With the 2024 presidential election approaching, the question of each candidate’s popularity with minority demographics becomes increasingly complicated as many people in these communities are reluctant to back either Biden or Trump.
In a new exclusive USA Today/Suffolk University poll of Black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which are two pivotal swing states, the results show an ambivalent dynamic between this significant demographic and President Biden.
The surveys of 500 Black voters in each state, taken by landline and cell phone from June 9 to 13, have margins of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
According to the data collected, 76% of those surveyed in each state said they voted for Biden four years ago. Now, however, his support has fallen 20 percentage points in Pennsylvania (to 56%) and 22 points in Michigan (to 54%). The former president was viewed favorably by 61% to 31% in Michigan and 59% to 33% in Pennsylvania.
Compared to his 2020 campaign, this is a considerable drop, as he then received 92% of the Black vote in each state.
The most common reason volunteered by respondents in the survey was being discontent with the job he’s done in the White House, followed by worries about his age and mental acuity, and then by concern about wars, including his support for Israel in its occupation of Gaza.
Given this observable pattern of declining support from Black communities across the country, Biden’s campaign has been made efforts to win them back. Meanwhile, Trump went to Detroit, Michigan, this weekend to appeal to Black voters in the state, as Biden raised more than $30 million during a fundraising event in California.
The poll conveys that Black Americans are far from leaning toward the former president who is awaiting sentencing on 34 charges, as the presumptive Republican nominee was supported by 15% of Black voters in Michigan, compared with 9% who said they voted for him in 2020, and by 11% in Pennsylvania, compared with 8% in 2020.
What these results may indicate is that some Black voters are leaning toward a third-party candidate as an alternative to the two primary ones.
In Michigan, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was backed by 8% and Cornel West by 6%. In Pennsylvania, West was supported by 8% and Kennedy Jr. by 7%. The Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, was supported by 1% in each state.
Yet in both states and with every independent candidate, Black voters were more likely to pick Biden than Trump as their second choice.
