Vice President Kamala Harris has improved her party’s standing among Black voters since President Biden’s exit from the presidential race, but she still trails Mr. Biden’s 2020 share of that critical Democratic constituency, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of Black likely voters.
According to the poll, over eight in ten Black voters nationwide indicated they would vote for Ms. Harris, a significant rise from the 74 percent who said they would support Mr. Biden before he stepped out of the race in July. However, Mr. Biden earned 90 percent of Black voters to win the White House by narrow margins in 2020, and Ms. Harris’ drop-off, if it holds, is significant enough to jeopardize her prospects of winning critical battleground states.
Democrats have been banking on a tidal wave of support from Black voters, drawn by the opportunity to elect the first Black female president and disgusted by former President Donald J. Trump, whose questioning of Ms. Harris’s racial identity, comments on “Black jobs,” and demonization of Haitian immigrants brought his long history of racist attacks to the forefront of the campaign.
Ms. Harris is undoubtedly on course to win an overwhelming majority of Black voters, but Mr. Trump looks to be chipping away at the Democratic Party’s long-standing edge. His campaign has witnessed an increase in popularity as it has used targeted advertising and sporadic outreach activities to seek African American voters, particularly Black men. According to the new poll, almost 15% of Black likely voters indicated they expected to vote for the former president, up six points from four years earlier.
According to the poll, most of the drop in support for Ms. Harris is due to a growing sense that Democrats, who have long hailed Black people as the “backbone” of their party, have failed to deliver on their promises. Forty percent of African American voters under 30 believed the Republican Party was more likely to follow through on campaign promises than the Democrats were.
“They sweep table scraps off the table like we’re a trained dog and say, ‘This is for you,'” said LaPage Drake, 63, of Cedar Hill, Texas, just outside Dallas, about the Democratic Party. “And we clap like trained seals.”
Mr. Drake, who operates a tree removal business, stated that he would support Mr. Trump.
“Regardless of how people call him racist and stuff, he is for the country of America,” Mr. Drake declared.
The vice president has tremendous support from Black women, with approximately 83 percent. Twelve percent of Black women said they would vote for Donald Trump, while five percent were undecided. However, the drop from Mr. Biden’s 2020 statistics among Black men is notable: 70 percent indicated they would vote for Ms. Harris in November, down from 85 percent in 2020. This is consistent with the overall gender divide, although it is relatively recent among Black voters.
Still, despite Mr. Trump’s ongoing efforts to persuade African American voters that they were better off during his presidency, more Black Americans now than in February believe the Biden-Harris administration’s policies have benefited them.
Significantly fewer people now say that Mr. Trump’s initiatives benefited them.
In Pittsburgh on Thursday night, former President Barack Obama made a direct appeal to Black men who may be on the fence about supporting Ms. Harris, claiming that many “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president” and reminding them that “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time.”
Allies of Ms. Harris point to her work as vice president to reduce Black unemployment, stabilize health-care costs, and enhance financing for historically Black institutions and universities as examples of a focused and demonstrable effort to benefit Black communities. In recent interviews, Ms. Harris has stated that she understands that African American voters will not automatically flock to her candidacy.
To reach these people, Ms. Harris’ team has begun a tour of historically Black institutions and universities, and a push to engage Black faith voters in battleground states will begin this weekend. Ms. Harris has also attempted to engage Black men with surrogate events and unorthodox media appearances, such as a recent appearance on the podcast “All the Smoke,” hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
The vice president will attend a town-hall-style gathering in Detroit on Tuesday organized by “The Breakfast Club,” according to Charlamagne Tha God, one of the show’s hosts. The nationally syndicated show is popular among Black millennials.
African American voters had a much higher opinion of Ms. Harris personally than of Mr. Trump; 75 percent believe Ms. Harris would do a better job handling problems vital to them. Only 17% thought Mr. Trump would.
“She’s more capable of doing the job than he is, I feel,” said William Cox, 47, a truck driver in Greensboro, North Carolina. “She stands more for what betters my family.”
However, on individual issues, Black voters were divided. Fifty-six percent said the United States should focus less on problems abroad and more on domestic issues, a position more similar to Mr. Trump’s than Ms. Harris’. Mr. Trump’s border wall is supported by 40% of Black voters, and 41% support wholesale deportation of illegal immigrants, as Mr. Trump has promised. That is less than the 52 percent who oppose the proposal, but it still represents a sizable portion of the Black electorate.
Mr. Trump, who is closing up his campaign with increasingly nativist rhetoric and scare tactics, routinely evokes a false picture of crime rampant in the country’s cities, fueled by undocumented immigrants. In fact, violent crime in US cities has decreased.
However, a plurality of African American voters, 47 percent, felt crime in big cities had grown out of hand, appearing to agree with Mr. Trump’s representations. 42 percent agreed with a more moderate framing of the issue: crime is a huge problem in big cities, but it is not out of control.
Crime rates, particularly murder rates, are improving in most large cities following the coronavirus pandemic rise in Mr. Trump’s final year in office, according to statistics.
Black voters, on the other hand, have tempered their assessment of Mr. Biden’s tenure in government. In February, African American voters believed Mr. Biden’s policies hurt them more than helped them, by 25 percentage points. Views have now flipped, with Black voters 23 percentage points more likely to say Mr. Biden’s policies had benefited them, giving Ms. Harris a potential advantage as she makes her argument.
At the same time, public perception of Mr. Trump’s presidency has deteriorated since February. Black voters are now twice as likely to say Mr. Trump’s policies harmed them as to say they helped them; in February, Black voters were 50-50 on the issue.