AFRICAN AMERICANS AND PROPOSITION 8
Here we present data indicating that while African Americans did support the measure at higher rates than voters as a whole, we have strong reason to think that their support was not as high as that estimated by the National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll (70 percent). Analysis of the full range of data available persuades us that the NEP exit poll overestimated African American support for Proposition 8 by ten percentage points or ore. Furthermore, much of African Americans' support for Proposition 8 can be explained by the fact that blacks tend to be more religious than Californians as a whole.
• Surveys conducted just before and just after Election Day found much smaller differences in support for Proposition 8 between African Americans and voters as a whole than did the NEP exit poll. The NEP result should thus be treated as an outlier that overstates black support for Proposition 8.
As shown in Figure 2, two surveys conducted just before Election Day (by Field and SurveyUSA) found insignificant differences in support for Proposition 8 between African Americans and Californians as a whole. Two surveys conducted in the weeks following Election Day found similar results. On average, the difference in support between African Americans and all voters in these four surveys was just two percentage points. The NEP exit poll finding—that black support for Proposition 8 was 18 points igher than Californians as a whole—is most likely an "outlier," a result that is very ifferent than what concurrent data trends suggest to be the case.
• Evidence from precinct-level voting returns suggests that African American support for Proposition 8 was in the range of 57 to 59 percent.
We analyzed precinct‐level voting data on Proposition 8 from five California counties— Alameda, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco—that together comprise 66 percent of the state's African American population. By merging these data ith estimates of the precincts' racial and ethnic makeup, we were able to assess the recinct‐level relationship between voter demographics and support for Proposition 8.
Figure 3 depicts this relationship with a scatterplot in which each precinct is represented by a point. The figure also includes a line called a "running‐mean smoother" that indicates the pattern taken on by the data. As seen in the figure, a slight but unmistakable relationship exists between the proportion of a precinct's voters who are African American and support for Proposition 8. Also, we note, that precincts with very few black voters (shown on the left‐hand side of the figure) supported Proposition 8 at levels about as high as those precincts with many black voters (shown on the right‐ and side). That is, support for Proposition 8 was greatest in precincts that are the least racially diverse.