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Blacks in 2012 voted at higher rate than whites for the first time
5.8.13 David Lauter Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-black-voting-rate-2012-election-20130508,0,519527.story

November’s election marked the first time in U.S. history that black voters turned out at a higher rate than whites, according to new census data showing how much the country’s burgeoning population of racial and ethnic minorities has reshaped the electorate.

Some of the increase in black voting stems from enthusiasm for President Obama and his campaign’s mobilization efforts, but much of the gain reflects a trend of ever-greater participation among blacks.

Many were denied the right to vote until the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and have been the target of intensive voter registration and turnout efforts ever since.
Turnout has gone from 53% of voting-age blacks in 1996, the earliest year for which the Census Bureau has comparable data, to 66.2% in the most recent election. In all, almost 18 million blacks voted last fall, the agency estimates, up about 1.7 million from 2008.

White voter turnout, by contrast, rose from 1996 to a peak in 2004, when President George W. Bush won reelection, and has declined through Obama’s elections, to 64.1% in November.

Not only has white turnout gone down; the white share of the U.S. population also has declined. The lower population share combined with a lower turnout led the number of white voters to drop by 2 million between 2008 and 2012. It’s the only time since 1996 that the census has recorded a drop in the total votes cast by a racial group from one election to the next.

Black turnout rates exceeded that of whites mostly in the East and Midwest, perhaps reflecting high levels of voter mobilization in major battleground states. The gap was largest in the mid-Atlantic states, where a high black turnout was key to Obama’s victory in Pennsylvania, and in a swath of Southern and border states from Kentucky down through Louisiana and Mississippi. White turnout exceeded that of blacks in most of the West.
In contrast with blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans continue to vote in much smaller numbers than their growing populations would allow.

Just more than 11 million Latinos voted in 2012, an increase of 1.4 million from 2008. But the number of Latinos who did not vote even though they were eligible grew faster, so the turnout rate fell slightly, to 48%. The same pattern held true for Asian Americans -- an increase in the overall numbers, but a slight drop in turnout, to 47.3%.
The one part of the country where Latino voter turnout most closely approached that of whites was in the south Atlantic states. That appears to have been driven in large part by relatively high Latino turnout in Florida, census figures indicate.

The Census Bureau bases its estimates on a large survey it conducts in November after each election. The figures are considered the most reliable data on who shows up to vote in U.S. elections.
The racial trends revealed in that data have a major impact on elections and government policy. Although the bureau does not ask questions about which candidate or party a person supports, exit polls and other surveys have demonstrated a sharp racial divide between the two major parties. Republicans remain overwhelmingly white, while Democrats have become increasingly dependent on the votes of minority groups.

In the last election, Mitt Romney won 59% of white voters, according to exit polling, an extremely high percentage by historical standards. He lost nonetheless as Obama took more than 80% of minority voters. Concern that they are losing touch with Latino voters has become a major force motivating Republican leaders to back an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws, even though that would mark a significant policy victory for the president.

The Latino and Asian share of the U.S. electorate is all but certain to continue to grow because of the rising number of voting-age citizens in those groups. Latinos, for example, make up 17% of the total U.S. population, but 24% of the population younger than 18, the Pew Research Center noted in an analysis of the new census figures. Each year, about 800,000 Latinos turn 18, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens and eligible to vote. Non-white voters made up just 26% of the electorate, but Census Bureau projections suggest they will exceed 37% by 2020, the Pew analysis noted.
Although the number of minority voters continued to rise in 2012, another big segment of the Obama coalition -- young voters -- declined sharply. Just 41.2% of citizens aged 18 to 24 voted in 2012, down from 48.5% in 2008. That reversed a pattern of increased youth voting that had held true in every election since 1996. The 2012 balloting saw a decline in youth voting across all major racial and ethnic groups.

The racially diverse Millennial generation -- adults born after 1980 -- has become a major source of support for Obama and Democrats. Its members make up more than one-quarter of the people old enough to vote. Typically, voter turnout goes up for each generation as it ages. If that pattern holds with the Millennials, and if they retain their Democratic tilt, they would be a potent source of votes for the party in future elections.
For the 2012 election, however, the most noticeable increase in voting came at the other end of the age scale -- among older blacks. When Census Bureau analysts divvied up the electorate by age and race, the only groups to show a statistically significant increase were blacks aged 45 to 64 and those aged 65 and above, who turned out to vote at a record-setting pace of about 75%.