More than 95 percent of black voters in Duval County are registered Democrats, compared with just under half of all voters in the county. Those statistics are hardly anomalies -- all across the South, blacks are rarely more than 5 percent to 10 percent Republican. But local Republican leaders are nursing plans to redouble their efforts at courting black members, and some recent statistics are giving them hope. Their actual numbers are still tiny -- fewer than 5,000 in Duval County, and fewer than 50,000 of the state's nearly 8 million voters -- but leaders see opportunity. While voter registration in Duval County increased 36 percent since 1989, black Republican registration jumped 118 percent... "There is a reflection among blacks that the Republican Party just doesn't have a whole heck of a lot to say to them," said Philip Klinkner, an expert on race and politics at Hamilton College in New York. "Many blacks go even further and believe the Republican Party is antagonistic toward them: It's not that they get a dollar from the Republicans and two dollars from the Democrats; it's that they get a dollar from Democrats and lose 10 dollars with the Republicans."
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