Are Black voters really leaving Democrats in the dust? The data from recent elections tell a more complicated story.

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>Our analysis relies on the Cooperative Election Study, which has surveyed more than 30,000 Americans every election year since 2006. Thanks to the CES large sample size, we are able to measure the attitudes and behavior of Black Americans and other voting blocs, with more precision than most other surveys.

>The CES aligns with other surveys in documenting a noticeable decline in Democratic partisanship among Black Americans over recent election cycles. In 2008, 81% of Black adults affiliated with the Democratic Party or Democratic-leaning independents. By 2020, Democratic affiliation among Black adults had dropped to 69%.

>Most of this decline, however, is happening among nonvoters. We know this because the CES matches respondents to voter files to distinguish between voters and nonvoters. It’s true that Black voters have seen a modest decline in Democratic partisanship. But the drop has been much more pronounced among Black people who do not vote. In 2012, 80% of Black nonvoters identified as Democrats. This figure fell to 57% in 2020. By comparison, Democratic partisanship among Black voters declined from 88% to 82% during that same time period.

>Despite this decline in partisan identification, the two-party vote share for Democratic presidential candidates has remained robust. To broaden the time frame provided by the CES data, we included an analysis of exit poll data extending back to 1980. During this four-decade period, Black support for Democratic presidential candidates stayed consistently around 90%. For example, during the 1980s and 1990s, the share of the Black vote going to Democrats averaged about 89%. That vote share dipped to 87% in 2004, but in the 2008 and 2012 elections more than 95% of Black voters supported Barack Obama. In the past two presidential elections (2016 and 2020), the Democratic ticket won at least 92% of the Black vote. In that context, Black support for the Democratic presidential candidate in recent elections has been modestly stronger than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s.