President Biden and former President Trump are strengthen their messaging toward black male voters, underscoring the political power this demographic will have in November.
Although black voters predominantly identify as Democrats, Issue Rumors that black men are leaving the party have been circulating since 2020, when Trump secured the support of 12 percent of black voters.
Now some observers believe that black men could decide the winner of the presidential election in November.
“I don’t know your path to victory without black men,” said Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project.
He added, however, that progress must also be made among “ordinary” black male voters, not just those who are politically engaged.
“The majority of black men in this country do not see themselves in that,” said Robinson, who is also mayor of Enfield, North Carolina. “Sixty percent of black men sit out election after election after election and [candidates] continue to pursue the same strategies. So I ask them, “How can you win without these black men?”
While black voters’ interests span a range of issues, including education and health care, experts and activists agree that any party must focus on the economy if it wants to win over black men in time for the election.
“Black voters are placing importance on many of the issues this cycle that we’ve seen in the last few election cycles,” said Terrance Woodbury, founding partner of polling group HIT Strategies. “But the first issue is the economy, although I think there’s a bit of a disconnect here because when black voters talk about the economy, we hear them talking about costs, and that doesn’t necessarily mean jobs or wages.”
According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 77 percent of black voters said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, while 20 percent of black men said they would vote for Trump.
But while some polls suggest an ideological shift among black men, that doesn’t mean they will show up at the polls on Nov. 7, according to Shelley Wynter, a member of the Georgia Black Republican Council.
“Black men still represent the lowest percentage of voter turnout,” Wynter noted.
One of the reasons black men don’t vote is because no one talks about the issues that are most essential to them, he added.
“We are focusing on women because we know that older people and women will go to the polls,” said Wynter, a Trump supporter.
This year, Trump’s team has tried to put black male voters at the center of their messaging.
In February, Trump tried to tap into pop culture by unveiling a line of sneakers aimed at black men at Sneaker Con. He also tried to build a connection with them by referencing his legal troubles, apparently in an attempt to highlight racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Trump also indicated that he would consider appointing a black vice president as his running mate. However, Robinson doubts that this will have any impact on the voting behavior of black men.
“They think you can use a face that looks like ours to motivate black men to vote, but that doesn’t work,” Robinson said. “They think of black men in the context of the ’60s, when Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael were leaders of a certain group of black men. These brothers who don’t vote don’t believe anyone is their leader, and if you’re not a trusted messenger, you can send Jesus Christ and knock on their door, but you’re probably not going to convince them.”
But Trump’s team continues.
The former president recently traveled to New York’s South Bronx, where he spoke to a crowd that was largely black and Latino. And on Saturday he will take part in a panel discussion in Detroit, a city where the majority of the population is black.
“President Trump is showing up in Black communities and listening to voters where they live,” Janiyah Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director, said in a statement to The Hill.
“Polls and all other indicators of public support show that a historically high number of voters in the black community are turning their backs on Biden and turning to President Trump.”
However, Woodbury is not convinced that this support for Trump will last until November.
“There is a gender gap between black men and black women – with black men being about 4 percentage points less likely to support Joe Biden than black women – but it’s a very small gap,” Woodbury told The Hill.
The bigger problem, Woodbury said, is the generational conflict.
HIT Strategies found a 30 percentage point difference between youthful and older black voters’ support for Joe Biden.
But Biden’s campaign team is convinced that the administration’s success in forgiving student loans, record-low black unemployment and the passage of reforms such as banning no-knock search warrants, as well as Trump’s history of racially motivated statements, will deter black voters from supporting the former president.
“Donald Trump has spent his life and political career disrespecting black men at every opportunity: he entered public life by falsely accusing five black men of murder, he denigrated the memory of George Floyd, and he launched his political career by trying to undermine the first black president as the architect of the Birther movement,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement to The Hill.
“That’s why the first thing he did when he took over the RNC was shut down its minority support centers, and why his campaign has no significant black support program. President Biden is campaigning – and campaigning – to earn the support of black people, not to ask for it. That’s what leadership looks like.”
Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said black men are a vulnerable demographic right now. The party that most addresses those vulnerabilities, he added, will win the support of black men – and with it the White House.
“We have to acknowledge the pain and the frustration … and that there is still work to be done,” Seawright said.
“Some people don’t understand that you can’t undo 400 years of neglect in one or two election cycles,” he added. “People see these weaknesses and want to exploit these weaknesses, but I’m confident that [Black men] “We are not fooled – we see through the fog and understand who was with us and who was against us, who will fight for us and who will fight against us, but also who is trying to take away some of the fundamental values that we as black men in this country have recently been able to unlock and enjoy.”
