Do Kamala Harris or Trump have better inroads with the African American community?
While African Americans accounted for only 11% of voters in the 2020 election, according to the Pew Research Center, they were a key racial demographic in the Democratic Party’s coalition in 2020 voting 92% – 8% in favor of Biden over Trump.
Pew research saw 76% of Black respondents respond with ‘strengthening the economy’ as the top priority for the next President, and the Black Economic Alliance (BEA) found that the economy is the primary issue for Black voters. Housing was the most critical economic issue according to the same BEA poll with 91% of Black voters believing that an increase of the supply of affordable housing would benefit their economic outcomes (compared to 78% of all voters).
If Trump outperforms the current polls or Harris underperforms with Black voters compared to recent elections, these voters could decide the race.
A recent poll from the Angus Reid Institute has Vice President Harris leading Trump with Black voters 67%-12% with an additional 17% still undecided. Another poll, conducted by the progressive group NextGen America, found Harris leading Trump 72 percent to 19 percent, which are similar numbers to how Biden was performing while he was still in the race according to Pew Research.
While Harris currently leads Trump with black voters according to these polls, if these numbers were to hold, the margins would be significantly lower than it was for the Biden-Harris ticket’s razor-thin win in 2020 or Hillary Clinton’s close loss to Trump in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center validated voter studies.
It is reported that black males are not resonating with the Harris-Walz campaign.
In a recent CNN clip, multiple black patrons in a local barbershop told a reporter they didn’t consider Kamala to be Black and that her race/ethnicity did not make them more likely to vote for her. In addition to this, reporting from the New York Times found that “while Black men have been reliable voters for Democrats… a small but significant slice of Black men have historically been hesitant to support Black women seeking the highest positions of power.”
The Trump campaign responded to a question regarding African American support in recent poll results, Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, told Newsweek, “President Trump has actually gained support from 2016 and 2020, so Democrats have actually lost Black support.”
