The New York Times tells us that Hillary Clinton's camp is concerned about her level of support among black voters:
... Since Mrs. Clinton left the secretary of state post in February, she and her husband have sought to soothe and strengthen their relationship with African-Americans, the constituency that was most scarred during her first bid for the presidency. Five years after remarks by Mr. Clinton about Barack Obama deeply strained the Clintons' bond with African-Americans, the former first family is setting out to ensure that there is no replay of such trouble in 2016....Antipathy? Here's the level of antipathy I'm seeing in the polls: In a Quinnipiac poll taken a couple of weeks ago, Clinton beat Paul Ryan among black voters 87%-7%; she beat Ted Cruz 88%-6% and Rand Paul 83%-10%. She even beat Chris Christie, supposedly the Republican most able to make inroads among non-white voters, 77%-12%. When black voters are asked whthr she'd make a good president, 86% say yes. (Only 51% say the same about Joe Biden, and 35% about Chris Christie.)
"I think that this is an effort to repair whatever damage they felt may have been done in '08," said the Rev. Al Sharpton. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton "know that there are some who have lingering questions, if not antipathy, towards them," Mr. Sharpton said....
A survey conducted by Public Policy Polling about a month ago has similar numbers (PDF), although there are more undecideds: Clinton beats Paul 76%-8%, beats Cruz 78%-10%, beats Jeb Bush 77%-6%, and beats Christie 74%-8%. And that would be after primaries in which Clinton beats Biden 66%-17% among black voters (Elizabeth Warren gets 4%).
Do these match Barack Obama's stratospheric numbers among black voters? No, but they're pretty close to Bill Clinton's numbers: he beat George H.W. Bush 83%-10% in 1992 (Ross Perot got 7%), then beat Bob Dole 84%-12% (with Perot at 4%) in 1996.
Yes, yes, yes: this is all premature, the campaign hasn't started, and we don't know how it's going to play out. But if the argument is that there's still a large amount of bad blood after the 2008 primaries, I don't think it's borne out by the evidence.
