With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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Notes -
Very significant, and much more likely if it holds.
African Americans have been voting Democrat at about 80% or above for the last half-century, and in the upper 80s/low 90s since 2000. Any sort of notable decrease from that has significant follow-on consequences.
The reason for that is that by the nature of bi-partisan gerrymandering, parties want narrow-but-reliable margins in various voting districts (so as the maximize the value of their voters / increase the wasted votes of the as-big-as-possible-but-minority opposition. For several census periods, African Americans have been that reliable voting block. As such, a decrease in their turnout threatens to flip various narrow-held seats. This could, for example, help ensure a Republican Senate for the next two years (which would mean considerably more for a Trump presidency on issues like judges).
It also matters because African American are a core part of the lower-income-strata of the Democratic coalition, and so serve as a better proxy for that end of the Democratic base turnout than the upper-middle-class Professional Managerial Class (PMCs). Kamalla Harris was specifically chosen as Biden's VP / became the candidate specifically because she was supported by the African-American political machine wing of the Democratic Party, who were Biden allies. Harris is supposed to run exceptionally well with them, and thus if her strongest part of the coalition is underperforming, it's more likely that related parts of the coalition will also do so.
If Harris loses the Democrat's working class, she loses, as the PMCs are too concentrated in urban centers and the coasts to carry the rest of the country.
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