ABSTRACT
While there are volumes of literature describing the Republican Party’s base of support among the nation as a whole, there are fewer studies on African American support for the modern Republican Party. Because of this, it is not clear if African American support for the Republican Party is correlated to income, education, religion, or some other factor. The purpose of this article, then, is threefold: using data from the 2004 American National Election Survey, it will undertake to explain the factors leading to support for the Republican Party among African Americans, determine if the Republican Party’s strategy to court African Americans by talking about moral issues had any effect, and discover if African American Bush voters supported him for the same reasons as other Americans. To do this, we will first explore the relationship between the African American community and the Republican Party, the connection between African Americans and the conservative movement, and the context of the 2004 presidential election.
