(The Center Square) – Minority voters will be a key part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to success, both across the country and especially in the battleground states.
While both Black and Hispanic voters overwhelmingly support Harris, former President Donald Trump has made some headway compared to past elections, especially with young Black men.
In 2020, President Joe Biden won 90% of Black voters. This time around, there has been a 12% swing in favor of Trump.
A recent poll from The New York Times found that only 78% of Black likely voters plan to vote for Harris this time around. When third-party candidates were added to the question, Harris received only 76% of the vote.
Concerned with this negative trend in the polling, Democrats like former President Barack Obama, the first Black president, are campaigning to try to rally them back to the Democrat Party.
“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all corners of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama said at a campaign event to rally Black voters in Pittsburgh earlier this month.
Yet, reports have found that Obama’s message is falling short for its targeted audience.
Harris has also made multiple appearances in Georgia in the last few weeks, even appearing at some churches in Atlanta over the weekend to rally voters.
Of the 7 million registered voters in Georgia, 30% or 2.1 million are Black, making it the largest minority group of voters. Hispanics are less than 4%.
According to data from the U.S. Census, that is nearly the same percentage as the number of Black citizens in the state, which make up 33.2% of the state’s population.
In Georgia, when asked to choose between Harris and Trump in a recent poll from ActiVote, 76% of Black likely voters said they would choose Harris.
In 2020 exit polling, 83% of Black men said they voted for Biden – winner by 11,779 votes to take the state’s 16 electoral college votes.
Early voting thus far is setting records. Black voters have made up a significant part of that.
Of the 2.1 million votes cast, 537,000 were submitted by Black voters. That means that just over 1 in 4 Black voters in the state have already voted.
This is all according to an Election Data Hub from the secretary of state’s office.
At a recent appearance in Georgia, Harris urged Black voters to vote for her if they want a “country of freedom, compassion and justice.”
For Harris, resurrecting Obama’s campaign promise of “positive change” is a last-ditch effort to win back the over 1 in 4 Black men who say they support Trump.
Currently, with 13 days left before Election Day, polls in Georgia have Trump leading by an average of 1.5%.
