President Joe Biden is hemorrhaging support from a historically pro-Democrat voting bloc. The latest I&I/TIPP Poll published this week suggests that 59% of black voters favor Biden over his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump. In 2020, a staggering 87% of black voters supported Biden, representing a drop of nearly 30 percentage points over the past four years.
Matt Carpenter, director of FRC Action, explained to The Washington Stand, “In past elections, a singular poll here or there would show Democratic support among black voters slipping, and the results on election day would confirm there was no significant movement of black support away from the Democrats. This election we have seen consistent polling showing this is happening.” He continued, “I think the reason is simple: a generational divide is forming within the voting black population. Younger black voters are coming of age, entering the voting booth, and are choosing candidates who fit their ideological preferences or who speak to their concerns about the direction of the country.”
Carpenter added, “They’re less likely to show loyalty to the Democratic Party if they don’t believe the Democratic Party is conservative enough for them, or isn’t doing enough to address their concerns about the state of the economy or the border or crime.” He concluded, “I suspect we will see this divide show up in a big way on November 5.”
Ken Blackwell, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Human Rights and Constitutional Governance, explained to TWS why black voters are abandoning the Democratic presidential candidate in favor of Trump.
“The real break and movement away from the Republican Party happened in 1968, very much akin to what’s happening now: protests across campuses and in the major cities. The black vote has become the most stable demographic in the Democratic quiver since 1968,” he said. “What’s interesting to me now and is accounting for the shift is the bankruptcy of public safety initiatives in major Democratic cities that have become crime-ridden. Cities have become not fields of dreams but battlefields and fields of destruction. And safety is a big deal in the black community.”
Blackwell added, “Couple that with the fact that the lowest levels of black unemployment in history came under the first Trump term — he was growing the economy, there were meaningful jobs being created, he passed a very important Second Chance law for people who had been convicted of lesser crimes. He was walking the walk.”
“I think what you began to see starting in 2020 was a shift of the black male vote. All of the polling information reported that black males between the ages of 25 and 40 were in a high percentage beginning to take a serious look at Trump,” Blackwell clarified. “Right now, because of the safety problems in our cities, because of school choice, you’re starting to see some bleeding of the black female vote away from Biden too.”
He continued, “In places like Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, this open-borders policy is killing Biden. It’s rhetorically catchy to say every state is a border state, but when you start to see Biden giving housing, cell phones, and clothes to illegal immigrants, people notice. And where are they locating them? In many cases, in black middle-class communities. So people are drawing the line. They just aren’t going to take it.”
“You can ‘not like’ Trump, but the reality is that he is consistent,” Blackwell further observed. “He basically campaigned in 2016 on his Second Chance program, and most politicians in general have campaign promises that they forget until the next election season. But there was so much consistency in what he promised and what he did when he was elected. And as a consequence, he in fact had his list of promises made. He became the first president to get 12 million more votes in his reelection campaign than he did in his first election. And that’s because he delivered — including to black communities across the country. So this might be the hardest pool of voters for him, particularly among black women, but the movement toward Trump is starting to be … significant.”
The I&I/TIPP Poll also showed Biden losing support among Hispanic voters. In 2020, Biden won 65% of the Hispanic demographic, against Trump’s 32%. Now, only 47% of Hispanic voters express support for Biden, while 26% back Trump and 13% back Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
This is in line with polling data from the past several months, forming a trend. An Axios/Ipsos poll found that even though Hispanic voters largely identify as Democrats, Biden’s popularity among that demographic has fallen from 53% in 2021 to 41% as of last month. Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity among Hispanic voters has increased from 24% to 32%, diminishing Biden’s advantage over Trump from 29% to a mere 9%. Among Hispanic voters who say they plan to vote in November, Biden’s advantage falls even lower, to only 3%. A study published by the Pew Research Center also found that the share of Hispanic voters who identify as Democrats has fallen by 13 percentage points just since 2016.
Another historically Democratic voting bloc has also been abandoning Biden: American Catholics. A Pew Research Center survey last month found that Trump is leading Biden by 12 points (55% to 43%) among Catholic voters. In 2020, Trump maintained only a one-point advantage over Biden. Earlier this year, another survey showed that battleground state Catholics prefer Trump to Biden 54% to 31%, with 15% undecided.
Significantly, the survey found that Catholic voters consider Biden and the Democratic Party to be “too extreme” on abortion. A prior study found that Catholics have been steadily abandoning Democrats as their abortion advocacy has increased.
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
