Some Estimates Suggest Black Voting Milestone Occurred in 2008

Did the Census Bureau and the media miss the milestone moment on black voter turnout?

A study by the Census Bureau released Wednesday found that the rate of black voter turnout surpassed that of white voters for the first time on record in 2012. According to the agency’s estimate, based on surveys, 66.2 percent of “eligible” black citizens cast a ballot in the 2012 presidential election, compared with 64.1 percent of eligible, non-Hispanic whites.

But some researchers contend that slightly different calculations show the black turnout might have first moved ahead of the white rate in 2008, the year when a black candidate first led a major party ticket.

Any American citizen who is 18 or older meets the census’s definition of an eligible voter. But some American adults have lost that right: an estimated 5.85 million people with felony convictions were disenfranchised in 2010, according to the Sentencing Project, and they are disproportionately African American. That advocacy group determined that 5.6 percent of nonincarcerated, voting-age blacks face such restrictions, compared with 1.9 percent for nonblacks.

“Turnout seems lower than it actually is if we don’t take into account felon disenfranchisement,” said Bernard L. Fraga, a political scientist studying at Harvard.

When Mr. Fraga recalculated the rates without disenfranchised felons, 68.5 percent of eligible blacks voted in 2008, compared with 67 percent of eligible whites. (Under the census definition of eligibility, black turnout was 64.9 percent in 2008 and white turnout was 67 percent.)

If disenfranchised felons are excluded in the 2012 estimates, 70.1 percent of eligible blacks went to the polls, as did 65 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

Michael P. McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University, is among those who contend that the black turnout milestone occurred in 2008, by making different assumptions about people who did not give a usable answer. The Census Bureau counted people who gave such a “non response” as a “no” to questions about voting. Mr. McDonald simply removed them from his calculations, yielding much higher turnout rates for all. In 2008, according to his estimate, black turnout was 78.9 percent and white turnout was 75.5 percent. In 2012, black turnout dipped to 77.9 percent and white turnout was 72.8 percent.