This is interesting:
A new Public Policy Polling poll finds that African-American voters in Missouri have shifted drastically on the question of same-sex marriage since they were last polled in January. They now support marriage equality 50-31, whereas before opposition was much stronger at 25-44, a 38 point shift. Missouri follows polls in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and nationally that all show African-American voters embracing marriage equality in the wake of President Obama’s endorsement.
I remember when Obama was running against Hillary Clinton that he wasn’t initially winning anything like monolithic support from the black community. A lot of the polling focused on South Carolina because it was an early-voting state, and the first one with a heavily black Democratic electorate. I’m going from memory here, but I recall that his support among South Carolina blacks skyrocketed after he won in Iowa. The way this was explained was that black folks didn’t think white people would vote for him until they saw them do just that in Iowa.
It now appears that Obama has won some rather fierce loyalty. For him to be able to move public opinion in the black community so significantly on a moral question like gay marriage is very impressive. My guess is that he did change a lot of minds. But I think there’s a large segment of the black community who aren’t going to answer a poll question in a way that they feel will be unhelpful to the president. In other words, they didn’t change their mind about gay marriage; they suddenly started viewing the issue as a political question rather than a moral one.
One thing I think is going underreported is how black folks are experiencing the attacks on the president. Whether it’s the refusal to work with him or the mean-spirited crap about his birth certificate, it can’t be very pleasant for most black people to watch. And then there are the efforts to disenfranchise people of color and the endless nonsense about the New Black Panthers or Trayvon Martin or ACORN or whatever is the FOX-driven racism of the moment.
My guess is that a bit of a siege-mentality is taking root. A lot of people think that black turnout will be down from 2008, but I’m not so sure that it will be down as much as people are anticipating. I get the sense that black folks see a lot at stake. Obama cannot fail. Not like this.
