Comments on: Why was “African Americans” a trending topic on Twitter?

By: alex eben meyer

alex eben meyer — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:18:00 +0000

np. thanks for the edit.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:03:00 +0000

Thank you so much for pointing that out! I am sorry for the error. I will change it to @bfnh.

By: alex eben meyer

alex eben meyer — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:17:00 +0000

your credit on the illustration is incorrect, it was art directed by http://www.twitter.com/bfnh

By: Carole Bell

Carole Bell — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 19:06:00 +0000

That original stat is really bizarrely inaccurate. Just to add to Saheli’s comment, it’s a completely different thing to say that African Americans comprised 10% of the electorate versus only 10% of African Americans voted. If only 10% of African Americans voted, that would mean they’d comprise a much tinier percentage of the electorate that showed up. There are 310 million Americans and African Americans comprise just under 12.7% of that or 39.6 mn (see 2009 population data on the Census Factfinder site at http://goo.gl/zO40V). Minors are roughly 25% of that total. So if 9 million African American adults voted out of a total of 28 mn registered AA voters, the 30-odd % participation should be about right. We should strive to make that higher but it’s no where near the levels originally alleged.

By: themis

themis — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:35:00 +0000

The CBS article referred to in the above post stated 10% of blacks are votING… I suspect it was just a typo on the twitterer’s part.

By: Lynn Cabrera

Lynn Cabrera — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:39:00 +0000

Is the source of the rumor known?

By: InnyVinny

InnyVinny — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:42:00 +0000

I hate that people automatically believe things they read on the internet. So, so sad.

By: razib khan

razib khan — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:38:00 +0000

i would say “wow”, but i’m not surprised. i employ numbers in my posts/comments a lot, and i’ve become very careful about typos by decimal places: usually people actually don’t correct the error!

By: Student Activism

Student Activism — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:52:00 +0000

I found some more specific numbers and came up with an estimate that 34% of African American adults voted yesterday:

http://studentactivism.net/2010/11/03/did-only-4-7-of-blacks-vote-yesterday/

By: Saheli Datta

Saheli Datta — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:01:00 +0000

In the above analysis of the over all participation rate (i.e. voters/eligible voters, not voters/*registered* voters) I’m assuming all African-Americans the census counts as such are citizens, which might be a more reasonable assumption than for any other ethnic group except I don’t think the census differentiates between century+ African-Americans and more recent immigrants. So the over all participation rate in the ‘indigenous’ African-American community might be much higher than 25%.