2019 National BVP Study

2019 National Black Voter Project Study

Description of Study

The 2019 National Black Voter Project public opinion survey is a follow-up project to the initial 2017 Pilot Study. Again, collecting data from an online questionnaire administered by Survey Sample International (SSI), a non-partisan, survey research center with access to mobile panels for market and academic research. Dr. Christopher Towler and Dr. Nyron Crawford, both Assistant Professors of Political Science, are the co-principal investigators on this survey. The survey was administered online based on randomly selected email addresses from lists of panel respondents who identify as African-American or black. An online questionnaire was fielded throughout the months of November and December, 2019. A total 1545 African-American respondents were interviewed, and the survey had an average interview length of 28 min. The survey was stratified across age, education, and gender evenly distributing respondents from all 50 states.


Selected Findings

  • National Black Voter Project (BVP): Preliminary Report of Results

    Of all the candidates in the Democratic primary race, the largest proportion of blacks, 46%, believe Joe Biden has”addressed issues pertaining to the African American community” extremely well. Comparatively, 37% express that Bernie Sanders addressed “issues” extremely well, and 15% responded extremely well when asked how either Elizabeth Warren or Bete Buttigieg addressed these issues. Of the candidates of color still campaigning, 32% feel Julian Castro addressed black issues extremely well, and 28% feel the same about Corey Booker.

    Click here for full research report

  • 2020 Mobilization: Perceived Threat and African American Mobilization

    Using an original survey experiment, data from the 2019 National BVP allowed for a new project to build on results from a publication that, using the 2017 BVP Pilot Study data, explored the relationship between the perceived threatening political context of Trump’s presidency and black political engagement. In this new report, we not only confirm the finding that blacks who “strongly agree” Trump’s presidency is a threat are more likely to feel confident about their 2020 engagement, but we also employ three different message frames that highlight Trump’s threat as either racial, existential or economic to examine if there is a specific type of threat that hold more predictive power.

    Click here for full research report

    Beyond the Report: 2020 Mobilization, Experimental Conditions by race condition and gender

    We also wanted to examine the effect of Trump’s racist messages on the likelihood of mobilizing the black electorate in 2020 in ways not specified in the research report; we wanted to drill down deeper an explore the role that gender plays. After all, in 2017 (Alabama and Virginia) and in the 2018 midterms, black women were far more likely to mobilize than black men. Our results confirmed this. Among black men, we observed no difference between the treatment, i.e., Trump poses a threat to racial progress, and the control condition. However, among black women, the treatment increased the probability that black women will be more politically engaged by 20 points.