Once again, in an essential election, African Americans came to the rescue. In the Virginia election earlier this month, whites were 67% of all voters but only 42% of whites voted for Ralph Northam for governor. Even though he seldom invoked Trump’s name, Ed Gillespie, the Republican, ran on a Trumpian platform, and 57% of whites voted for him.
Nonwhites—African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and others—were 33% of the voters and 80% of them voted for Northam, providing him the victory. Northam won with 54% of the vote to Gillespie’s 45%. According to exit polling, whites provided 28 of those 54 percentage points, with nonwhites providing the other 26 points. A closer look at the results shows that the black vote was enough to provide the margin of victory for Northam.
Blacks were 20% of the voters, and 87% of them voted for Northam. Thus, blacks provided over 17 points. This means whites provided 28 points and blacks 17+ points, which together exceed the 45-point total for Gillespie. Consequently, the white vote plus the black vote were enough to surpass Gillespie’s total.
The racial story in the Virginia election was turnout as well as the vote. Black turnout was slightly higher than the black share of the voting age population, and the black vote was heavily Democratic.
Black votes in particular and the non-white vote, in general, functioned in the Virginia election similar to how they have functioned in presidential elections for generations—providing the margin of victory for winning Democrats. Only once since WW II has the majority of whites voted for the Democratic nominee for the presidency. That was in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater.