Fewer Black Americans plan to vote in 2024, Post-Ipsos poll finds

Fewer Black Americans plan to vote in 2024, Post-Ipsos poll finds

Black Americans’ desire to vote in this year’s election is down sharply compared with four years ago, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted last month — a potentially troublesome sign for President Biden, whose ascent was powered by Black voters in 2020 and who has intensified efforts to court them before November’s election.

The poll of more than 1,300 Black adults finds that 62 percent of Black Americans say they’re “absolutely certain to vote,” down from 74 percent in June 2020. The 12-percentage-point drop outpaces the four-point drop among Americans overall, from 72 percent to 68 percent.

The drop in turnout interest is sharpest among younger Black people, who have always been less enthusiastic about Biden and have now shifted to majority disapproval of his job performance. Overall, nearly 1 in 5 Black voters who turned out for Biden in 2020 say they are less than certain about whether they will vote at all this year.

The softening support includes voters like Michayla Crumble, who said she held her nose and voted for Biden in 2020 — and still cringes when she remembers Biden saying, in the midst of the 2020 campaign, that if an African American voter was having trouble deciding between him and Donald Trump, then “you ain’t Black.” Four years after voting for Biden to stop Trump, the 26-year-old student from St. Louis has left Biden’s camp altogether.

“I think it’s maybe because of the way the economy is going, how inflation is going and then with the whole situation in Palestine and how he’s responded to it — it’s just made me less impressed with him,” said Crumble, who said she is likely to vote for a third-party candidate in November. “So the likelihood of me voting for him again is pretty low.”

In follow-up interviews, poll respondents stressed a number of issues that weakened their interest in voting and supporting Biden: Biden has not delivered on the criminal justice, police and voting rights reforms that he campaigned on. Several mentioned the conflict in the Middle East, either as a moral disaster or as a conflict that has soaked up U.S. money while minority and poor communities at home struggle for resources. Many said that they and the people they care about have been affected by ballooning costs of groceries, gas and other goods.

Deatrick Woods voted for Biden in 2020 but is on the fence about turning out this year in Michigan, a state Biden won by 2.8 percentage points. “Biden, he hasn’t made things better like I would have thought at this point,” said Woods, who identifies as a Democrat and has never been a Trump supporter.

“Economy and inflation, that’s still a big problem,” the 35-year-old retail worker in Highland Park said. “Rising prices affected me a lot, along with everybody else … more spending and less saving.”

Asked what would motivate him to vote, Woods said, “I just want to have the confidence that they’re going to improve things.”

The drop in enthusiasm is notable among Black women, who have been a backbone of the Democratic Party. The poll finds 41 percent of Black people ages 18 to 39 are certain to vote this year, down from 61 percent in June 2020. Among Black women in that age group, certainty to vote dropped from 69 percent in 2020 to 39 percent this year.

A polling station at a library on the first day of early voting in Charlotte on Oct. 15, 2020.

The Post-Ipsos poll finds 74 percent of Black registered voters say they will “definitely” or “probably” vote for Biden. Just 14 percent of Black voters say they would definitely or probably support Trump. That is smaller than Trump’s Black support in some recent national and state polls, though it would still mark a slight improvement from his performance in 2020.

Some 20 percent say they would probably or definitely vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 14 percent say the same for professor and activist Cornel West and 9 percent say they would at least probably vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, although only 1 percent said they would “definitely vote for” any of the third-party candidates. (Rather than asking a traditional forced-choice vote question, the survey asked respondents to rate their likelihood of voting for each candidate and respondents could say they would “probably” vote for more than one candidate.)

Among Black registered voters under age 40, 60 percent say they are likely to vote for Biden, 20 percent for Trump and 21 percent for Kennedy. Biden’s support rises to 78 percent among Black voters ages 40-64 and to 88 percent among those 65 and older. About 1 in 3 Black registered voters are younger than 40, as are about one-third of poll respondents.

And more Black Biden supporters than Black Trump supporters say they are certain to vote this year — 78 percent of those who say they will probably or definitely vote for Biden say they are certain to vote, compared with 51 percent of those who support Trump.

Erica Young, 53, of Atlanta, is certain she’ll be disappointed at some point if Biden wins a second term. Inflation is taking a bigger bite out of her monthly disability check, and she feels gun violence is out of control in her community. She is also worried that the president is too focused on conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, and not on the poor and disadvantaged at home.

But she’s unenthusiastically voting for Biden anyway, because she’s terrified about what will happen if Trump wins the White House again.

Erica Young voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and says she’s unenthusiastically voting for him again in November.

“I’d rather choose the lesser of the two evils,” said Young, who voted for Biden in 2020. “Biden has his faults. There are a lot of questionable things. But if this is the choice between the two of them, I’d rather it be [Biden]. Trump is a show. He’s a clown. He’s not a real politician.”

Young said part of the reason she’s certain to cast a ballot, if reluctantly, is because she lives in Georgia, a hotly-contested battleground that will be one of a handful of states that decide who wins the White House.

Overwhelming majorities of Black voters supported Biden in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to network exit polls; each state Biden won by narrow margins.

The Post-Ipsos poll finds a 76 percent majority of Black Democrats say they are certain to vote, but that is down from 84 percent four years ago. The drop is even sharper among political independents, from 54 percent to 38 percent.

While 64 percent of Black Americans overall say their vote matters “a great deal” or “a good amount,” that drops to under half of those under 40.

A young boy holds a sign during a rally advocating for early voting and voting rights in October 2022 in Decatur, Ga.

Biden and his campaign have stepped up their efforts to shore up support with Black voters recently. In August, the campaign said it was spending $25 million to reach key voters in battleground states, including what it called the largest and earliest investment in Black media for a reelection campaign in history. Those ads highlight Biden’s efforts to close the racial wealth gap and note that he has presided over the lowest Black unemployment rate in history.

In addition, Biden launched a pair of ads in March aimed at Black voters in battleground states, touting pandemic relief checks and his administration’s successful effort to cap the price of insulin at $35 a month.

Last Monday in Atlanta, Vice President Harris began a national economic tour aimed at highlighting how Biden administration policies have helped Black Americans. She stressed that the Biden administration has helped narrow the racial wealth gap with student loan forgiveness and small business grants.

Still, the Post-Ipsos poll indicates some positive — or at least mixed — signs for Biden among Black voters.

Some 62 percent of Black Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, down slightly from 66 percent last year and from 70 percent in 2022. His disapproval rating has reached 37 percent, up from 31 percent last year and 28 percent two years ago. That’s still far better than Biden’s approval rating with the general public, which stands around 40 percent in a Post average of April polls.

And Black Americans trust Biden more than Trump to handle a wide range of issues, although sizable shares say they trust “neither” candidate on each issue. Biden holds a 50 percent to 16 percent advantage over Trump on the economy and a 54 percent to 9 percent advantage on abortion. Biden also holds wide leads over Trump on whether Black voters trust him to handle crime, immigration, the Gaza war and racism.

But Black Americans have mixed opinions on Biden’s record. Some 38 percent say his policies have helped Black people; about half (49 percent) say his policies have made no difference; while another 11 percent say they have hurt Black people. Asked about Trump’s presidency, 55 percent say his policies hurt Black people, while 13 percent say they helped and 30 percent say they made no difference.

“Sometimes he does good and sometimes he’s just a little slow,” Carl Wade, 71, said of Biden. The retired data typist from New York City voted for Biden in 2020 and plans to do so again in November. “President Biden has been a little slow as far as trying to solve the problem of prejudice and discrimination. But I know that he alone cannot solve the problems … I know that the president is just a human being like you and me.”

Over half of Black Americans, 55 percent, say they trust Biden more to handle racism compared with just 6 percent who trust Trump more, with 33 percent saying they trust neither.

Supporters watch the presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden during a Latinos for Biden-Harris watch party on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Black Americans under 30 have flipped in a negative direction on Biden: 56 percent approved of Biden’s job performance last spring, but today 55 percent disapprove. Today, just about half of Black people in their 30s approve of Biden (51 percent); ratings rise to 59 percent among those in their 40s, 72 percent among those ages 50-64 and 85 percent among Black adults ages 65 and older.

On the Israel-Gaza war, 42 percent of Black Americans overall trust Biden more to handle the conflict, while 11 percent trust Trump and 40 percent trust neither. About half of Black adults under age 30 trust neither candidate to handle the Israel- Gaza war, though nearly as many say the same about abortion, racism and crime.

Black Americans’ overwhelmingly negative views of Trump could represent one route for Biden to energize his supporters by November. An 83 percent majority of Black registered voters have an unfavorable view of Trump; 80 percent believe he is biased against Black people. Over three-quarters of Black voters say Trump is “probably” or “definitely” guilty of a criminal conspiracy in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Just 8 percent think he is innocent.

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll was conducted April 9-16, 2024, among 1,331 non-Hispanic Black adults ages 18 and older along with a partially overlapping sample of 1,029 U.S. adults overall through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, an ongoing survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. Results among Black Americans have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.