A key factor that contributed to the Democratic Party’s loss in the presidential election was its failure to engage minority voters. And trends indicate that this will only become more important for the fate of politics in future elections.
A Pew Research Center study revealed last week that 2016 was the first year the Black voter turnout declined for a presidential election from 2012’s record-high of 66.6 percent to a low 59.6 percent. This is also the largest decrease in voter turnout by ethnicity for any racial group since white voter turnout went down by about 10 percentage points from 1992 to 1996. According to Pew, the number of Black voters went down by an estimated 765,000.
In total, Blacks consisted of 11.9 percent of 2016’s voters, compared to 12.9 percent in 2012 “the first time since 2004 that blacks have declined as a share of voters,” Pew reveals.
