African-American Voter Surge

Black voters are why Democrats have a Senate majority. In the November election, only 27 percent of voters were African American. In the runoffs last week, some 30 percent were African-American. That turnout was fueled by the massive work of grassroots mobilization groups.

The increased black turnout generated by those groups meant that Perdue’s vote among African Americans fell from 11 percent in November to 8 percent in the runoff.

So many commercials attacking the “radical” record of Raphael Warnock, the Democratic opponent of Perdue, were run that some in the black community felt that Warnock, the current pastor of Martin Luther King’s old church in Atlanta, was unfairly targeted. While some voters were repulsed by Warnock’s history of extreme statements, more apparently concluded that the tsunami of negative ads was an over-the-top campaign tactic.