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He did not note that Biden’s approval rating among black adults was only 67%. That was down 20 points, from 87% at the start of his presidency, which is somewhat in line with the percentage of black voters who supported him in 2020.
Perhaps the fact that Biden’s acceptance rating with black adults is still high when compared to other groups is that the 20-point drop has not received much attention. Regardless, the Gallup poll isn’t alone.
All of these polls showed Biden losing a disproportionate amount of support from black adults (and voters).
Of course, the president’s loss of support with a group does not necessarily translate into changes in electoral preferences. Biden may be opposed to younger voters, but as I have pointed out, their midterm preferences shouldn’t differ radically from the way they voted in 2020, even given the Democrats’ current national environment.
Examination of the general suffrage for Congress, however, indicates that black voters, at this point, appear much less likely to vote for Democrats than you might expect given their voting history.
What current polls indicate is a 15-point drop from that margin among black voters. For comparison, among Hispanic voters, Democrats are down 5 points from the 2020 House margin.
When ideology aligns with voting patterns
While Democrats are doing worse among black voters than in 2020, Republicans are not doing better. Things could change as we approach November, and the Democrats could regain some ground they lost.
But there is plenty of room for Democrats to step back from their 2020 baseline, given trends in the recent presidential election twice. Unlike most other demographic groups, black voters who are historically considered conservatives have been fully Democratic. Hillary Clinton beat them by 58 points in 2016, for example.
(In 2004, a good year for Republicans, Democrat John Kerry won conservative black voters by 48 points.)
There is no recent historical analogy to what happened with conservative black voters in 2020. The mold has already broken.
If Republicans reduce Democrats’ support for black conservatives, it won’t change the fact that black voters, in general, remain a very Democratic group.
However, elections are not won and lost by the winning groups of voters. Margins are what matters.
If we continue to see a movement among black conservatives as we did in 2020, life will become easier for the GOP. Republicans will not need wide margins of victory among other groups to win the election.
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