[dirtboy]

The lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama’s margin of victory there was 103,000.

From 2011 census figured, I estimate there are 1.1 million blacks of voting age in Ohio - and the Obama campaign was able to drive roughly ten percent of the total black voters to the polls that did not vote in 2008. So we are supposed to believe that there were so many black voters that stayed home in 2008 when previously given the chance to vote for a black president?

This reeks of voter fraud.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[GlockThe Vote]

Or they all got obamaphones and were sent text messages or reminded to vote by said obamaphone?

[Poincare]

Sadly we will probably never know the magnitude of Black disaffection with Bathhouse Barry and his support of gay marriage etc. The Dem party operatives voted in place of the Black population.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Yes. You can find the percent of each voting age population that voted in 2008, and clearly see that there are tens of millions of prospective voters that don't vote, just waiting to be given some reason to show up at the polls.

Under 70% of the eligible voters are registered. Of that amount about 80% voted in 2008.

So, in 2008, of the eligible population of voters, there were 80 million that didn't vote. That amount is spread fairly evenly across all population groups.

In 2008, Ohio had a voting age population of 8.5 million, of which 5.7 million voted. So almost 3 million voting age Ohioans didn't vote. U.S. Voter Participation 1990-2010

(NOTE: Oddly, in this link they keep saying that 145 million divided by 217 million is 79%, but it's 68%)

2008 vote NEARLY erased racial gap explains how, in 2008, and increase in black turnout brought their voting average to about 65%, which was ALMOST up to the overall population. So even in 2008, blacks didn't vote at a higher rate than the general population, and about 35% of eligible black voters did not vote.

In 2008, blacks were 11% of the vote in Ohio, or about 616,000; 97% voted for Obama.

So, could blacks have increased from 616,000 to 800,000? That's a big move, but would reflect a registration increase of about 20%.

So, while I think it is possible, and certainly easy enough to get a lot more new voters to the polls, including new 18-year-olds, I do agree that 178,000 new black voters in Ohio seems like a stretch.

I'd be curious where that specific number comes from.

I will say that comparing CNN 2008 and 2012 numbers, they suggest that black turnout in Ohio increased from 11% of the total to 15% of the total. 11% of the 2008 total was 616,000. 14% of the 2012 total would be 740,000, so the difference would be 124,000, not 178,000. Of course, that is based on a lower total turnout in Ohio in 2012 from 2008, and the numbers are still increasing for the state as they count more of the votes.

The big thing though to note is that this statement you made : So we are supposed to believe that there were so many black voters that stayed home in 2008 when previously given the chance to vote for a black president?

The answer is yes, the 2008 numbers show that even with the historic black candidate, blacks only managed to get their turnout up to the average for the entire population.

And in the past 4 years, Obama was able to increase that turnout even more, as he used every power available to the President to target that demographic and others.

[palmer]

the Obama campaign was able to drive roughly ten percent of the total black voters to the polls that did not vote in 2008

Consider that the black birth rate for teen mothers was about 10% in 1990.

[PghBaldy]

Yeah this seems HIGHLY unlikely that more blacks voted for him in 2012. I don’t trust the (open borders loving) WSJ, BTW.