Joe Biden would not have become the Democratic presidential nominee without overwhelming support from Black voters in South Carolina. He won’t be elected president next week without a similarly strong showing from Black voters all over the country. And so far, amid the wave of encouraging early-voting data for Biden, there are reasons to be anxious—especially considering the surge, in some swing states, in non-college-educated white voters, a demographic that skews heavily toward President Donald Trump.
In Philadelphia, Black voters are undershooting their share of the city’s population by six points, according to analysis by TargetSmart. In Florida, the number of younger Black early voters is lagging, and Black voters in general are underperforming in three of the state’s most populous counties, according to Adrianne Shropshire, the director of BlackPAC, which is working with Mike Bloomberg’s Hawkfish digital operation and Unite the Country, a pro-Biden super PAC. So Shropshire and company are now making a strong push to increase the rate of Election Day Black turnout in the Sunshine State.
Four years ago, Trump eked past Hillary Clinton by 1.2% in Florida. His margin of victory in Michigan was even slimmer: .23%, which translates to a mere 10,704 votes. In Wayne County alone, Clinton pulled 76,000 fewer votes than Barack Obama had four years earlier—with 50,000 votes of that drop-off coming in Detroit, where nearly 80% of the population is Black. A few thousand more Black votes in Florida and Michigan in 2016, and today Clinton would be running for reelection instead of running as an elector on the Biden–Harris New York slate. Biden, trying to avoid a similar near miss, dispatched Obama to Florida for two appearances last weekend and will stump with him in Detroit and Flint on October 31. (A Biden spokesman declined to comment on whether the two will trick-or-treat.)
Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist, now lives in Washington, D.C., but he grew up in Detroit. Simmons is scrutinizing the voting analytics from his hometown, and he’s also intrigued by what he’s hearing from his father, Larry, who is the pastor of Bethel A.M.E. Church in Detroit. “The church is running a program called ‘Arrive With Five,’ where they’re asking each member to bring five people to the polls with them or to check and make sure that five people have filled out mail-in ballots,” Simmons says. “The response has been really strong. The other thing I’m hearing is that people who complained about not having any contact with the Clinton campaign in 2016 are feeling very contacted in 2020, by the Biden campaign and its allies.” It seems to be working in Wayne County. TargetSmart’s numbers show 89,000 more Black early votes have already been cast there, compared with 2016.
A Biden campaign adviser points to increased Black turnout in Georgia and North Carolina, and says that nationally, “We have a host of Black celebrities, elected officials, activists, and local validators on the airwaves, doing virtual and in-person campaign events.” At least one grassroots organizer hasn’t been feeling the love, however. “The Biden campaign’s advertising has been lackluster. Its outreach on the ground to Black voters has been lackluster,” says Cliff Albright, who lives in Atlanta and is a cofounder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. Granted, Georgia has been a lower priority for the Biden campaign than states like Wisconsin or Arizona or Pennsylvania. But it is now very much in play. “There’s been a stronger effort by organizations like ours that are part of the Civic Engagement Table here,” Albright says, “and Black voters are making up a large share of early-vote numbers, in spite of the long lines.”
Maybe the anxiety is premature. The Saturday before an election is traditionally the biggest day for Black early-voting turnout, and those numbers are typically far surpassed on Election Day itself. This year, however, that presents its own problem. “What I’m more worried about is voter suppression, in all its forms,” Albright says. “We already had a white woman who pulled out a gun and was threatening organizers who were giving out food and water at a polling place in Albany, Georgia.”
Cornell Belcher is well aware of the Trump team’s attempted mischief. Yet he remains cautiously optimistic. Belcher was a pollster and strategist on both of Obama’s winning White House bids, and he’s seeing signs that Biden is reassembling the 2008 and 2012 coalitions, with Black voters as a key piece once again. “I laugh, because there’s a stupid, lazy narrative being pushed by a few people about how well Trump is doing with Black voters,” Belcher says. “It’s fucking nonsense. A Democrat never gets universal Black support. But in the CBS News poll this week, Biden’s at 90% of the African American vote. That is Obama-level performance. The early-vote data looks good, even at the state level. South Carolina, African Americans are making up 30, 31% of the early-voting turnout. That’s above and beyond their proportion of the electorate.” Belcher’s main concern is more general. “Here’s the big X factor: You’ve got 15 million people who didn’t vote in ’16 who have already voted,” he says. “So I’m sure the Republican internal polling is wrong. But I’m also fairly sure that ours is too.”
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