Poll: Black voters’ support for Biden has cooled
Various reform efforts stalled
As far as Stacy Mumford is concerned, Joe Biden fulfilled the campaign promise that mattered most to her the instant he was inaugurated: simply not being named “Donald Trump.” But in the 18 months since then, she hasn’t seen Biden deliver on the myriad promises she believes he made to her and other Black voters.
There has been little movement on police reform or voting rights protections. Gas prices in her town of Thomasville, Ga., near the Florida border, approached $4 a gallon this week. Her most recent raise was gobbled up by the rising price of everything, including food and rent. And she worries about the students at the school where she works - because, she says, gun control is another thing Biden has not successfully delivered.
Mumford believes the president is well-intentioned and that his campaign promises were made in good faith. But she’d hoped that a politician who spent 36 years as a senator and eight as vice president “would have more of a deft hand.”
“He’s not really holding up to his end of the bargain,” said Mumford, 49, a school nutritionist. “Some things he’s promised. Some things he’s done. But we are still struggling as a whole. We are all still struggling.”
Like Mumford, roughly 9 in 10 Black voters supported Biden in the 2020 election, but a Washington Post-Ipsos poll of more than 1,200 Black Americans this spring finds what appears to be diminishing support: 7 in 10 approve of President Biden’s job performance, and fewer than one quarter “strongly approve.” A 60% majority of Black Americans say Biden is keeping most of his major campaign promises, but 37% say he is not.
Writ large, the poll shows much stronger support for Biden in the Black community than among most others groups. But that support is growing less intense among this loyal constituency heading into the midterm elections, and younger Black Americans are significantly less enthusiastic about the president than older ones.
Black registered voters still overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates in the midterms, according to the poll, but they are less likely to say the election matters to them than they did before the Biden-Trump contest, and fewer say they are certain to vote.
Many also expressed relatively little faith in the institution of voting itself: Black Americans are less confident that all eligible citizens will have a fair opportunity to vote than White or Hispanic Americans who were asked the same question.
Black voters are particularly important to the president and the political party he leads. Voters like Mumford helped propel Biden to an 11,779-vote victory in Georgia, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate prevailed in the state since 1992. And a month after Biden won the White House, two Democrats narrowly won Georgia’s Senate seats, handing the party what many Black voters hoped would be a governing majority large enough to enact sweeping changes.
But those changes have been slow in coming, particularly on issues that matter to Black Americans. That’s in part because the Senate is split 50-50 between the parties (with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties), and passage of most bills through the chamber requires 60 votes.
Efforts to reform police demands heard nationwide after the murder of George Floyd stalled in Congress and ended with an executive order that Biden acknowledged did not go as far as he’d hoped even as he signed it. Rising inflation has eaten away at people’s incomes and threatens Biden’s political prospects. The federal government has done little to bolster voting protections, despite a raft of state legislation that activists say puts obstacles between Black people and voting booths.
Asked about the failure of a Democratic voting right effort in the Senate, 46% of Black Americans say they are disappointed and another 15% say they are angry. But among those with negative reactions, 84% blame Biden “a little” or “not at all.”
While several of the people polled expressed frustration at the slow or nonexistent progress, many stressed that the blame did not lie solely with the president.