Stand back, I am going to try talk about issue of race in the presidential election without histrionics or hysterics.

Let’s begin with a prediction.

In next week’s election, Barack Obama will win 99 percent of the black vote in Philadelphia.
To some people, that would be proof that blacks will only vote for blacks and that this is a race-based election.

But, they would be wrong.

In Philadelphia, African Americans are what political scientists call “behavioral Democrats.” It’s very hard to get them to vote for Republican candidates. Ever.

In 2004, for instance, John Kerry (who’s a very white guy) won 97 percent of the black vote in Philly. Ditto for white Al Gore in 2000. Even white Michael Dukakis, a dog of a Democratic candidate, got 96 percent of the black vote in 1988.

Obama will do marginally better because he is black, but he’ll get most of his points from African American voters because he is the Democrat.

For the Obama campaign – and for the John McCain campaign, too — the big question mark is not margin, it is turnout.

How many of the city’s estimated 450,000 black voters will show up on Nov. 4?

Here is what I know about the black vote in Philadelphia.

Blacks generally have lower turnout rates than whites. In the last nine presidential elections, blacks have voted an average of 8 points below the citywide average and 13 points below white turnout.

This has more to do with class than race. In Philly, many African Americans are poor and low-income groups, regardless of race, have lower turnout rates than middle-class folks.

W. Wilson Goode

In the last 38 years, there has been only one election where black turnout exceeded white turnout. It was in 1983, when W. Wilson Goode Sr. was running for mayor and black turnout exceeded white turnout by 3 percentage points. Goode also happened to be the first serious African American candidate to run for mayor. He won.

And what is Obama? He is The One. The first African American candidate to run for president who has a real chance to win. In other words, he is to black Americans what John F. Kennedy was to Irish-Catholic Americans in 1960.

Just like it was for Irish Catholics in 1960, for blacks this election is not a political moment, it is a historic moment. It is likely to result in super-charged black turnout.

In 2004, black turnout was about 60 percent in the city. This year, it could approach 75 percent. If it does, it would boost Obama’s margin in black wards by 75,000-80,000 votes above Kerry’s margin in the same wards four years ago.

On the other side of the equation you have the fact that Obama’s race will depress his margin among the white voters who just won’t vote for a black for president – or for mayor or governor or senator or any public office.

Race is a deciding factor among a slice of white voters and because of it Obama’s margin will be lower than Kerry’s in a number of white wards.

Take Northeast Philadelphia, which is home to many middle-class whites. They gave Kerry 62 percent of their vote in the Northeast in 2004.

My best guess is that Obama will get a 53-55 percent share in the Northeast. The Republicans are hoping he will lose in the Northeast, but I don’t see that happening. This area of the city – like the city itself – has become more Democratic in the last 20 years.

The last Republican to win the Northeast was George Bush the Elder in 1988, against Dukakis, though it wasn’t a runaway. Bush got 53 percent of the vote.

In South Philadelphia, another home to white voters, Obama will also get a 53-57 vote share. Though he may lose in the heavily Italian-American 26^th Ward. he will do well in the rest of South Philly — the 1st and 2nd Wards, the 39th and 48th Wards. This is mostly due to the fact that South Philly has also changed in the last 20 years – fewer old-school Italian Americans, more ethnic and racial minorities; more younger, affluent whites. These new arrivals tend to be Obama supporters.

In short, if there is a surge in black turnout it will offset a drop in white support for the Democrat.

The bottom line is that Obama is likely to emerge from Philadelphia with a 400,000-plus-vote margin on Nov. 4^th, the same margin Kerry enjoyed.

A Note:
The figures in this piece are drawn from my study of black and white indicator wards in the city. These are wards that have been either 95 percent or more African American or 95 percent or more white since 1970. Together, these 10 black and 10 white wards hold about one-third of the city’s voters, so they represent a sizable sample.

I have used these indicator wards to analyze racial voting patterns in the city for the last 25 years and have found them to be reliable barometers of turnout, margin, etc.

They do have limits. For instance, all the black wards in the sample are centered in poor neighborhoods in North and West Philadelphia, so there is an over sample of low-income voters.

There are middle-class black wards in the city – the 10^th and 50^th Wards in the Northwest, for instance, where turnout rates often equal or exceed white turnout. Though, in those two wards, the margins given to Democratic candidates are the same as in poorer wards.

The 10 white indicator wards are all in Northeast Philadelphia, so they do not include the city’s white liberal wards, such as the 5^th and 8^th Wards in Center City, whose voting patterns differ from whites in the Northeast.