Biden steps up efforts to reach voters of color

President Biden’s campaign is stepping up efforts to reach voters of color ahead of a November showdown with former President Trump and amid signs that some Black and Latino voters are turning away from the Democratic Party.

President Biden’s campaign last week launched ads speaking directly to Black voters in battleground states, arguing another Trump term would be a “disaster” for the demographic. A day later, the campaign announced a program to engage Latino voters — and Biden said during a campaign stop in Arizona that they’re “the reason why, in large part, I beat Donald Trump.” 

Biden’s trips to Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada in recent weeks shows a ramped-up understanding that “this is going to be won in swing states, and in places with young voters of color,” said Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins. 

“The only way for Democrats to win is for Black voters to show up at the polls,” Hopkins said. 

In 2020, Black voters voted overwhelmingly for Biden over Trump, casting 92 percent of ballots for him, according to a Pew Research analysis of the previous cycle. Biden earned 59 percent of the Hispanic vote to Trump’s 38 percent. 

But as the race heads toward a 2024 rematch — and as both campaigns make a play for minority voters — there are signs that a growing share of voters of color are frustrated with the Democratic Party to which they’ve long been loyal. 

“It’s a huge, huge risk,” said Theodore Johnson, a senior adviser on race and electoral politics at the think tank New America, on the chance that voters of color turn away from the Biden campaign in November. “If those folks stay home, the winner of the race will have Black folks who stayed home to thank, and my sense of it is that would be Trump.” 

Gallup polling released last month showed Democrats’ lead in Black American’s party preferences has fallen 20 points in the past three years, and their lead among Hispanic adults is at its lowest point since 2011. 

A CBS News poll from late February found Biden’s support from Black voters down from 87 percent in 2020 to 76 percent this year. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll in January found Biden with just 63 percent support among Black voters.

“There was an exodus from the Republican Party, not because of Bush, but because of Barack Obama. And there’s a return to the Republican Party, not because of Trump, but because Obama is no longer at the top of the ticket,” Johnson said. “Welcome back to the America post-Black president.” 

Many Black voters are “more conservative than I think people expect and understand,” said Hopkins, who contended there’s some “alignment” on policy views, even despite Trump’s “insulting” rhetoric.

But Johnson and others shrugged off the polls, arguing the results are better gauges of frustration among those voters than they are indicators of what will happen in November. 

“When we look at Democratic support on actual Election Day, we don’t see the kind of slide or drop-off of support from Democratic voters that we see in whether or not people are identifying as a Democrat,” said Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of the left-leaning BlackPAC.

Black voters “are expressing an expectation of the Democratic Party that the party itself might not be meeting right now, but it does not mean that they’re changing their voting behavior,” Shropshire said. 

With Latino voters, polls also show Trump making inroads despite his anti-immigration positions. 

A New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this month found Trump gaining support among Latino voters, whom Pew Research projects will make up around 15 percent of eligible voters in November. Black Americans are set to make up 14 percent of eligible voters. The CBS News poll found Biden’s support from Hispanic voters down from 65 percent in 2020 to 53 percent this year.

“I think what’s happening with Latinos and Black voters this time is somewhat similar in that folks are feeling increasingly squeezed. If Black and Latino Americans are feeling like, ‘I am struggling,’ … then they remember those stimulus checks that Trump sent out, or they remember, ‘maybe things used to be better under Trump.’ And memory has faded,” said Melissa Michelson, a professor of political science with a focus on Latino politics at California’s Menlo College.

Trump has controversially said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and commented at a rally last week that some undocumented immigrants are “not people.” 

But many Latinos identify more strongly as “white, or something else, or just as Americans,” Michelson said, and may not connect the former president’s rhetoric to themselves.  

Matt Barreto, one of Biden’s 2020 pollsters who continues to work with the DNC, stressed that the polls at this point aren’t enough to support a narrative that voters of color are fleeing the party, and he noted key problem points in gathering the data — like “ignorance” in some polls that may survey Hispanic voters only in English. 

“There’s no danger of a majority of Latino or Black voters not voting for Biden,” said Michelson, “but there’s definitely evidence that a larger proportion than in some of the most recent elections are considering either not voting or voting for the Republican in the race.” 

A significant enough number simply sitting out could be crippling in an election year when turnout will be particularly important. 

“Yes, the Biden campaign should be worried,” said Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, who served on Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic outreach team during the 2008 presidential election. “We should all be worried — that way, we’re not going to take anything for granted. Which this campaign never has.”

“I need you badly,” Biden told Latino voters this week in Phoenix, where he kicked off Latinos con Biden, a series of events to engage, train and mobilize Latino supporters. 

Vice President Harris touched down Friday in Puerto Rico, her first trip to the territory during the administration. Puerto Ricans are the second-largest population of Hispanic origin living in the U.S., according to Pew Research. 

Meanwhile, Biden’s allies have shrugged off his dip in support among Black voters as he paints another Trump term as potentially dangerous to Black America.

On the other side of the aisle, Trump argued that his criminal indictments have increased his support among Black Americans in controversial remarks to the Black Conservative Federation last month. Speculation has also swirled about whether he might pick a Black Republican as his running mate.

“Hispanics, very entrepreneurial people. They like me, I like them,” Trump told Nigel Farage in an interview released last week. “Nobody’s ever done well with the Hispanics like I’ve done, with the Black community.”

Maca Casado and Jasmine Harris, the Biden-Harris campaign’s Hispanic and Black media directors, respectively, told The Hill in a joint statement the president’s reelection bid is “not taking a single voter for granted” this cycle. 

“Black and Hispanic voters sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020 which resulted in record low Black and Latino unemployment, Black and Latino businesses starting up at historic rates, along with billions forgiven in student loan debt — they will again this election, giving the Biden-Harris administration four more years to finish the job and build on this work,” the pair said. 

In Atlanta earlier this month, a trio of political action committees representing Asian American, Black and Latino voters endorsed Biden, citing the stakes for voters of color. 

“This is a problem for the Democratic coalition broadly, but I think it represents an opportunity for the Biden coalition,” said Terrance Woodbury, Democratic strategist and founder of HIT Strategies, of the recent polls. 

“People of color don’t dislike Joe Biden, they are frustrated with the job that he’s been doing and don’t think that enough progress has been made,” Woodbury said. “I think that this just represents an opportunity for him to begin crystallizing this campaign around continuing the progress that he has made, or returning to the chaos of Donald Trump.”