Graphic by Chicago Crusader
As President Joe Biden’s approval ratings continue to plummet, more Blacks say they will vote for former President Donald Trump should the two square off again in 2024, according to the latest poll in the New York Times and Siena College.
The poll found that 22 percent of Black voters in six major battleground states said they would support Trump in next year’s election, and 71 percent would back Mr. Biden. Those states include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Researchers say the poll is striking because Trump won just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020 and 6 percent in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.
No Republican presidential candidate has failed to win more than 12 percent of the Black vote in nearly half a century.
In April, Time magazine reported that Biden’s favorability ratings among Black voters declined from 84 percent right after he took office in 2021 to 74 percent at the end of March 2023, according to YouGov/Economist polling.
The New York Times articles quoted several leaders of political organizations who said many Blacks who they represent will vote Republican in 2024 after supporting the Democratic candidate in 2020.
The New York Times report also said the poll shows 27 percent of Black men supported Mr. Trump, compared with 17 percent of Black women.
According to the Pew Research Center, more than eight in ten Black adults (84 percent) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 10 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.
Black voters in South Carolina saved Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020, where during the primary, he trailed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Blacks went to the polls in droves after South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn endorsed Biden’s failing campaign. Biden went on to defeat Trump after flipping the red states of Georgia and Arizona to blue.
Biden appointed California Senator Kamala Harris as the nation’s first Black female vice president. He nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson before she became America’s first Black female Supreme Court Justice.
Under Biden, the unemployment rate among Blacks has been the lowest in years at 5.8 percent, compared to 3.4 percent for White workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Biden in 2021, won praise from Black female voters after he used an executive order to cancel up $10,000 in student loan debt for an estimated 40 million Americans. But in June the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Biden’s plan, saying the U.S. Secretary of Education does not have the power to waive student loans.
Today, many Blacks have grown disillusioned with Biden’s leadership, accusing him of not doing enough for Blacks in post pandemic America. In addition, Blacks have grown more distrustful and disappointed in the Democratic Party, which many believe no longer represents their political interests.
In May, the Crusader reported on a campaign by Black voters in Chicago to boycott the polls during the 2024 presidential election. Called “Black American Biden Boycott,” the campaign aims to call attention to the lack of progress Blacks made under the Democratic Party and progressive liberals.
But Biden is expected to be the Democratic presidential nominee, despite calls for him not to seek reelection. With a year before the 2024 presidential election, political analysts are concerned that his dwindling poll numbers will cause a historic shift where Biden will be the first presidential candidate in the civil rights era who has earned less than 80 percent of the Black vote.
