As Black Voters Sour on Biden, Will They Abandon the Democrats? - Jason Riley

[Geee]

WSJ

Their decadeslong loyalty to the party was already beginning to show signs of becoming weaker.

 

“Why Joe Biden Is Bleeding Black Support” was the headline of a New York magazine article in late January. Not whether, but why. And if the polling since then is indicative, the hemorrhaging continues.

Blacks have been throwing some 80% of their support to Democrats since the late 1960s. Since President Obama left office, however, the party’s grip on this key voting bloc has loosened somewhat. Hillary Clinton’s underperformance among blacks in such swing states as Pennsylvania probably cost her the presidency in 2016, when people in heavily black neighborhoods voted more Republican than they did in 2012.

Democrats normally don’t worry about blacks voting Republican. They just worry about blacks not voting at all. That, too, may be changing. Black voter turnout in 2018 was the highest on record for a midterm election. Yet New York magazine reports that in the House races that year, “Democrats actually won a smaller share of the African American vote than they had in the 2016 presidential election—even as the party’s overall popular-vote edge in the midterm was five points higher than Hillary Clinton’s two years earlier.”