Politics
African-American voters want Obama to focus on jobs
President Barack Obama. PHOTO/File
President Obama’s coalition came through for him big time on Election Day, and now members of the coalition want him to return the favor.
African-Americans, who backed Obama with 93 percent of their votes, are calling on Obama to pursue new jobs programs and make sure that budget cuts do not fall too heavily on middle- and lower-class Americans.
“I think the president heard us loud and clear,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, reports the Associated Press. “The collective message was, ‘let’s build on where we already are.'”
While the national unemployment rate came in at 7.9 percent for the month of October, that number for African-Americans was 14.3 percent; black unemployment has been as high as 16.5 percent during the Obama presidency.
In winning re-election over Republican opponent Mitt Romney, Obama also relied heavily on the votes of women and Hispanics.
“African-Americans made up 13 percent of the electorate this year, about the same as 2008, while participation among whites shrank slightly to 72 percent and Hispanics increased to 10 percent, national exit polls showed….
“African-American voter samples in national exit polls are not useful for providing turnout measurements. Census surveys and other analyses eventually will provide turnout numbers for specific racial groups. But exit polls can be used to examine different groups as shares of the overall vote. And there, experts say, is where the evidence can be found of how much black voters delivered for Obama.
