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By Kate Plummer
Senior US News Reporter
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Joe Biden is losing the support of Black voters in Georgia ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Georgia is a key swing state that could decide who wins November's race. In 2020, Biden flipped the state from Donald Trump by 11,779 votes, or 0.24 percent of the 5 million ballots cast, making Trump the first Republican to lose the state in decades. But since then, polls have suggested Trump may flip the state back as support for Biden wanes.
Key to Biden's potential endurance in the state is the Black vote. In 2020, he won 88 percent of this demographic, but last week, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed that 58.6 percent of Black Georgians said they would support Biden, while 20.4 percent said they would support Trump. Ten percent of Black Georgians said they do not plan to vote in 2024.
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Meanwhile, an October survey by the New York Times and Siena College also showed 76 percent of Black Georgians favor Biden, while 19 percent favored Trump.
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With tight margins in 2020, even a small dip in support could impact Biden in Georgia. Overall, the poll of 1,007 registered voters, which was conducted January 3-11 by the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, said Trump would have an 8-point lead over Biden in a hypothetical match-up: 45 percent to 37 percent.
Newsweek contacted a representative for Biden to comment on this story.
Meanwhile, Republicans have made or held gains in Georgia since the 2020 election. Stacey Abrams, who was bidding to become America's first Black female governor, was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp, in a November 2022 election. In the same month, right-wing Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was re-elected to the House of Representatives.
Mary Frances Berry, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, told Newsweek that perceptions of the economy and food inflation specifically had caused Black men to lose enthusiasm for Biden.
"For rural Blacks especially, the passage and then withdrawal of federal funds to remedy Black land loss because of long-term agriculture department discrimination against Black farmers is a frequent topic of discussion," she said.
"Young Blacks have begun avoiding discussion of their lack of enthusiasm about Biden with their parents when the older adults are what they regard as too uncritical of the President and overly concerned with Trump's rhetoric."
DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive advocacy group, said that issues like housing and justice reforms were key to the Black vote.
"Black voters in Georgia are the reason Joe Biden won the state in 2020," he said.
"Black-led organizations registered and mobilized hundreds of thousands of voters in Georgia. We can't afford to take this key electorate for granted this year. To energize and excite Black voters in Georgia, and across the country, President Biden must demonstrate his commitment to the issues that Black Americans care about most, like housing, police accountability, justice reforms, and protecting voting rights."
This perceived lack of interest in issues that matter to Black voters in the state has led to apathy among some, Candis Smith, a professor of political science at Duke University, said. However, she cautioned against treating the Black electorate as a monolith.
"Many people have been shocked at the proportion of Black Americans who are reporting in polls that they may consider supporting Trump, but perhaps the thing we ought to focus on is the proportion of folks who, at this time, simply do not want to vote at all if the choice is between Biden and Trump," she said.
She added: "Politics is like any other area of American life. People want to be seen and heard, and the recent polling results seem to reveal a complex array of ideas among Black folks. Some Black Americans are dissatisfied with the status quo; others are disappointed that the Democratic party, which they have supported for decades, is not providing a real opportunity to express their dismay. Still more, there are Black voters who truly like Trump while others may simply be suggesting that they are not beholden to societal expectations.
"It is worth noting that Black Americans, especially younger Black folks, have been drifting away from identifying as Democrats and toward independence for quite some time. We have seen fluctuations in Black partisan identity and party support before. Here, we may be seeing what happens when a group perceives they must choose between 'the lesser of two evils.'"
Nationally, Black voters have historically supported Democrats over Republicans in presidential elections. In 2020, 87 percent of Black men supported Joe Biden, compared with 12 percent who voted for Trump.
But, provided he is selected as the Republican Party's candidate in 2024, Trump could win more Black votes than any Republican in history, though that would be due to an increasing population reflected in the turnout, as well as his performance in polls.
Meanwhile, Biden's favorability among Black voters in seven swing states slipped 7 percentage points from October to December 2023, to 61 percent, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll. Trump's favorability in the same period has remained steady at around 25 percent.
But a poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies of 1,025 likely voters last week showed Trump and Biden are almost neck and neck, with Biden on 41 percent of the vote and Trump on 42 percent.
It will only be in November when the national impacts of shifting voting behavior among the Black demographic in Georgia becomes clear.
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