Hasta La Gadget!

Aug 21

Mitt Romney Is Capturing Zero Percent Of The Black Vote, According To New Poll

Take a guess as to what percentage of black voters Mitt Romney is winning this election. Now take whatever number you’ve got in your head and go lower.

According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, President Obama is beating his Republican opponent among black voters by a whopping 94 percent to 0 percent. The numbers are pretty brutal for Romney among Latinos, as well: he’s losing to the president almost 2 to 1. The poll has President Obama ahead among all registered voters, 48 percent to Romney’s 44 percent.

The numbers aren’t a complete surprise. The Republican party has fared poorly with black voters for decades. But there was a moment in the mid-aughts when the GOP was starting to see hints of progress. Both Bob Dole and George W. Bush actively courted conservative black voters and even managed to eek into double digits. (Not a small accomplishment, considering Democrats regularly won 90-plus percent of black voters in national contests for decades.) In 2005, Ken Mehlman, who was then running the Republican National Committee, even apologized to black leaders for the party’s use of racially divisive tactics, in a gesture that suggested that Republicans were making a serious play to slice off bits of the black electorate.