In Swing Districts Black Candidates Can Win
During the 2020 presidential election, there was a lot of discussion about what makes an electable candidate. Is it someone who is moderate? A candidate who can turn out the base? Do other attributes of the candidate matter? In my research, I looked at one specific characteristic of potential electability: the candidate’s race.
Conventional wisdom previously held that Black Democratic candidates struggled to win swing congressional districts due to racial prejudice among white voters. As a result, they were encouraged to run instead in districts considered safe because most of their constitutents were Black and were strongly Democratic.
In 2018, however, multiple Black Democratic candidates ran – and won – in competitive congressional districts that had high percentages of white voters. ...