News
November 2012
It’s easy to understand why some Republicans and pollsters dismissed the idea that the Obama coalition from 2008 would be fired up and ready to go in 2012. Not possible. Not with the unemployment rate at 14.3 percent among blacks, 10 percent among Hispanics, and 11.8 percent among adults under 30.
Yet, fired up or just trudging to the polls, those groups were among President Obama’...
November 2012
When Timothy M. Kaine took his message of bipartisanship to the crowd gathered at the Virginia NAACP’s annual convention, the crowd nodded in agreement as the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate criticized an obstructionist Congress working against the country’s first black president.
“Watching people decide they would like to proclaim [that] their success would be making...
October 2012
On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, the economy, unemployment, Big Bird, binders full of women and bayonets will take a backseat to the only poll that maters in electing a president and vice president – ballots cast in the polling booth.
Either way, history will be made on Election Day. Barack Obama will become the first Black president elected to a second term (as well as the first) or...
October 2012
When then-candidate Barack Obama won North Carolina by 14,000 votes in 2008, a lot of the credit went to the eye-popping 76 percent turnout rate among African-American voters.
Virginia, too, saw its large share of black voters help put Mr. Obama over the top in a state that hadn’t supported a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson. The results revived Democrats’ hopes for a...
September 2012
On a hip-hop radio station in northeast Ohio, a swing state where turnout among black voters may decide the presidential election, listeners are being exhorted to vote this year — not just for a candidate, but to send a message.
“There are forces at work that don’t want you to vote,” intones an ad produced by the station that mentions no parties or candidates, “...
September 2012
While advocates of voter identification laws say the goal is to prevent fraud at the polls, Rep. Elijah Cummings insists that what is really at work is voter suppression during a campaign that promises to be a tighter than ever race for the presidency.
“As many as one in four African-American voters, more than one in six Hispanic voters, and about one in ten eligible voters overall do...
September 2012
Deidra Reese isn't waiting for people to come to her to find out whether they are registered to vote.
With iPad in hand, Reese is going to community centers, homes and churches in nine Ohio cities, looking up registrations to make sure voters have proper ID and everything else they need to cast ballots on Election Day.
"We are not going to give back one single inch. We have fought...
September 2012
Fresh from a controversial NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll which stated that Mitt Romney will receive 0% of the Black vote, the Joint Center for Political and Economic studies followed up with its own poll of the Republican National Convention Attendees.
The report discovered that there were 47 African Americans who were part of convention delegates at the 2012 Republican National...
Press Release
September 2012
The voting booth is the one place where we all are presumed equal, yet the reality this year is that the playing field is far from level. This core American value is threatened this year by some politicians who have manipulated laws for their own gain by passing restrictions that could make it harder for millions of Americans to vote. Numerous independent, non-partisan studies...
September 2012
The Joint Center for Political and Economic studies today released its quadrennial report, Blacks and the 2012 Democratic National Convention, which tracks both African American participation at the event and, more broadly, the relationship between African Americans and the Democratic Party.
The Convention Guide provides a comprehensive look at African Americans, their voting patterns and...