If the latest polls are correct (always a big “if”, to say the least) and if they hold to election day (just as big an “if”), Joe Biden is going to lose a great many Black votes; more than enough, it would seem, to cost him critical “swing” states…and maybe even one or two that, in a normal year, would be pretty solidly Democrat.
Want to see some evidence of the possibility there might be such a Biden “Blackout”? Here are excerpts from Mandy Taheri’s just-published article at Newsweek:
While fewer Black voters in two critical swing states plan to vote for President Joe Biden compared to 2020, former President Donald Trump has seen his support among Black voters jump into the double digits surpassing his 2020 influence, a poll published on Sunday shows.
“Biden is still the first or second choice of the vast majority, while most would avoid Trump,” a USA Today/Suffolk University phone survey of 500 registered Black voters each in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania found.
The former president received less than 10 percent of Black voter support in Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2020, but according to the new poll, about 15 percent of Black voters in Michigan and 11 percent in Pennsylvania have pledged their support for him.
The poll found that most Black voters who don’t want to support Biden, won’t turn to Trump on the ballot, but rather are likely to support third-party candidates like Cornel West or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Nearly 15 percent of voters in both states said they prefer the third-party candidates to Biden or Trump, with 14 percent indicating they are undecided.
As you can see, the poll shows that Biden’s problem with Black voters is two-fold. Some – though not a great many – claim they are going to switch to Trump. But a large additional number express preference for neither candidate and say they will go third-party.
If the Black vote were evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, the loss of votes to Cornel West and RFK Jr. would not be a big deal. They would probably pretty much even out between the two parties. But since almost all Black votes typically go Democrat, the loss would be predominantly felt by Joe Biden…to the obvious benefit of Donald Trump.
Let’s remember that it is a long way to November. And, as I’ve pointed out numbers of times in this blog, I do not expect Joe Biden will be the Democrat nominee.
But if he is, and this trend holds – along with the significant losses of Latino votes we have seen in numerous polls for months and months – it is truly panic time for Democrats in general and for Biden in particular.
