"VALUES VOTERS": Rich Lowry

...The numbers fell off on Election Day. According to the exit polls, Bush's support among blacks nationally inched up only slightly from 9 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2004. But the kind of dramatic movement in the pre-election Joint Center survey showed up in the battleground states where the GOP invested the most resources to woo black voters. Bush went from 7 percent of the black vote in Florida in 2000 to 13 percent in 2004. In all-important Ohio, Bush's support among blacks rose from 10 percent to 16 percent.

"I have not found a single black precinct where Bush's vote went down from 2000," Nadler says. "It just went up everywhere." One Republican strategist predicts that the GOP share of the black vote will hit 30 percent within the next few election cycles. If it does, many religious black voters will be finding their appropriate home in a political environment defined by a cultural split over social issues. ...

But it was gay marriage that had the most resonance. "It really played," Nadler says. Black preachers, desperate to reinvigorate the traditional family, opposed it from their pulpits. "In the churches, there was a backlash against the notion of sexual proclivity being equated with civil rights," says Nadler. In the end, according to some estimates, 60 percent of black voters voted for the state-level referenda banning gay marriage.

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posted by Eve at 6:59 PM VOTE

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