Vote totals show GOP faces major hurdle to woo black voters: The ‘Selma effect’

Leftist pundits have spent the weeks since November’s election claiming that “whiteness” and racial grievance explain why Donald Trump is headed back to the White House — a hard sell when the president-elect assembled the most multi-racial coalition in Republican history, but it doesn’t stop committed partisans from trying.

Trump’s victory does offer valuable lessons about the role race played in the election.

But neither party is asking the central question: Why is there such a disconnect between the ideological beliefs of black voters and their behavior on Election Day? 

Across the electorate, nine in 10 self-identified liberals voted for Kamala Harris, exit polls found, while the same share of conservatives voted for Trump. Moderates were split, with roughly 60% voting Democratic and 40% voting Republican.

Nearly 80% of African American voters identify as either conservative or moderate, and if the connection between ideology and voting was the same for them as for other groups, Trump should have won roughly 40% of the black vote — but he came nowhere close.

He did just as well (13%) among black voters as in 2020, but lost black conservative voters to Kamala Harris by an 11-point margin, a glaring political anomaly. 

The Democratic Party’s success at positioning itself as the guardian of American civil rights — and the bulwark against a return to a time when African Americans lacked them — is a prime reason why black voters are such a political outlier.

Call it the “Selma effect.”

The result has been the fusion of racial identity and political affiliation in a way that makes voting Democratic not just the “right” choice in the minds of progressive pundits, but also the black choice for millions of Americans. 

For older African Americans in the Silent and Baby Boomer generations, the Selma effect is an ever-present and powerful reminder of what their lives were like in decades past, when racial segregation was enforced through law and social custom.

Older black voters are the most religious and socially conservative of all, yet they are even more likely to identify as Democrats than their younger counterparts.

The older black Christians who enthusiastically supported Harris might be surprised to know how many of their fellow Democrats see them as bigots for expressing traditional views on sexual orientation, gender identity, marriage and family. 

While black Millennials and Gen Z voters never experienced segregation firsthand, the Selma effect impacted them, too.

They were bombarded with messages during the presidential race smearing Trump as a racist bent on rolling back civil rights and giving police who kill black men in cold blood immunity from prosecution.

Since Harris’ loss, some progressives have gone even further: The Root recently published an article claiming that black voters are worrying that a second Trump administration will lead to the return of slavery.

This is completely on-brand for the political left.

Democrats frequently link policies they don’t like — from abortion restrictions to school choice — to white supremacy. Recall how President Biden floated the idea that Jim Crow, or even “Jim Eagle,” was making a comeback to take black people back to the days of poll taxes and separate water fountains. 

The idea that voting Democratic is a sign of racial solidarity is rarely stated explicitly, but it is certainly enforced publicly among African Americans.

Barack Obama publicly chastised black men who weren’t supporting the Harris-Walz ticket, and the black men’s summit that aired on BET shortly before the election featured several celebrities who connected voting for the vice president — and supporting abortion — to “protecting” black women more generally.

This way of thinking casts black Trump supporters as not just politically unsophisticated, but as self-hating race traitors.

It means that public support for Republicans comes at a high social and cultural cost for black voters, a cost that has no parallel for other groups.

White conservatives and liberals don’t find their “whiteness” questioned based on how they vote. 

The Selma effect is not the sole explanation for black Americans’ voting patterns. Those who live in urban areas where Democrats control every level of government have few opportunities to vote for conservative candidates.

And Republicans must take responsibility for policies and rhetoric that fuel the perception that black voters aren’t welcome.

But when close to 90% of black voters, from BLM activists and radical feminists to small business owners and Baptist preachers, support the same party, the GOP must wake up to the fact that something far beyond politics is walling a significant number of Americans off from its outreach.

And that’s no surprise, when Democrats have convinced even the most conservative pastor that getting “souls to the polls” is the only thing keeping his congregation from another Bloody Sunday.

Delano Squires is a research fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation.