President Biden’s support among Black voters may have collapsed in his beloved Philadelphia as the White House continues to grapple with poor polls.
The president, 80, received a cold welcome in the City of Brotherly Love when the New York Times surveyed dozens of residents in predominantly black neighborhoods.
The outlet said they found only eight voters committed to voting for Biden in November. Some said they were siding with former President Trump, while others plan to stay home entirely.
It comes as CNN polling found Trump has surged among black voters, with 22 percent of the demographic now supporting him compared to just nine percent in the 2020 election.
President Biden’s support among Black voters may have collapsed in his beloved Philadelphia as the White House continues to grapple with poor polls.
Among the dozens in the sample, only a fraction of Black voters in Philadelphia said they were committed to supporting Biden, while some said they were leaning toward Trump instead.
While not a widespread sample in Philadelphia, the New York Times poll of black voters in the city is revealing of the issues that many experts see as Biden’s weaknesses ahead of the election.
In particular, Biden’s focus on foreign policy – including sending billions to finance conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East – has apparently turned off voters.
“I don’t care what happens overseas,” said Latasha Humphrey, 36, who described herself as a rare voter who leans toward Trump.
“I care where I live.”
A variety of polls conducted in recent months have found that support for Biden among normally staunchly Democratic demographics has declined in recent months, and young voters are also said to have flocked to Trump.
Notably, Biden still maintains a commanding lead among young and black voters, with a new New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College Last week’s poll found he has 69 percent support among black voters in Pennsylvania.
However, this figure is 10 percent lower than his support in June 2020, and experts noted how Democrats routinely rely on high turnout to offset their lack of support in some suburbs.
In that recent poll, Trump had a three percent lead over Biden statewide, but Philadelphia City Councilman Isaiah Thomas warned that might not be enough to drive Black voters to the polls.
“It’s going to be easy to convince people not to vote for Trump,” Thomas began. ‘It’s going to be difficult to convince people to vote for Biden.
“Those are two totally different fights.”
Former President Trump has seen a rise in poll numbers among young and black voters, traditionally Democratic strongholds in elections.
Trump’s support among black voters rose to 22 percent compared to 2020, when the 45th president only had the support of 9 percent of the population.
Biden’s black media director, Jasmine Harris, told the New York Times in response that the re-election campaign was not taking black voters for granted.
“(The campaign) is treating black voters as targets of persuasion, investing the same resources to reach them as they do to traditional swing voters.”
“We will really see the results of our campaign’s outreach to Black voters closer to Election Day,” Harris said in a statement.
New CNN polling averages also found that Black voters are moving toward Trump, with his poll numbers rising to 22 percent compared to 2020, when the 45th president only had the support of 9 percent of the demographic. .
Biden, on the other hand, saw his 81 percent support from Black voters in 2020 drop to 69 percent.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten said this could be a “worrying sign” for the Biden campaign, which depended heavily on black voters to take him to the White House the last time.
If the trend of black voters aligning with Trump continues, he could win a larger share of them than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960, Enten added.
“This would be by far the best performance by a Republican candidate among black voters in a generation, two generations, probably since 1960 and Richard Nixon against John F. Kennedy… This could be a truly historic margin.”
This comes as the two candidates agreed to debate twice: first on June 27 with CNN and again on September 10 with ABC News.