In November 2024, 59.6% of Black citizens 18 and older told the Census Bureau they had voted. For white citizens who are not Hispanic the figure was 70.5%, a gap of about eleven points.
The national number hides a wide spread. In Mississippi, where Black adults make up 36% of the adult population, the highest share of any state, reported Black turnout was 70.8%, level with white turnout there (70.0%). Maryland (70.5%), Washington, D.C. (70.0%) and New Jersey (69.5%) sit beside it at the top.
But a large Black population did not by itself mean high turnout. Alabama (52.4%), Louisiana (53.4%), South Carolina (55.8%) and Tennessee (51.5%) all came in below the national Black rate, and Arkansas was the lowest of the states that can be measured, at 42.5%. Georgia, home to the third largest Black adult population in the country after Texas and Florida, landed near the middle at 61.2%.
Set the two measures side by side and the relationship is weak. Where Black America lives tells you little about where it turned out.
What jumps out to me is that numbers alone do not create political participation. Mississippi and Maryland have large Black populations, but so do Alabama and Arkansas, and their turnout looks very different. That tells me there is something more happening beneath the surface.
It may be the strength of local organizing. It may be churches, civic groups, families, campaigns and community leaders consistently reinforcing that voting matters. It may be differences in registration, access, political competition or whether people believe their vote can actually make a difference. The data cannot tell us which of those factors is driving the gap, but it does tell us that simply having a large Black population is not enough.
And that is the part I keep coming back to. We cannot take Black political participation for granted anywhere. We have to register people, educate people, talk to our neighbors, bring somebody with us and do everything we can to get out the vote, y’all.
How to read this
These figures come from a survey, not from ballots. People are asked whether they voted, and some say yes when they did not, so every number here runs a little high. The rates are for citizens 18 and older, not all residents. And state samples are small: most of these estimates carry a margin of error of ±5 to ±9 points, so treat close neighbors as ties rather than a ranking. About 57% of Black adults live in the South, which is why so much of this story is told there.