Black Voters in Bad Relationship with Democratic Party, Going Independent

LAST WORD
Black Voters and the Battered Voter Syndrome (By George Boykin, American Thinker) Unfortunately, the vast majority of black voters have been bitch-slapped so for so long by the Democratic Party that many seem to be afflicted with the battered voter syndrome (BVS).

NOTE: About 24% of black voters are independent. Independents and black voters joined together in 2008 to elect Pres. Obama, and 50% of black voters in NYC voted for independent Mike Bloomberg in 2005. This is a coalition that is not going away. AND African American voters are becoming increasingly independent. Check out this Raw Story editorial by Recardo Gibson "African Americans' disaffection with Democrats growing":

The New African American Voter
Leviticus Turner, a 24-year-old African American female and second-generation college graduate from Chicago, defines herself as an Independent and was a self-described Democrat until 2000. When asked what prompted the switch she responded, “I don’t just vote on party lines anymore. I used to. Although I was never, explicitly, told to vote Democratic, it was implied: That’s what black people do. But now, I look at each candidate individually.”

Turner is not alone in this trend that sees African Americans moving toward the status of Independent voters. The Joint Center for Politics and Economic Studies, in another poll, revealed that 24 percent of African Americans identify themselves as Independents, and 10 percent as Republicans, each up from 2000. The poll went on to show that the number of blacks voting Democratic in the 2002 election was 63 percent, down from 2000. This survey suggested that many black Democrats are rethinking their political affiliation.

Although Turner is open to voting for a Republican, she said won’t vote for Bush. Turner pointed to the economy as the main reason why she is seeking another option.

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From the Joint Center for Politics and Economic Studies 2006 paper, those independents are young voters:

Young Black Voters
While the 74 percent of African Americans who identified with the Democratic Party in the Joint Center’s 2004 National Opinion Poll is down from the recent high point (2000),
there is ample reason to believe this trend is reversing, largely because the previous decline in support from young African Americans has been reversed. The 74 percent of African Americans who identified with the Democratic Party consisted of 63 percent who clearly identified with the party, and 11 percent who identified themselves as political independents, but who “lean” more to the Democratic Party than to the GOP.

Prior to 2004, declines in black
Democratic identification had been driven by younger, i.e., under the age of 35, African Americans. In Joint Center national opinion polls conducted prior to 2004, only 50 to 60 percent of 18- to-25-year-old African Americans identified with the Democratic Party (Figure 1). However, since the Bush Administration launched the Iraq war, younger African Americans have moved decisively leftward, with 75 percent identifying with the Democrats in 2004. In the 2004 election, 18-29 year-olds were the only age cohort where Kerry defeated Bush.