With exit polls showing stronger than usual black support for Republican Jim DeMint in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate race, Democrats are dismissing claims that their most loyal voting bloc is eroding.

Republicans say the polls reflect a shift in ideology by some blacks as they join the middle class. They also point to previous outreach efforts by DeMint and other Republicans.

Democrats say the polls are just plain wrong.

DeMint, a little-known Republican outside his Upstate congressional district before the campaign, captured 14 percent of the black vote Tuesday, according to final exit poll figures compiled by the National Election Pool, a media owned group.

That’s at least four percentage points higher than Republicans historically have done in statewide races.

Inez Tenenbaum, the Democratic nominee, pulled 83 percent of the state’s black vote, according to the exit poll.

Pollsters interviewed 1,782 voters as they left their voting precincts Tuesday. The margin of error of their sample was 4 percentage points.

Ron Thomas, vice chairman of the S.C. delegation to the Republican National Convention in September, said the exit polls are “probably in line.”

“What I see and hear is that African-Americans want to get involved” with the GOP, said Thomas, who is black. “But they don’t want to deal with the stigma that goes along with it.”

Several factors could be driving the Republican showing in the exit polls, Thomas said. DeMint appeals particularly to young blacks in the 18-40 age group on job creation, conservative social values and taxes.

“The GOP has not changed its message,” Thomas said, “but blacks are starting to become more open to conservatism, versus Republicanism.”

Tenenbaum spokeswoman Kay Packett said exit polls are not reliable enough to base such assumptions on.

“Exit polls are nothing more than partially educated guesses,” she said, “and they’re very often wildly wrong.”

More reliable is an inspection of identifiably African-American precincts, Packett said, where Tenenbaum won 93 percent or more of the black vote.

County-by-county comparisons of the percentage of the black vote won by Tenenbaum and fellow Democrat Alex Sanders in his unsuccessful 2002 bid for the U.S. Senate show similar totals, she said.

The State Election Commission on Monday plans to post precinct vote totals that will show actual black voter turnout.

Other observers say little time was devoted to issues pertaining to diversity or equity in the U.S. Senate campaign, which opened the door for diminished black support for Tenenbaum.

“The election results are a call for the Democratic Party to take a new look at the way it packages its message and deals with its base,” said the Rev. Joe Darby, vice president of the state NAACP.

If Democratic candidates had raised issues dealing with equity, diversity and civil rights, he said, it would have forced a Republican response and exposed weaknesses.

Also, Darby said, DeMint had developed friendships within the black community well before he began his run for the Senate.

“In the Senate race, both candidates articulated similar conservative stands on a lot of issues,” Darby said, though DeMint “vigorously and openly embraced his Christian Right base and tied himself to President Bush.”

Bruce Ransom, a political science professor at Clemson University, said DeMint may have benefited from outreach efforts to the black community fostered by his predecessor in the 4th Congressional District.

Ransom said he saw DeMint at annual meetings of black leaders hosted by former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis at his home during the past few years to discuss various issues.

Inglis was elected Tuesday to succeed DeMint in his old seat.

Black voters traditionally have held conservative views on such issues as the death penalty, homosexuality, marriage and abortion, Ransom said, but they haven’t translated that into votes.

It’s a legitimate question now as to whether that’s changing.

“There may be something going on, but clearly we need more data,” Ransom said, questioning whether the 2004 results reflect a developing crack in the Democratic Party between blacks and Southern whites.

“There was no enthusiasm for Tenenbaum in the black community,” he said, “but 83 percent is still a lot, and getting 90 percent (of the black vote) would not have made her win.”

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Columbia Democrat, said he finds the exit poll numbers for DeMint incredible. He said an examination the election results of some of Richland County’s most nonwhite precincts shows DeMint only got 3.9 percent of the black vote.

Clyburn said the percentage of whites voting for S.C. Republicans has held roughly at 53 percent to 54 percent over the years.

Tenenbaum’s whole premise for winning “depended on her cracking the women’s vote at a higher percentage than they normally would vote,” Clyburn said. That didn’t happen.

Clyburn said a notion has taken hold in the state and nation that “God only smiles on Republicans.” That’s a problem for Democrats right now, he said, “but it’s one that will pass.”

“Look,” Clyburn concluded, “there are 30-some odd black legislators in South Carolina. They are all Democrats. There are 43 black legislators in Congress. They are all Democrats.

“That answers it for me.”

Reach Burris at (803) 771-8398 or rburris@thestate.com