This was because black voters in the North at this point had been voting for Democrats since the New Deal, while Southern black voters had only started to vote Democrat since ‘64. This means that voting Democratic was already more established in the North by ‘72 than in the South, meaning that they got higher margins there.

     But I agree that I don’t see how Nixon could’ve gotten only 13% of the black vote whilst winning counties that were 70%+ black.

[Idaho Conservative]

One would have to took at the precinct data to tell if these majority black counties flipping had to do with blacks voting Republican, lower black turnout, or most likely, both.

[Alcibiades]

I asked this same question a while ago. Maybe you’ll find some useful answers in this thread:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=389522.msg7522259#msg7522259

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

An election survey from 1972 reported George McGovern received 87% of the black vote:

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/12/archives/survey-reports-mcgovern-got-87-of-the-black-vote.html

If that were true, he would have been roughly on par with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, etc. with the black vote. Of all elections since the Voting Rights Act was passed, he only would have done significantly worse with the black vote than Barack Obama, and significantly better than Jimmy Carter.

Yet despite this, Nixon won several black-heavy counties in 1972, both rural and urban, that have not been won by a Republican since. And even in some he lost, he came closer to winning than any Republican since.

How can this be?

Was the exit poll simply wrong? Were there still lingering remnants of Jim Crow suppressing turnout in the black belt? But even if that explains his underperformance in the black belt, how does it explain that McGovern also did so poorly for a Democrat even in Northern urban counties? Was the white vote just so overwhelmingly for Nixon that even in places where whites were a minority, it canceled out the black vote for McGovern? But if that was the case, why was it not also in, say, 1984?

Ultimately the only way it seems to add up is if the exit poll was wrong, and Nixon in fact did significantly better with the black vote, perhaps the best for a Republican since himself in 1960 at least. I also don’t really buy that Ford did considerably better four years later because Jimmy Carter was a white Southerner or something. In part because Carter did much better in many of those same black-heavy places McGovern did poorly in.

It wasn't even 10 years since the VRA was passed, it took decades for mass voter registration drives  to boost black turnout.