What's up with all those black men who voted for the Republican in the Georgia governor's race? [View all]

[DonViejo]

By Vanessa Williams
November 23 at 6:00 AM

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Black men voted for Kemp at a higher rate than black women, according to exit polling, a data point that drew gasps and rebuke on social media and news commentary.

According to CNN’s exit polling, 11 percent of black men voted for Kemp; the Associated Press’s Vote Cast reported 8 percent.

Those numbers are reminiscent of the double-digit level of support that Donald Trump got among black men in the 2016 presidential election. Trump endorsed Kemp, which helped him win a runoff primary contest in July, and he traveled to Georgia to stump for Kemp two days before the Nov. 6 election.

Kemp’s campaign mirrored Trump’s political themes and rhetoric. During the primary, Kemp promised to protect the Second Amendment by running a campaign ad in which he brandished a shotgun at a teenage boy who wanted to date his daughter. Another ad showed him sitting in a pickup truck that he said he’d use to personally "round up criminal illegals.” He described Abrams, who campaigned on expanding Medicaid, increasing spending on education and protecting the rights of women, immigrants and people of color, as “radical” and “extreme.”

“How can so many black men still align with a party that, now more than ever, is unified by white identity politics?” Renée Graham asked in a Boston Globe column after the election. “This Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln. This is unabashedly the party of white supremacy, migrant family separations, racist fearmongering, and Brett Kavanaugh.”

Ted Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said black male voters’ behavior in Georgia’s gubernatorial race reflected a return to how they voted before 2008, when Barack Obama made his successful bid to become the first black president of the United States.

Before that election, around 82 percent of black men voted for Democrats, about 10 points lower than black women. “Now that Obama is out, basically black men have gone back to where they were before” in terms of supporting Democrats, Johnson said. “The fact that Abrams got in the high 80s or low 90s means she outperformed Democratic candidates, pre-Obama, among black men.”

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Vanessa Williams is a reporter on the National desk.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/23/whats-up-with-all-those-black-men-who-voted-republican-georgia-governors-race/