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September 10, 2024 - 9:00pm
Kamala Harris is projected to perform significantly worse among black and Hispanic voters compared to Joe Biden in 2020, according to a new Focaldata poll.
Support for the Democrats has declined from 91% to 81% among black voters, and from 64% to 56% among Hispanic voters compared to the 2020 election. The findings come shortly after a widely publicised New York Times/Siena poll, which found Donald Trump one point ahead of the current Vice President.
The new polling undermines any expectations that Harris, a woman of colour, will naturally win over non-white voters. Democrats’ longstanding dominance with black and Hispanic voters has been waning over the past decade amid a broader political realignment, as Trump and the newly populist-branded GOP win over low-education and low-income voters. Shortly before Biden stepped out of the race this summer, Trump was polling at 30% among black voters, a historic high for a GOP candidate.
The trend has been even more striking among Hispanic voters. Trump’s statements on immigration and the border have dominated each of his campaigns, but he has nonetheless performed well with Hispanic voters. Trump won 28% of the Hispanic vote in 2016, a performance comparable to past GOP candidates. But in 2020 he won 32% of the Hispanic vote, and he’s currently polling at around 40% among this demographic.
Economic concerns and immigration remain front of mind for voters across the board, the Focaldata poll found, and Trump is outperforming Harris on each of those issues. These policy areas also dominated in 2020, but the importance of racial issues to most voters has declined. Racial and ethnic inequality, for example, was a top issue for 52% of voters in 2020, but that number has since fallen to 37%.
Trump is slated to win the upcoming election in the new poll, winning swing states Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which swung for Biden in 2020. Harris is expected to win the popular vote by 1.6 percentage points, and Democrats are on track to retake the House of Representatives, according to Focaldata.
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