For years, Black men have been an integral part of the Democratic coalition.
In 2012, 87 percent of Black men backed former President Barack Obama; in 2016, 82 percent backed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and in 2020, 79 percent backed President Joe Biden, according to NBC exit polls. This year, 70 percent have said they’re backing Vice President Kamala Harris, per a recent New York Times/Siena poll.
As those numbers make clear, the group overwhelmingly supports Democrats, but their loyalty has begun to wane, a shift that stretches across the last several campaigns. That attrition has something to do with the candidates themselves, but also with voters’ longstanding disillusionment with the party. Despite being one of Democrats’ most loyal voting blocs, some Black voters have felt ignored and taken for granted as campaign promises and change have been slow to materialize.
“People are disappointed with the Democrats,” says David Childs, a history professor and director of the Black Studies Program at Northern Kentucky University. “A lot of people feel disenfranchised. They don’t feel like they have a voice.”
An added twist is some evidence that the Democrats’ leftward shift on social issues may also be a factor. Reviewing polling on respondents’ views on LGBTQ issues, Thomas Edsall of the New York Times noted that views expressed by Black voters in one survey suggested that “some aspects of Democratic liberal orthodoxy contribute to the exodus of conservative minorities from the party.”
The erosion Democrats have seen could be attributed to any number of reasons. But broadly, here are three theories that can explain why some Black men are feeling cool toward the party this cycle:
1) A sense of economic stagnation
In the last four years, Black Americans have faced the same economic challenges as everyone else, while also navigating racial wealth and wage gaps that mean many Black families feel the effects of rising costs and inflation more keenly than their white counterparts.
While Black unemployment reached an all-time low during the Biden administration, it’s still twice as high as white unemployment. Similarly, while the Black poverty rate reached a record low in 2022, that all-time low still meant nearly one in five Black Americans was living in poverty, nearly double the poverty rate of white Americans.
“In focus groups and conversations with party leaders, Black men have stated repeatedly that their material conditions have remained unchanged under Democratic and Republican presidential administrations,” the New York Times’s Maya King reports. And as costs have risen during a Biden administration — mostly due to inflation — that feeling of stagnation has only grown more pronounced.
Such sentiments have prompted some voters to weigh whether voting for an alternative option – like Trump – could help produce a different outcome.
“Nothing has come to fruition. Look at the schools, the playgrounds, the parks. Downtown is struggling. In our community, typically, we vote for Democrats. How has that panned out for us?” Ahmad Taylor, an undecided Michigan voter who previously voted for Biden, told the Washington Post’s Michael Brice-Saddler.
Multiple Covid-19 aid packages also helped stem the economic pain some voters experienced because of the pandemic during the Trump administration and the beginning of the Biden administration. These included stimulus checks, small business funding, and expansions to unemployment payments.
A number of these payments, however, expired during the Biden administration because Republicans in Congress balked at passing a continuation of programs like an expanded child tax. That’s left voters dealing with both higher costs on consumer goods and a drop-off in aid that could help soften the blow.
Because the first wave of stimulus checks was sent out during the Trump administration and also bore his name, some voters have been under the mistaken impression that he’s solely to credit for them. That idea has taken hold even though the aid was passed by a Democratic House and a Republican Senate, and even though stimulus payments were distributed during the Biden administration as well.
2) Resistance to the growing social liberalism of the Democratic Party
Another dynamic at play is more conservative attitudes among some Black voters on social issues. In particular, as Democrats have shifted leftward on LGBTQ rights — just over a decade ago, Obama was hesitant to back same-sex marriage — some of these voters have chafed at the party’s current stance.
This cycle, Republicans have ramped up attacks on LGBTQ rights, particularly those targeting trans people, and that may be resonating with certain voters, including Black men. In one attack ad on Harris that played during football games, the Trump campaign has gone after her support for funding gender-affirming surgeries for trans inmates — something, it should be noted, that prisons also offered under Trump. “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you,” the ad states.
Charlamagne Tha God, an influential media personality and one of the hosts of the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, has described the ad as “effective.”
Other voters have spoken of Democrats’ support for gay rights as a problem. “That’s when I left Democrats alone,” one voter, identified as J, told NPR, noting that the legalization of gay marriage, a milestone made possible by the Supreme Court but celebrated by Democrats, was his tipping point away from the party.
Those socially conservative viewpoints can extend to gender as well. When it comes to Harris’s candidacy, specifically, sexism might well be a real issue for some voters, including Black men.
“There are traditional values that come out of a lot of the Black homes that are still around. Even though many Black males were raised by a mother, by a matriarch, there’s still this notion that women have a certain place in our society,” says Childs.
Cliff Albright, executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, notes that he’s heard the sentiment from a small percentage of voters he’s spoken to: “You got some percentage that will come out and tell you, like in your face: I don’t think a woman should be president,” he says.
3) An election cycle rife with disinformation
A problem that only amplifies Democrats’ struggles is the rise of disinformation, multiple experts posited.
Childs notes that influencers on the right have seized on real concerns Black men may have — like economic frustration — to advance false messages about how Harris and Biden haven’t accomplished anything to help members of this group.
In one example that Charlamagne Tha God cited during a town hall with Harris this week, he referenced a viral clip from a Harris interview with The Grio that was taken out of context and has been cut so it looks like she’s saying she won’t do anything specifically for Black people.
These claims often begin with pundits on the right, or even Trump himself, and get amplified over social media by celebrities, podcasters, and other prominent personalities. The singer Janet Jackson, for instance, recently elevated lies that Trump had told questioning Harris’s ethnicity.
Multiple surveys, including an August NAACP poll, have found a stark generational divide among Black men, with voters under 50 far less likely to support Harris than those over 50. Albright believes this points to the effect disinformation on social media has had, as younger voters are more likely to get news from these sources.
“It’s like a living organism, this disinformation. It grows from a cell, and then it reaches the point where it takes on a life of its own, and it just grows all kinds of tentacles,” Albright tells Vox. “And … it’s touching millions of Black voters.”