Obama admits black turnout for Clinton is lagging

Amid signs that black voters aren’t fired up about Hillary Clinton, President Obama urged blacks Wednesday to go to the polls and acknowledged that turnout in early-voting states “is not as solid as it needs to be.”

Speaking on the Tom Joyner Morning show, Mr. Obama sounded the alarm as he prepared to travel to North Carolina to rally the Democratic base.

“I’m going to be honest with you right now, because we track, we’ve got early voting, we’ve got all kinds of metrics to see what’s going on, and right now, the Latino vote is up. Overall vote is up,” Mr. Obama said. “But the African-American vote right now is not as solid as it needs to be.”

The radio show has a largely black audience.

Early voting among African-Americans is down about 16 percent in North Carolina compared with 2012, when Mr. Obama lost the state narrowly to Republican Mitt Romney. The state is a must-win for Republican nominee Donald Trump, and the New York Times reported that early voting among white voters is up 15 percent from four years ago.

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