Today the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies released 50 Years of the Voting Rights Act: The State of Race in Politics.
The report examines minority voter turnout, racially polarized voting, policy outcomes by race, and the number of minority elected officials from the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 until today.
Click here to read the report, which is authored by Professors Khalilah Brown-Dean, Zoltan Hajnal, Christina Rivers, and Ismail White.
Key findings:
- The black/white racial gap in voter turnout has decreased dramatically in presidential elections since 1965.
- Local election turnout is generally less than half of presidential general election turnout. As overall turnout declines in local elections, the electorate may become less diverse.
- Turnout rates among both Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans in presidential elections remain 15 to 20 points below white Americans.
- Since 1960, the party identification and partisan voting patterns of blacks and whites have become sharply divided.
- In urban local elections, race is a more decisive factor than income, education, political ideology, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender, and political ideology.
- Based on available data from 1972 to 2010, blacks were the least advantaged group in America in terms of policy outcomes.
- Since 1965, the number of elected officials of color has grown enormously, but people of color remain underrepresented in elected office.
If you’ll be in Selma, click here to join a breakfast with the authors and National Urban League President Marc Morial at the Selma Public Library on Saturday, Mar. 7 just before President Obama speaks.