Kamala Harris is facing potential challenges with Black voters, despite overwhelming support from this demographic, according to a poll from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
The poll reveals both promising signs of enthusiasm and areas of concern for the vice president, as she prepares for the 2024 election.
The NAACP poll, conducted in collaboration with Hart Research and HIT Strategies, surveyed Black voters across 12 priority states.
It found that 78 percent of respondents felt the same or more excitement about voting than when Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008.
Jacquelyn Martin/ASSOCIATED PRESS
If elected, Harris will become the first woman and, after Obama, the second Black person to serve as president.
Of that group, 56 percent said they were even more enthusiastic about voting in 2024.
“This election season, we’ve witnessed a surge of enthusiasm among Black voters that we haven’t seen in some time,” NAACP chief executive Derrick Johnson said. “But we cannot be distracted—there are still voters to be reached,”
Despite the enthusiasm, gender and generational disparities emerge as potential challenges for Harris.
While 79 percent of Black women over 50 said they would vote for her, only 66 percent of men in the same age group felt the same.
Among younger Black voters, aged 18 to 49, Harris’s support drops further, with just 56 percent backing her candidacy.
The NAACP poll found that 40 percent of respondents cited economic issues as their highest priority for elected officials, while 53 percent said protecting rights and freedoms was their primary concern.
Undecided voters could pose a challenge. While 59 percent of respondents overall reported a more favorable view of Harris over the past month, only 14 percent of undecided voters shared this view, with 25 percent of undecided voters saying that their opinion of her had worsened.
This points to potential vulnerabilities that the Harris campaign will need to address as they work to lock down support from the Black voting bloc.
Harris’ support among Black voters, while strong, lags behind previous Democratic candidates.
A Suffolk University poll from earlier in September showed she held a 64-point lead over former President Donald Trump.
This figure is lower than Joe Biden’s 2020 lead, which stood at 78 points, and significantly behind Hillary Clinton’s 88-point lead in 2016.
With razor-thin margins expected in key swing states, even a small erosion in Black voter support could be critical.
Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, a Black voter education and turnout group, told Politico that Harris would need to energize a record turnout.
“Black voters are well positioned to turn out in historic numbers,” Shropshire said. “[But] it will not happen without the necessary work, right? It will not happen if we do not increase knocks on doors, it will not happen if we don’t increase mail and digital, if we’re not countering what the Trump campaign is [doing] within Black communities, then we’re going to lose people.”
Newsweek contacted Harris’s campaign via email for comment.
