Travis Foreman, a Black attorney in metro Atlanta, says he’s been everywhere on the political spectrum. “I voted Democrat, I voted Republican, I voted independent, you know, I voted all over the map,” he said. “But I personally believe that this country is headed into a very dark place.
“I know a lot of people believe that Donald Trump is the reason for that dark place,” he added, “but I actually disagree.”
Foreman’s politics are at the center of a broad conversation about Black men voting for Trump. The only people in America who are less likely to vote for Trump than Black men are Black women. That is the history of Black voters and Democratic presidential candidates over the last 10 election cycles, from Ronald Reagan’s second term to today.
And yet, talk of defection by an unexpected number of Black male voters to Trump remains persistent. Obama himself has said he finds the focus on Black men and Trump support puzzling.
“[Harris’s] message is directly focused on the challenges that we face as Black men, and that our communities face, and that America faces,” he said on an organizing call Sunday hosted by Win With Black Men. “Donald Trump has shown utter disrespect and disregard for our communities – and for Black men specifically – throughout his career.”
Media reports citing polling data have suggested that Trump is capturing more Black male voters than previous election cycles. Many of those reports have relied on a statistical aberration in polling data – smaller sample sizes of Black voters within larger polls. As the election evolves in earnest, polls suggest Harris is suddenly recovering to the traditional baseline of Democratic support from Black voters.
“It’s nonsense that Black men are not supporting the vice-president. We are supporting the vice-president. We actually have the data to prove that,” said Quentin James, CEO of the Collective Pac, a political fundraising organization supporting Black candidates. His organization has been tracking turnout and conducting polling throughout the campaign, he said.
James noted that Black turnout was softer in Georgia and North Carolina than Democrats would like, particularly among younger voters. Though turnout overall is breaking records, Black voters compose only about 26% of the electorate so far in Georgia – about four points shy of what conventional wisdom in the state suggests is a Democratic win.
“So as Black men, we need you all to be surrogate fathers for the next nine days,” he said. “If you see a Black young person, they are your child, a child of our community. We need you to encourage them to show up and vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris.”
Republican policy objectives stand in stark contrast to the stated social and economic interests widely expressed by Black voters, with a conservative assault on diversity initiatives central to the Trump campaign. The last time Democrats nominated a Black candidate for the presidency, turnout among Black voters increased – proportionately exceeding white turnout in 2012 for the first time in American history. Barack Obama won about 93% of the Black vote.
Obama refrained from lecturing Black men for political backsliding on the Sunday call, as well as at a Harris rally in the heart of Atlanta’s Black suburbs in Clarkston, Georgia, last week. The former president drew some criticism from a previous appearance in Pittsburgh this month, when he told Black men to get over their reluctance to vote for a woman. Some Black men “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, as you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that”, Obama said.
For Black men who are steadfast Democratic voters, though, the impulse to question the motivations of Black Trump voters looms large.
“Black men need to grow up,” said Darryl Manning, a business consultant in Atlanta who cast his vote for Harris on the first day of early voting. “Black men need to own their communities again. We don’t have those leaders any more. We don’t have the Malcolm X and the Martin Luther King and the Ralph David Abernathy and the John Lewises any more … Black women held up, Black women stepped in, and Black women have led our communities.”
Trump won 12% of the Black vote in 2020. That is close to the high-water mark since the political realignments of the 1960s. Reagan maxed out Republican support among Black voters at 14% in 1980. With the exception of the Obama years, Republicans win a tight band of 8-12% of the Black vote.
That figure disguises a significant gender gap. Historically, about 15-20% of Black men vote for Republicans, compared with 5-9% of Black women.
Trey Baker, a senior Harris adviser working on Black voter outreach, said it was on the campaign to bring in voters who may have sat out in recent years.
“We have to take that next step,” he said. “Go out and make sure that the disaffected voters, the people who didn’t vote last time, the people who don’t see themselves in some of these policies and some of these things, show them where they fit in.”
