The voting data itself is interesting, but of particular note is the regional differences in the voting blocs (remember "Black people are not a monolith?"):
Clinton's more moderate plans, coupled with her better (though not necessarily great) fluency on race issues, may seem more achievable than Sanders's liberal, class-focused plank.
" … understand Bernie Sanders's message," Huffmon said. "But … his message is more likely to appeal to black voters who live in one racial context than another."
Even if black voters make up a majority of Democratic voters in the South, these states also lean Republican in general.
Take South Carolina. Black Democrats face a political landscape where most of their national elected officials are Republicans: The governor, both US senators, and six of the seven representatives in Congress are Republicans.
As Huffmon pointed out, this creates conditions where black voters aren’t necessarily prioritizing "significant gains, but trying to stop continued losses or the erosion of certain abilities and past gains."
And with those kinds of considerations, familiarity matters: Clinton is a household name; Sanders isn’t. Clinton has a rapport that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have built with black voters, black elites, and black institutions over the past 30 years that Sanders lacks. These facets work to Clinton’s advantage in the South.
The articles goes on the mention the generational divides in what voter priorities were. Going by these numbers, my assessment (aguessment?) from a couple weeks ago was pretty on the money.
The figures also tentatively indicated that states in the Rust Belt that had lots of young progressive activists like Black Livers Matter and other groups played a factor
in black votes for Bernie being higher, even if they had not explicitly endorsed him. The deep south has much less of a progressive movement than other areas,
so not being as familiar with Bernie Sanders made his decision to not really go campaign there REALLY hurt him there. Good to know for the future, I guess.
University of Chicago professor Michael Dawson adds this. Probably responding without even meaning to someone's rather inappropriate remarks made about black voters and their "undying loyalty," (whoopsie! right?)
"One thing I think pundits are missing in general is that black voters have been very pragmatic in general and very sophisticated in presidential elections," Dawson said. "What I mean by African Americans are pragmatic is that African Americans, in comparison to the rest of the American population, have a fairly good grasp of the issues, often better than mainstream Americans do. But because the stakes have been so high, African Americans have often used the decision rule of lesser of two evils."
Again, this is why familiarity is important and why, as [Prof. Andra] Gillespie (Silence side note: I've met her!) pointed out, Sanders's limited outreach to Southern black voters came at a price.
"From a strategic standpoint, it made perfect sense for [Sanders] to go north and to go west, because he wasn't going to win," Gillespie said.
"But if you're trying to win black voters, that probably wasn't the right move at that particular time. So from a strategic standpoint, I understand the divisions. But there are costs. There was a consequence to that decision that people who were skeptical were not going to be won over by the bank."