Although a recent Census Bureau study showed a stark gap between black male turnout and black female turnout in the 2012 election, the large number of black men ineligible to vote because of felony convictions explains much of the gap.
In its tabulations, the Census Bureau counts any American citizen of voting age as an eligible voter. But nearly one in 10 black men are ineligible to vote because of state laws that apply to people with felony convictions.
The census report listed the turnout rate for black men as 61.4 percent, compared with 70.4 percent for black women. However, once noninstitutionalized felons â€" people who are not in prison but lost the right to vote as punishment â€" are removed from the tally of eligible voters, the turnout rate among black men rises to 68 percent, according to Bernard L. Fraga, a political scientist at Harvard, and the rate among black women rises to 71.4 percent.
The equivalent turnout rate is 65.9 percent for white women and 64.1 percent for white men â€" only slightly higher than the turnout rates listed in the census report for those categories.
“Black men look like the lowest turnout group of the four if we don’t take into account felons,†said Mr. Fraga, who recalculated the turnout rates for the 2008 and 2012 elections. In fact, he said, black men have a higher turnout rate than white men or white women.
Turnout among Latinos and Asian-Americans is substantially lower than among whites and blacks. Latinos and Asian-Americans, both men and women, have turnout rates around 50 percent.
Removing disenfranchised felons makes men look like better voters across all races. Only 0.6 percent of women are disenfranchised felons, compared with 3.3 percent of men. For black men, the figure jumps to 9.7 percent, according to Mr. Fraga, who obtained data from the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group. For black women, the rate is 1.8 percent.
Mr. Fraga’s numbers also show that the black turnout rate first exceeded the white turnout rate in 2008, rather than in 2012, as the census reported.
