US Vice President Kamala Harris has improved her party’s standing among Black voters since President Joe Biden left the presidential race, but she still significantly trails Biden’s 2020 share of that vital Democratic constituency, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of Black likely voters.
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Nearly eight out of 10 Black voters nationwide said they would vote for Harris, the poll found, a marked increase from the 74 percent of Black voters who said they would support Biden before he dropped out of the race in July. But Biden won 90 percent of Black voters to capture the White House by narrow margins in 2020, and the drop-off for Harris, if it holds, is large enough to imperil her chances of winning key battleground states.
Democrats have been banking on a tidal wave of support from Black voters, drawn by the chance to elect the first Black female president and by revulsion toward former President Donald Trump, whose questioning of Harris’s racial identity, comments on “Black jobs” and demonising of Haitian immigrants pushed his long history of racist attacks to the forefront of the campaign.
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Harris is no doubt on track to win an overwhelming majority of Black voters, but Trump appears to be chipping away broadly at a longstanding Democratic advantage. His campaign has relied on targeted advertising and sporadic outreach events to court African American voters — especially Black men — and has seen an uptick in support. About 15 percent of Black likely voters said they planned to vote for the former president, according to the new poll, a six-point increase from four years ago.
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