The North Carolina Board of Elections discovered thousands of Black residents who have switched their political party to “unaffiliated.” Approx. 123,000 residents have registered as unaffiliated and about 37,000 of those voters are Black since 2016 according to ABC 11. Unaffiliated voters are voters who do not consider themselves members of a specific political party.
“I love it because I don’t have to vote straight Republican or straight Democratic. And I can just get a feel for each candidate,” voter Tiffany Pass told ABC11.
Across the nation, 37 percent of registered voters identify as independent voters compared to 33 and 26 percent of voters, respectively, who consider themselves Democrats and Republicans according to 2017 data from the Pew Research Center.
Black Americans overall remain mostly Democrat, with 84 percent of Pew survey participants identify themselves as Democratic voters. While only eight percent of Black people consider themselves Republicans.
A 2019 survey of 30,000 Black Americans conducted by The Black Census Project discovered a majority of those surveyed were disillusioned with the Democratic party. Sixty percent of respondents identified as Democrats while 2 percent were Republicans. The rest said they were independent or members of another party. In the study 52 percent of participants believe Democratic politicians “do not care about Black people or their interests,” according to Vox.
“Black voters are an incredibly powerful force, and yet we’re not being engaged as if we’re an incredibly powerful force,” Alicia Garza, Black Futures Lab, told Vox.
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