Can Kamala Harris help Democrats regain lost Black votes?

Barely a week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the United States presidential race, his deputy Kamala Harris emerged as his replacement atop the Democratic Party ticket.
Just this week, she was confirmed as the official Democratic Party nominee, following a string of key endorsements, including from former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Harris, a 59-year-old former California prosecutor, could potentially become the first woman — and the first African American-Indian candidate — to make it to the White House.
But experts wonder whether Harris will be able to reverse a troubling trend for Democrats.
Recent opinion polls suggested that Biden had been losing the support of Black voters before his withdrawal from the race. And their support had proven crucial in his 2020 election victory.
That year, 87 percent of Black voters opted to support Biden. But in May, a Pew Research poll of Black voters found that only 77 percent indicated that they would choose Biden over Republican nominee Donald Trump for president in this year’s elections.
So, can Harris turn this downward trend around before the November election?
Support for the Democrats has traditionally been high among Black voters, reaching a high of 95 percent during Obama’s tenure in 2008.
Since Franklin D Roosevelt won the presidency in 1932, the Democratic Party has received the majority of Black votes. While there is no data for 1932, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Roosevelt gained 71 percent of the Black vote for his presidency in 1936.
In the early 1930s, Black communities strongly supported Roosevelt’s New Deal programmes which attempted to address the economic and racial issues and reduce inequalities in the wake of the Great Depression.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA), Public Works Administration (PWA) and other programmes provided jobs for millions of Americans, including African Americans and employment rates rose.
Furthermore, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had also long been an advocate for civil rights for Black Americans, helping to cement support for Roosevelt.
In the 1964 presidential election, Lyndon B Johnson received 94 percent of the Black vote due to his strong advocacy of civil rights legislation which eventually led to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Although voting rights for the African American population were granted under Republican Abraham Lincoln back in 1870 as part of the 15th Amendment, it was Johnson who enforced the rights by addressing racial discrimination in the voting process.
Black voter support for the Democrats fell to 83 percent in the 1992 election, when Democratic Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton beat incumbent Republican President George HW Bush.
Black support for the Democrats went up to 87 percent in 2020. But some Black voters have been gravitating away from the party with Black support coming down to just 77 percent, according to the latest polls.
In the recent Pew Research poll, 18 percent of Black registered voters said they were leaning towards a vote for Trump.
That represents a 50 percent increase from the 12 percent of Black votes Trump received in the 2020 election.
However, there appears to be a significant increase of support among Black voters for Trump, according to some polls, since Harris has entered the presidential race.
According to a recent New York Times/Siena College survey taken from July 22 to July 24 on the question, “If the 2024 presidential election were held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were Harris and Trump?”, Harris is at 47 percent while Trump is 48 percent for likely voters.
For registered Black voters, it polled 72 percent for Harris, and 19 percent for Trump.
Before Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, a New York Times/Siena College survey on July 2 showed Biden polling 41 percent and Trump leading at 49 percent among registered national voters.
For registered Black voters, it polled 73 percent for Biden, and 15 percent for Trump.
However, in a recent Reuters/Ipsos national presidential poll, Kamala led Trump 44 percent to 42 percent. The poll was taken days following the Republican National Convention in July
A steady stream of donations suggests Harris has brought back a bit of enthusiasm to the Democratic Party, especially the Black voting bloc.
Last month, Win With Black Women, a network of Black women leaders, organised a Zoom call to support Harris. Nearly 44,000 people, mostly women, joined the call and the group was able to raise more than $1.5m in under three hours.
That same week, more than 53,000 Black men participated in the Win With Black Men virtual conference on Monday night, showing their support for Harris. The organisers announced that it successfully raised more than $1.3m in four hours.
According to the Harris campaign, she has brought in $200m during the first week of her presidential campaign, with 66 percent of all donations coming from first-time donors. Harris raised a total of $310m in the month of July.
Representative Jim Clyburn, one of the most significant Black senators in the Democratic Party, has endorsed Harris.
Clyburn has played a pivotal role in endorsing political candidates, including former President Obama in 2008 when he was House majority whip and one of the most powerful Democrats in the House.
Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden before the South Carolina Democratic primary in 2020 is widely credited for revitalising Biden’s campaign, leading to a decisive victory and subsequently propelling him to secure the Democratic nomination and win the presidency.
Clyburn cited Biden’s choice of Harris for VP as one of the main reasons he had chosen to endorse him.
“One of President Biden’s first decisions as the nominee was to select a running mate that he believed possessed the values and vision necessary to continue this country’s pursuit toward a ‘more perfect Union.’ I echo the good judgment he demonstrated in selecting Vice President Harris to lead this nation alongside him, and I am proud to follow his lead in support of her candidacy to succeed him as the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee for President,” Clyburn said in a statement.
Harris managed to secure the support of Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr, marking the first time King has made a political endorsement publicly.
The Congressional Black Caucus, which has more than 60 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, representing more than 120 million Americans, endorsed Kamala Harris on July 22.
Collectively, every Black attorney general in the US has endorsed Harris with a recent post on the X account of Letitia James, the first African American to preside as New York attorney general.
In September 2022, James filed a lawsuit against Trump in the civil fraud case accusing him of fraudulently inflating asset values to secure favourable loans and insurance deals.
According to experts, the Harris campaign might inherit some of the criticisms of many Biden policies due to her being the current vice president.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll taken last month, still suggests that voters prefer Trump over Biden. Registered voters picked Trump 43 percent to 37 percent. Harris will have to contend with how the current economy stands while answering for the rise in inflation during the Biden administration. Recent reports show that inflation has slowed in recent months.
“Importantly, shelter costs, a major contributor to year-over-year inflation continue to slow. However, core services prices remain sticky and are slowing progress,” Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, wrote in a brief.
Immigration, which has been a sore spot for the Biden administration due to high border crossings has seen its fifth consecutive monthly drop in migrant apprehensions in July. According to the federal agency Customs and Border Protection, border crossings by undocumented immigrants at the US-Mexico border saw a 66 percent drop in monthly crossings. In December 2023, there were roughly 250,000 crossings, while in June 2024, there were 64,000 crossings.
Although not mentioned as frequently as other issues, Harris was recently interviewed by The Root, a news publication that primarily caters to Black audiences, about her stance on reparations for slavery.
“I think there has to be some form of reparations and we could discuss what that is, but look, we’re looking at more than 200 years of slavery,” Harris said.
However, in a 2019 interview with theGrio, a news and lifestyle media organisation that focuses on the African-American community, when asked about reparations, Harris stated: “So I’m not gonna sit here and say I’m going to do something that’s only going to benefit Black people. No. Because whatever benefits that Black family will benefit that community and society as a whole and the country, right?”
Harris’s record during her 12 years as district attorney of San Francisco and California’s attorney general has been in the spotlight, with some of her policies have come in for criticism.
Some progressives argue that her anti-truancy laws and rejection of DNA testing from a Black man on death row were inexcusable. However, her programme, Back on Track, to help young people arrested on non-violent drug offences to get job training and substance abuse assistance was quite progressive.
In an interview with The Guardian, Insha Rahman, director of Vera Action, an organisation advocating against mass incarceration, stated: “The longstanding version of Kamala Harris proudly owned the role of being ‘top cop’ and generally shied away from taking progressive stances on criminal justice reform. She played it safe and down the middle.”