President Joe Biden’s 2024 polling numbers among black and Hispanic Democrats are perhaps the worst since Walter Mondale in 1984, New York Times’s Nate Cohn warned Tuesday based on Siena College national polling.
While Biden’s support among white Democrats remains steadily below 50 percent, his support among black and Hispanic Democrats has plummeted since he assumed office.
“Biden’s weakness among nonwhite voters is broad, spanning virtually every demographic category and racial group, including a 72-11 lead among Black voters and a 47-35 lead among Hispanic registrants,” Cohn wrote.
In 2020, Joe Biden won 92 percent of the black vote and 59 percent of the Hispanic vote. Over the five presidential elections since 2000, the Democrat candidate has averaged 91 percent of the black vote, according to Gallup. Only eight percent on average goes to the Republican candidate.
“Overall, the president’s approval rating stands at just 47 percent among nonwhite voters in Times/Siena polling over the last year; his favorability rating is just 54 percent,” Cohn explained.
“[T]hese tallies might still be the worst for a Democratic leader among Black and Hispanic voters since Walter Mondale in 1984,” Cohn observed.
Biden’s terrible polling numbers appear to benefit former President Donald Trump. Only 53 percent of nonwhite voters support Biden, while 28 percent support Trump, Siena College polling revealed.
“Democrats have lost ground among nonwhite voters in almost every election over the last decade, even as racially charged fights over everything from a border wall to kneeling during the national anthem might have been expected to produce the exact opposite result,” Cohn wrote. “Weak support for Mr. Biden could easily manifest itself as low turnout — as it did in 2022 — even if many young and less engaged voters ultimately do not vote for Mr. Trump.”
“If the gap persists until the election,” Cohn continued, “it will raise the possibility that the political realignment unleashed by Mr. Trump’s brand of conservative populism has spread to erode the political loyalties of working-class voters, of all races, who were drawn to the Democrats by material interests in an earlier era of politics.”
Since 2016, Trump gained support among black and Hispanic voters, according to Pew Research. Trump’s support grew ten points from 2016 to 2020 (from 28 to 38 percent). It also grew two points among black voters (from six to eight percent).
More than 62 million Americans are Hispanic, the 2020 census found. The black population is just over 45 million. Forty-two percent of black voters cast their vote in 2022, as did 31 percent of Hispanic voters.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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