President Joe Biden‘s potential 2024 reelection bid is poised to depend on black voters, particularly black women, similar to his 2020 campaign.
Although no decision has been announced, Biden did dedicate the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day long weekend to honoring the civil rights leader as he burnished his record with the black community, important outreach should he run again while Republicans seek to make inroads of their own.
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Biden’s support among black voters has remained steady between the first and second years of the president’s administration despite political setbacks, according to pollster David Paleologos. Those setbacks include Biden and congressional Democrats’ inability to convince 10 Republican senators to back their policing and voting reform proposals, 2020 election promises.
Paleologos, Suffolk University’s Political Research Center director, cited his own polls that found Biden outperformed in his approval and favorability ratings among black voters by between 10 to 15 percentage points compared to his overall numbers in December 2021, and that difference only increased last month.
“That signals to me a growing loyalty, not a decreasing loyalty, even though they might have fallen short on some specific policy issues,” Paleologos told the Washington Examiner.
Simultaneously, Republicans have pointed to their own million-dollar appeals to black voters, especially men who were drawn to former President Donald Trump and CNN polling that, for example, found black voters moved toward the GOP by 4 points during last year’s midterm elections in contrast to the 2018 cycle. Associated Press data also found a 6-point shift during the same time frame.
“Basically, if a Republican improves their standing from 10[%] to 20% or higher among black voters, for every vote that is flipped over, a Democrat has to win nine others back to offset,” Paleologos said. “That’s why there’s been some focus on not only Hispanic voters but black voters.”
Other evidence of the GOP’s success is “the historic number of black Republicans serving in Congress,” according to Cecilia Johnson, the Republican National Committee‘s director of black engagement.
RNC initiatives include establishing nine black community centers, which hosted a combined 594 events last cycle, from back-to-school supply drives to business roundtables and even farmer’s markets. Johnson attributed Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) attracting 13% of black voters in 2022, 5 points more than Trump two years earlier, to the RNC’s Cleveland center, notwithstanding black men historically being less reliable at the ballot box.
“Republicans are putting down roots in the community, having conversations, and earning votes,” she said. “The Republican National Committee engages with the black community year-round, not just at election time.”
The significance of black voters to Biden was underscored last month when the White House started pushing the Democratic National Committee to reorder the 2024 presidential primary calendar to begin with South Carolina, the state that awarded Biden the 2020 nomination. But both of his Martin Luther King, Jr. Day long weekend appearances were toned down from past remarks in which he criticized Republicans for introducing “Jim Crow 2.0” with “voter suppression and election subversion.”
Biden used the Rev. Al Sharpton‘s annual National Action Network Martin Luther King, Jr. Day breakfast Monday to detail what he says he has achieved on behalf of the black community during the last two years, from lower black unemployment after the pandemic to the Senate confirmation of the Supreme Court’s first black female justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and declaring Juneteenth a federal holiday. He, too, emphasized other accomplishments, including the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure law and the Democrats-only Inflation Reduction Act, a $430 billion climate and healthcare spending measure, in addition to pardoning all prior federal simple marijuana possession convictions and securing the release of Russia-detained black WNBA Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner “just in time for Christmas.”
“So many of you work so hard to pass the George Floyd [Justice in Policing] Act,” Biden said. “But since the Senate Republicans blocked it last year, I did the only thing I could do: I signed a historic executive order that included key elements of that bill at the federal level.”
“We have to get the votes in Congress for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act,” he added. “That’s why I went to Atlanta a year ago to make clear that we cannot let the filibuster be an obstacle in protecting the sacred right to vote, period.”
Biden delivered a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr.’s pastoral home, the day before. There, in a state he had avoided prior to the midterm elections as Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) vied for a full term against retired NFL player Herschel Walker (R-GA), the first sitting president to address the congregation repeated exaggerated claims about his involvement in the civil rights movement. But Biden’s speech, drafted in part by White House Office of Public Engagement Director and onetime Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, reiterated his 2020 campaign theme as well.
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“The battle for the soul of this nation is perennial,” he said on what would have been King’s 94th birthday. “It’s a constant struggle between hope and fear, kindness and cruelty, justice and injustice against those who traffic in racism, extremism, and insurrection — a battle fought on battlefields and bridges, from courthouses and ballot boxes to pulpits and protests.”
