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Black voters are the most loyal constituency in the Democratic coalition and have been for about 60 years.
Over that span, Democratic presidential candidates have averaged nearly 90 percent of the Black vote. No other racial or ethnic demographic comes close.
That loyalty gets taken for granted.
The Democratic Party assumes the Black vote is sewed up, so they don’t work as hard at messaging or connecting.
Then, when Black voters don’t turn out at the numbers they wanted, the candidates act confused and offended. Meanwhile, Black voters get almost nothing.
Maybe that’s changing.
The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee just voted to have South Carolina lead off the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries on January 22.
The full DNC finalizes the calendar in August. Black voters make up roughly two-thirds of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate.
Which means the first voters any Democrat who wants to be president has to persuade are Black voters in the South.
South Carolina’s party chair, Christale Spain, made the case clear.
South Carolina has been first in the South since the early 2000s, and it has become the party’s most reliable predictor of Black voter sentiment.
What South Carolina’s Black voters do tells you how a candidate is resonating with Black voters nationally.
Now consider the alternative.
Candidates spent a year or more going back and forth to Iowa and New Hampshire. They set up temporary bases. They ran a full ground game. They learned to talk to one particular kind of voter about one particular set of concerns.
In Iowa, a big deal was ethanol. As important as that is, it is not high on the list for most voters outside of Iowa.
Then, in October before a November election, they showed up in Black communities with performative gestures.
Assemble the gospel choir. Pick up a plate at the barbecue. Grab the mic on the Black radio show.
That’s not a relationship. That’s a performance.
And it happens because those candidates never had to earn the trust of Black voters the way they had to earn it in Iowa.
South Carolina going first forces them to do the work. Prove you can build a relationship with Black voters.
Prove you can earn their trust.
Remember when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act?
They said partisan gerrymandering is fine, but racial gerrymandering is not. That’s a distinction without a difference.
Black people are the most loyal Democratic constituency, so breaking up a Democratic district dilutes Black voting power by definition.
Then they went further. To prove a racial gerrymander, you now have to prove racist intent, not impact.
You have to get inside the hearts and minds of the mapmakers. That is a nearly impossible standard.
The Voting Rights Act is a signature achievement of the Black civil rights movement. Black folks took this personally.
Days after the decision, we were marching in Selma. I was there.
We crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge just like they did in 1965, the bridge where John Lewis got his skull cracked by law enforcement because he wanted the right to vote.
Here we are again.
So it only seems right and fair that the DNC acknowledges that Black voting rights are under attack and puts a process in place to ensure Black voters have a stronger voice in the party.
They made South Carolina go first. Now the question is whether candidate will actually campaign like it.
In this episode:
The case Christale Spain made for South Carolina as the party’s most reliable read on Black voter sentiment
What primaries actually do, and why the order of states determines momentum and money
Iowa’s long run at the front of the calendar and what a 90 percent white electorate taught candidates
How the Supreme Court’s ruling on voting rights, and what the party owes Black voters now
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