Why does a country like the United States have vote bank politics?

Question

Vote bank politics is defined as:

A votebank (also spelled vote-bank or vote bank) is a loyal bloc of voters from a single community, who consistently back a certain candidate or political formation in democratic elections. Such behaviour is often the result of an expectation of real or imagined benefits from the political formations, often at the cost of other communities. Votebank politics is the practice of creating and maintaining votebanks through divisive policies. As it encourages voters to vote on the basis of narrow communal considerations, often against their better judgement, it is considered harmful to the principles of representative democracy.

In the US, just sticking to the last 4 presidential elections, we see that the black community has voted in vote bank fashion for the Democratic candidate.

• Obama 2012 - 95%
• Obama 2008 - 99%
• Kerry 2004 - 93%
• Gore 2000 - 95%

I am originally from India and have been convinced that vote bank politics is a shame to Indian democracy and it is very surprising to see that the same problem exists in the US also (a far more educated society). The press also seems to be happy to let this vote bank politics continue as I haven't see any talk about this subject.

Answer 1

Your question confuses two terms:

• Vote banks, even in the article you linked, refer to clientelism, where there is an individual or small sets of individuals that decides the vote of the block. In fact, the Wikipedia article even mentions the caste leader, and the clientelism term. It means the influential individuals decide the vote of their clients and reap political favour from it.

  The other side of clientelist politics is that such influential people are later rewarded by the politic machinery.

• Voting demographics. It is well established that the distribution of vote is different between young and old people, rural and city dwellers, white collar and blue collar workers etc. It has nothing to do with clientelism, but to the fact that a young man in a city doing white collar work will probably have more in common with another young man in a city doing white collar work in comparison to an old woman in a small town in a blue collar work. While political parties may try to appeal more to a demographic or other, the decision of each of the voters is individual.

A good example of the difference would be Obama as the first black candidate. While many black people identified with him because of race, the ones who voted for him did so on their own will¹, not because they were forced due to some client of "king of the black people".

Another good example is the practice of combining tickets so the candidate to POTUS and the candidate to VPOTUS are one from northern states and southern states. It is due to cater to different regional sensibilities, but no sane people would call that "block politics".

Note that your question only talks about the demographics of the votes for Obama, but it does not show "vote bank politics" measures (to keep the vote blocks system) anyway; like steps against racial justice or social mobility (to avoid black people leaving their block), measures to specifically increase the birth rate of black people (to increase the head count), etc.

Unless you can identify the "cast leaders" in the USA electoral process, I would refrain from using it. Probably it would fit the description of the USA politics during the "spoils system" period, though.

¹ Social pressure may have a role here, but the difference that the pressure is "horizontal" (from peers), not vertical (someone in a higher position).

Answer 2

How does a country like the United States have vote bank politics?

Why shouldn't a country like the US have vote bank politics? Is there any democratic country that doesn't have it?

It is wrong to assume that the US has a long history of democracy and it should not have things such as vote bank politics. You should note that women got the right to vote in 1920 and African Americans in 1965 (they had the right before, but they couldn't exercise it fully until the Voting Rights Act) in the US. Considering the fact that India started its democracy in 1947, there is no big difference between the US and India. The only few differences I see is the US got independence in the 18th century while India in the 20th century and the US established its own democracy through trial and error based on that of other countries and India learned it from other countries, mainly the UK, and applied what it learned to its democracy.

Democracy is governed by its principle, the rule of majority. No matter how many vote banks there are in any country, they all strive to gain the majority.

African American shifted its votes towards the Democrats when the Democratic Party helped them to gain the rights to vote and more equality. They used to be a strong vote bank for the Republicans from the Emancipation to early 20th centuries. They support what they believe is right. Is there any shame for anyone or any vote bank to support what they believe in? I don't think so.

Answer 3

Another consideration is that many US states are Gerrymandered to enforce a vote for a particular party. Most states are re-redistricted by an elected official or series of elected officials, and several states get gerrymandered for political biased in order to pick the electorate. This occurs in both parties, with the current opinion in discussions that the the Republicans do it more, but even pro-Democratic supports don't even side step that they control one of the worst gerrymandered states in the entire union with it's infamous 3rd congressional district (aka The Broken Wing Pteradactyl district), which cuts through four different counties and the city of Baltimore. The net effect is that in a state where the voters are registered 2 Democrats for every 1 Republican, Maryland's House Delegation has only one Republican out of 8 total representatives. If it was more representative of the population, it would look more like 5-3 or 6-2, depending on how the rounding is done.

In terms of the Presidential election, this is a horse of a similar yet different color. In the United States, the Popular vote does not decide the President (or if you want to push back against people who want it too, it does, but you have to win more popular votes). The U.S. uses the Electoral college which ranks the voting power of each state by it's total congressional delegation (each state gets an automatic 3 votes plus an additional X where X = House Reps - 1). In addition D.C. gets 3 votes and may never have more votes than the least populous state in the Union (D.C. currently has a higher population then at least two states, but it's not enough to merit an additional vote, so it doesn't really matter anyway).

Each state is allowed to delegate their Electoral votes any way they see fit. Baring Nebraska and Maine, every state with two or more electoral votes chose to use a winner take all system. Nebraska and Maine divide the votes such that winner of the popular vote takes 2 votes plus one vote for each congressional district they won the popular vote in (Maine has two so there could be a 3-1 split. Nebraska has five votes, so it can be split 3-2 or 4-1.).

As mentioned by her supporters, Clinton won the national popular vote (by 3 million votes... give or take), but Trump won more electoral votes (by a wider margin of total available. He also won more counties and more congressional districts). On paper this might seem like a violation of how a "Democracy works" at first, but the system is used in to prevent a few urban areas from controlling the larger rural areas. Like I said, Hillary only wins the election if it counts pure popular vote, any division smaller than purely national, she loses by wide margins. Even in a semi-direct democracy like Switzerland, the popular vote is checked by having it measuered against the Cantons vote (equal to states in terms of federalism). If it's popular with the majority, but not popular with the Cantons, it will lose there too.

And since you asked about race, this too is also balanced by the fact that the African American population represents about 12-15% of the national population. Meanwhile the Caucasian population is about 65% of the total population of the country. When combined with the Hispanic Vote (tends to Democrats, but there are significant sub-groups that swing Republicans, such as the Cuban Population who hate Castro and anyone who says he should be allowed to exist in any way and Conservative Catholics) This is around half of the majority vote still. The remaining ethnic minority populations also tend to Democrats, but this gets wobbley with Asian Americans who only recently started voting for Democrats more (it's only recently that there was significant American generation of Asians over Immigrant Asians. Most of the latter were either from very Conservative Cultures (such as the Japanese) or fleeing Communism regimes (Vietnamese, Some Koreans) or both (Chinese).

It should be worth pointing out that while I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, Hilary Clinton's poll numbers among African Americans took a dramatic dip of a few points while Trumps poll numbers increased far greater than the drop off in Clinton's and were the best numbers for that demographic for a Republican President in decades. While these numbers still had Hillary in the low 90s among African Americans and were only 1-3 points, the fact that Trump picked up a greater percentage can be worrying as some social commentators have speculated that a loss of only 20% of the African American vote would devastate the Democrat party (Though I have no factual number crunching to back this up at this moment. It's just a little discussed possible problem I thought was interesting to mention.).

As a rule, Americans will vote in block with like minded people, based on race, region, and need. But they are not historically a part of any particular party as the goals of the party change. And while people do talk about how the Republican party used to have the black vote up until the mid-20th century, the way particular states voted has shifted as well. Keep in mind that California was not the bastion of Democrats it is seen as now. In fact, for most of it's time as a member of the Union, California was a bit of a Swing state, with a strong period of Republican lean until 1952. For the next 10 Presidential Election Cycles, California would be a Strong Republican state supporting them for all but the election of Lyndon Johnson in 1964. California swung for Eisenhower (twice) Nixon (Thrice if you Considered his failed Presidential run against **KENNEDY!*, Five times if you consider his Vice Presidential ticket with Eisenhower, and 8 times if you consider his pre-1952 Congressional service as a two term representative and once as a Senator prior), Ford (Sure, Ford Pardoned Nixon, but, given how hardcore fanboy California was for Nixon at this point, that was a feature, not a bug.) Regan (twice for Governor of California and then thought he did such a great job, they thought he deserved a promotion and elected him President) and then voted for George H.W. Bush once before contributing to his re-election defeat to Bill Clinton. Only Barry Goldwater (who lost in a landside nationally) was to offensive to Califorina's sensibilities.

As I hoped it demonstrates, the U.S. may be bank voters, but they do changes parties based on the times and the platforms and issues.