Black voters powered Lacy Clay's victory : Stltoday

Black voters powered Lacy Clay's victory : Stltoday

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There were some exceptions to the larger pattern. Clay did well in upscale, mixed-race areas of the city like the Central West End. And even in the most predominantly white city wards on the south side, Carnahan never broke 78 percent.

But overall, the numbers confirm what was increasingly evident during the campaign: Race mattered.
Nearly half of the district is within the city borders. The rest of the district is largely in north St. Louis County, where Clay also handily beat Carnahan. The county did not provide vote breakdowns for individual neighborhoods.
Turnout figures varied, but in several of the wards where Clay did the best, turnout was significantly above the citywide average.
"What I'm thinking is that some of the predominantly white areas didn't turn out to the degree you might expect," said Lana Stein, former political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "There wasn't a galvanization of white residents to the degree that there was a galvanization of black residents."
The reason, she theorized, is that to many white voters, it was just another congressional contest, while to many black voters it was about the fate of the state's only congressional seat representing a majority-minority district, one that's been there for four decades. "I think that was very important," Stein said.