President Joe Biden will head to South Carolina on Monday, a state that swept away any chance for Democratic primary competition but forces the president into an uphill battle: to win over black voters who have slowly rescinded their support over his first term.
Many black voters have noted in polls and Democratic focus groups that they feel disengaged with the voting process. This comes on top of Democratic allies growing concerned that Biden may be losing his grip on the black voting bloc that helped his narrow victories in key battleground states in 2020.
A poll in November found that a significant number of black voters in important states would vote for former President Donald Trump over Biden in 2024 — leaving Biden allies worried that it might be too little, too late for the president to rekindle his support among black voters.
Biden is heading to the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the site of the 2015 mass shooting that killed six women and three men. By visiting with survivors and families of the shooting victims, Biden is hoping to win back black support in a place he says stands testament to the danger of rising extremism that his presidency can prevent.
A Biden campaign official told CNN that the president “will remind the American people that the same hate that plagued the Mother Emanuel Church years ago hasn’t gone away — and it is incumbent on our elected officials to do their part in rooting out hate, extremism, and division in our country.”
Biden’s campaign worked overtime to target black and Latino voting populations early on in the election cycle, investing in voter registration, outreach, and advertising. But Democratic allies and strategists are worried that Biden could ultimately lose his reelection bid if black people keep trending away from Biden.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said on Sunday that he is “very concerned” about Biden’s ability to garner support from black voters, stating that the president has a messaging problem.
“I have no problem with the Biden administration and what it has done, my problem is we have not been able to break through that MAGA wall in order to get to people exactly what this president has done,” Clyburn said.
Black voters are historically a reliable ally of the Democrats, particularly for Biden. In 2020, Biden garnered 92% of votes from black people. Trump received 8% of the black vote in 2020 and 6% in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center.
Now, only 50% of black voters approve of Biden, down from 86% in 2021, according to PBS. In six of the most important battleground states this cycle — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — 22% of black voters would place a ballot for Trump over Biden.
A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12% of the black vote in nearly 50 years. Conversely, no Democratic presidential candidate since the civil rights era has earned less than 80% of the black vote.
While Biden continues to have a strong lead among black voters, the Biden campaign’s biggest concern is that black voters will not show up to vote — in the 2020 general election and 2022 midterm elections, Democrats were disappointed at the level of black voter turnout. Several factors can contribute to the low level of black voter turnout, such as the drop in black unemployment and their poor view of the economic landscape under Biden.
“We’re not going to wait and parachute into these communities the last minute and ask them for their vote. We’re going to earn their vote,” Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told reporters last week. “Voters of color are the ones who have the most at stake in this election, and we need to make sure that every single one of them understands the choice in front of them.”
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However, some Biden supporters are confident the president’s connection to South Carolina could win over black voters. As vice president, he visited Mother Emanuel nearly nine years ago after the shooting that was two weeks after he buried his son, Beau Biden. Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison told CNN that the then-vice president’s condolences shared with the congregation are still “burnt” in his mind.
“Joe Biden is going to walk out of South Carolina with strong support because the state knows him; the state knows how hard he’s fought for them,” Harrison said. “That still sits with me because that was just genuine, who Joe Biden is. That wasn’t because of politics or any image. It is who he is.”
