Black History Month 2026: Black Republicans

Day 26

Let’s make something clear: Black Republicans are practically nonexistent. They’re a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.

What do I mean? Black people make up about 14% of eligible voters [1]. Only 64% of eligible voters, regardless of race, showed up in 2024 (this is high for America, unfortunately) [2]. That comes out to 155M people [2]. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume all races voted evenly. That means about 9% (14% x 0.64) people who voted in 2024 were Black (it was actually less). So about 14M people. Of that 9%, only 15% of them voted for Trump (83% voted for Harris). That gives us 2.1M Black Republicans, if we assume that every Black person who voted for Trump identified as Republican. There are about 34.5M Black eligible voters [1]. This means only 6% of Black voters are Republicans.

If Black Republicans such a small percentage, why do they get so much attention? Because Republicans love to use them as shields! Republicans point to the Black people, especially the high-profile ones like Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell, in their party and say, “See? We aren’t racist! If we were racist, why would Clarence Thomas be in our party? Why would Thomas Sowell be a popular conservative author?” It’s pretty much the “I can’t be racist because I have Black friends!” defense, but for the whole party. That’s why the Republican Party continues to elevate Black conservatives.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/10/key-facts-about-black-eligible-voters-in-2024/

[2] https://goodauthority.org/news/2024-brought-high-voter-turnout-but-a-growing-racial-gap/

Enjoying my content?