Kamala Harris Has a Massive Lead Among Black Voters. It May Not Be Enough.

Vice President Kamala Harris is winning support from an overwhelming number of Black Americans, but that still may not be enough to defeat former President Donald Trump in key swing states in November.
Black voters are a key group of Harris’ coalition, as they have backed Democrats by massive margins in past presidential elections, despite the small but significant GOP inroads made in 2020.
Republicans are optimistic they can continue gaining ground among Black voters, as some polls suggest Harris is falling behind past Democratic candidates like former President Barack Obama or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Some polls even show her numbers among Black voters running behind President Joe Biden’s 2020 polling.
Whether or not Harris, who is Black, can win big margins among Black Democrats could make the difference in key swing states Pennsylvania and Georgia, two of the states most likely to determine the outcome of the election.
A Suffolk University poll released on Tuesday showed that Harris’ polling numbers among Black voters are weaker than previous Democratic nominees, including Biden. The difference may not appear drastic, but could matter in states that could be decided by only a few thousand votes.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 likely voters from August 25 to 28, showed Harris leading Trump by 64 points among Black voters (76% to 12%). It found Harris leading Trump among all voters by just over 4 points (47.6 to 43.3%).
A similar poll released on Labor Day four years ago showed Biden with a 78% lead among Black voters (82 percent to 4 percent). It surveyed 1,000 registered voters from August 28 to August 31, 2020.
Meanwhile, a Suffolk poll released just after Labor Day 2016 showed Clinton with an 88-point lead among Black voters (92% to four percent). The same poll from August 2012 showed Obama with a 71-point lead among Black voters (77% to 6%).
David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told Newsweek on Tuesday that Harris likely needs to win Black voters by a net of 85 percentage points over Trump, or she could be in danger of losing key states.
Harris had made “great strides” but is still “falling short of where she needs to be,” he said, pointing to a drop in Democratic support among Black men between the ages of 18 and 34.
“Harris could still win Wisconsin without the exact same support levels of black voters if she improves her standing in the suburban and rural areas of the Badger state,” he said.
Michigan and Pennsylvania will be critical, too. “Both of those states rely on big margins (13-1) coming out of Detroit and Philadelphia to offset most of the red counties in the rest of those states. If she only wins the black communities 8-1, it will be very challenging,” Paleologos said.
Andrea Benjamin, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, told Newsweek that neither candidate should take Black voters for granted, and that Harris should emphasize issues that matter most to Black voters, such as the cost of housing, reproductive rights and voting rights. These are issues she noted that most middle and working class Americans, regardless of their race, may find common ground.
Current polls may not necessarily be indicative of how Black voters will vote in November, she said. Previous Democratic presidential candidates had more time to build trust among the electorate, and that many voters may have felt “more confident in what they were doing” further out from the election, she said.
Candidates should also work with community leaders to build trust among Black voters in key states, having a “state level plan,” rather than bring in people who are not connected to local communities to try to get out the vote. Voters respect “authentic outreach,” she said.
“Relying on networks that are already active and have the community respect. To me that’s the place I would start, because if a random person knocks on my door and tells me I have to vote, I can sort of take it or leave it. But when it’s someone that I know from my community, I might be a little more receptive,” she said.
Matt McDermott, a Democratic strategist who serves as the senior vice president of Whitman Insight Strategies, believesHarris will be able to match past Democrats’ performance among Black voters, noting that the number of Black voters considering Trump continues to fall.
“Polling earlier this year was bleak: showing Biden losing up to 35% of Black voters to either third party candidates like RFK Jr. or to the Republican nominee Donald Trump. Since Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, polls are now finding fewer than 20% of Black voters would consider a candidate other than the Democratic nominee, with that figure steadily falling,” he said.
However, he said what is “more important” than her margin is that Black voters have become more engaged and likely to vote since she became a candidate, and her polling gains have with them have made the race more competitive in states with a high percentage of Black voters.
“Kamala Harris’ entrance into this race has fundamentally upended the electoral map and put states like Georgia and North Carolina into battleground status. Harris has opened up multiple pathways to 270 thanks to her support among Black voters,” he said.
Both Harris and Trump are making plays to increase their share of the Black vote. Harris, who would become the first Black and Asian woman elected president if elected, has has emphasized her economic policies, such as an aggressive housing plan, over her identity. Even without a laser focus on identity, her candidacy has seen Black voters come back around to the party after surveys earlier this year found Biden losing support.
Meanwhile, Trump last month spoke at a National Association of Black Journalists panel, where he was interviewed by several Black journalists. The appearance sparked immediate and widespread criticism after he questioned Harris’ racial identity, saying during that panel that she “happened to turn Black.”
Conservatives have sought to win over Black voters by highlighting her stance on immigration, as polls suggest the issue may be her biggest weakness among various racial groups. Republicans have specifically sough to win over Black men, a key voting bloc polls suggest have trended toward the GOP.
To that point, NBC News reported last month that conservative groups are highlighting the Biden administration’s efforts to ban menthol cigarettes, which government data shows is more likely to be used by Black smokers, in key states in an effort to dull their support for Harris. The Biden administration meanwhile punted the menthol ban until after the election, seeing its potential problem with Black voters.
Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign for comment via email.
A recent YouGov poll delivered better numbers for Harris among black voters. The survey, conducted among 1,368 registered voters from August 25 to August 27, showed Harris with a 69-point lead over Trump among Black voters (81% to 12%).
This marks an improvement from where their poll showed Biden polling among Black voters four years prior, as an August 27 to August 28, 2020 showed Biden with only a 64-point lead over Trump among Black voters (7% to 11%).
Still, it found Harris polling behind where Clinton or Obama were among Black voters around this time in the cycle.
An August 2016 YouGov poll showed Clinton with a 76-point lead over Trump among Black voters (82% to 6%), while an August 2008 poll showed Obama with an 82-point lead (85% to 3%).
Elsewhere, a Quinnipiac University poll, conducted among 1,611 likely voters from August 23 to August 27, found Harris with a 55-point lead among Black voters (75% to 20%).
A poll four years earlier, conducted among 1,081 likely voters from August 28 to August 31, 2020, found Biden with a 58-point lead (74% to 16%).
While some polls suggest Harris may still have work to do to improve her margins among Black voters, an earlier Suffolk poll showed that she reversed most of the gains Trump made among Black voters.
Suffolk polled Black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two key swing states both before and after Biden exited the race in July. The polls found that Harris gained ground on Biden, whose polling among Black voters had dropped.
One survey polled 500 respondents per state between June 9 and June 13, finding Biden with a 39-point lead in Michigan (54.4% to 13.8%) and a 45-point lead in Pennsylvania (56.2% to 10.8%).
However, an August poll of Black voters from the two states showed Harris leading by 62 points in Michigan (70.4% to 8.6%) and about 60 points in Pennsylvania (70.4% to 10.8%).
In 2020, Biden won 87% of Black voters, while Trump won 12%, according to the New York Times’ exit poll. In 2016, Clinton won 88%, while Trump won 8% of Black voters. Obama won 93% of Black Americans, compared to Mitt Romney’s 6%.
Obama’s 2008 election remains the strongest performance for a recent Democratic presidential candidate among Black voters, perhaps unsurprising given the historic nature of that race. Sixteen years ago, Obama won 95% of Black voters, compared to the 4% who backed John McCain.