Harris is panicking over the Black male vote – but polls don’t show full picture

With the US election only 17 days away, Kamala Harris is courting one demographic with particular fervor: Black male voters.

As new polls warn that Black voters – who have consistently voted for Democratic presidential candidates (at rates of at least 80% since 1994) – may be less enthusiastic about the Democratic party, Harris has released a new slate of policies specifically aimed at Black men. Her stated plans include increasing access to the cannabis industry and educational opportunities that would expand pathways to “good-paying jobs … [regardless of] a college degree”.

But some pollsters say that panic around Black male voters is exaggerated and that such narratives ignore their historical support of Democrats. They also note that the focus on Black men elides deeper nuances about Black Republican support as well gender differences in voting amongst Black people altogether.

“To say that for any reason we need to worry about Black men not supporting Harris or the Democrats is completely overblown,“ said Chris Towler, founder of the Black Voter Project (BVP), a polling initiative about Black voting behavior. “I think a lot of the story around this need to regain Black voters is coming from a mainstream media narrative built around really poor polling on Black voters.”

The latest national data shows that Black men and women overwhelmingly prefer Harris for president, the largest amount of Democratic support she has from any demographic. But some polls suggest that such support is eroding. A recent New York Times/Siena College national poll reported that 70% of likely Black male voters support Harris (down from 85% of Black men who turned out for Biden in 2020) versus 83% of likely Black women voters. Twenty percent of Black male voters said they would vote for Trump if the election was held today, according to the poll, a six-point increase from the percentage of those who voted for the former president in 2016.

Several headlines have concluded that such polling is proof of Trump making “gains” amid Black voters. But Towler argued that national polls, which survey a majority of white voters, are “not designed to measure Black public opinion”. Instead, such surveys ask questions targeting the general population and pull data from specific demographics, attempting to draw specific conclusions on Black voting behavior from a small pool. Towler noted that BVP surveyed over 2,000 Black people in April and 1,600 in August, versus only 589 Black voters who were surveyed in the September Times/Siena College poll. BVP’s polling also includes Black people who are not likely voters and considers “cultural competencies around asking questions and collecting data with Black voters”.

Widely reported national data can also miss distinctions within the Black voting demographic, among men and women. Kiana Cox, a senior researcher on the race and ethnicity team at Pew Research Center, argued that such data can ignore how some voters may lack confidence in how, for instance, Harris handles issues of the economy – a priority issue for Black men but lower in importance for Black women, according to October polling from Pew Research.

In another report from September, written by Cox, 45% of Black men under the age of 50 were “very [or] somewhat confident” that Trump could make good decisions around economic policy. Only 20% of Black women in that age bracket felt the same. Distinctions around economic issues could explain gender differences among Black voters who support Trump, Cox said. But national polling rarely highlights those subtleties.

The latest data on Black male voters is a part of a larger feeling of “anxiety and dissonance and distancing” many are experiencing with the Democratic party, particularly among young voters who were raised during the Obama administration, said Leah Wright Rigueur, an assistant professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and an expert on Black male voting patterns.

Since the 1960s, the Republican party has had more success in appealing to Black men as opposed to Black women, a highly partisan group, Rigueur said. In fact, the latest figures on Black male support of Trump mirror similar data on Republican support during the Reagan administration, but have gotten an increased attention given the competitive nature of the 2024 election.

Still, she noted, the concern from parties about Black male voters is “valuable”, as the Democrats have been forced to respond with meaningful policy. She pointed out that several of Harris’s policies address specific concerns from Black men about being “left behind” by the economy.

Amid increased interest in Black Democratic support, Towler noted that the main focus should be on Black voter turnout, as news stories about Black voters moving to the Republican party could decrease votes. “Having narratives that make it seem like Black voters are moving towards the GOP, that there’s no difference between the two parties, that both are equally as bad, tends to depress turnout,” he said. It “makes it less likely that we are going to get the high levels of Black [voter] turnout that we need to influence swing states in the right direction”.