Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Why Black Voters Keep Picking Democrats

It isn’t because African-Americans are liberal.

February 23, 2020 at 1:00 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Democrats are wrong to take the “black wall” for granted.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images

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Although opinion polls currently put President Donald Trump’s approval among black voters at between 20 and 30%, most experts doubt that anything like that proportion of the black vote will go to Trump on Election Day. Yes, strange things happen in politics — remember the “blue wall”? — but the “black wall” of overwhelming support of black voters for Democratic candidates seems impermeable.

Everyone knows the wall exists. Everyone takes it for granted. Yet on issues from school vouchers to abortion, significant numbers of black voters are closer to the Republican than the Democratic point of view. Yet they still vote Democratic. Why?