PHILADELPHIA — The Rev. Alyn E. Waller, a senior pastor at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia, believes African American voters in his city hold the key to the White House.
After backing a Democrat for president since 1988, Pennsylvania swung behind Donald Trump in 2016, helping to propel him to the presidency with a dramatic turnout of supportive white voters while the turnout of black Democratic voters in urban areas fell.
Hillary Clinton easily won the vote in Philadelphia, but the drop-off from prior elections left her unable to offset white Republican votes coming from more rural and conservative parts of the state.
It was a moment not lost on Trump. During a rally in Pennsylvania in December 2018, he praised black Americans for staying at home. “They didn’t come out to vote for Hillary,” he said. “They didn’t come out. And that was a big — so thank you to the African American community.” He also has often lauded his rural supporters for their high turnout.
Overall, turnout of black voters fell from nearly 67 percent in 2012 — during the reelection of the nation’s first African American president — to less than 60 percent in 2016 while the white percentage rose incrementally, according to a Pew Research study.
In Pennsylvania, exit polls showed, the percentage of the vote cast by African Americans, who overwhelmingly sided with Clinton, dropped from 13 percent in 2012 to 10 percent in 2016. White voters, who went dramatically for Trump, rose from 78 percent to 81 percent of the electorate.
Interviews with black and white voters in the state show that a different dynamic may already by in play — on both sides.
Arresting the slide in black turnout and cutting into Republican advantages among white and rural voters is seen by Democrats as key to flipping Pennsylvania back into their electoral column. The same is true in Wisconsin and Michigan, two other historically Democratic states that went for Trump in 2016.
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