Staff

Nearly 90 percent of Black voters chose Biden in 2020, but according to a new poll, the numbers are not likely to be that high in 2024 should the president seek re-election.

A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted online April 21 through May 2, 2022, has found support for President Joe Biden to be lagging among black voters.

The poll of 1248 Black voters found that while a 60 percent majority of those polled said that Biden was keeping his promises, but 37 percent say he is not and while 9 in 10 voted for him, just 7 in 10 approve of his job performance.

In fact, while 60 percent of Black voters viewed a possible Republican takeover of the Senate in the midterms as bad, 31 percent of Black voters felt it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Upwards of 75 percent felt Biden had done little or nothing to reduce discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Of Biden’s unsuccessful attempts to curtail the rising gas prices and inflation, Myra Johnson observed, “I don’t know that I ever had a whole lot of faith in him to turn things around in the first place. I wasn’t all that thrilled about the Democratic candidates who were running and he [Biden] just seemed to be Black folks best shot at beating Trump. That’s why I voted for him.”

Johnson is among those who may not support Biden in 2024, unless as she puts it, “He is the only choice”.

Biden’s approval rating was even lower among younger Black voters.

The poll is one of several over the last year that have demonstrated decreasing support for Biden among Black voters. A CNN poll found that Biden’s support among black voters had dropped 20 points since last year.  A Pew Research poll released last September found a sharp drop in support among Blacks as well.

“What we must put in context is that the unusually high turnout among black voters in 2020 was at the height of the George Floyd movement…wanting to deal with policing issues, wanting to deal with how we were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and how it exposed the health deserts in our communities and all of that drove us to voting for Joe Biden and the Democratic ticket as well as the offensive nature of the Trump presidency,” Rev. Al Sharpton told Morning Joe in May.

“Now, that we have gotten two years in and we did not get the George Floyd Bill. We did not even get the John Lewis Voting Advancement Bill and we don’t have Trump there.”

Sharpton was quick to point out that the Biden/Harris team had made some advances in dealing with the impact of the pandemic in Black communities as well as investments in some black communities and the appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court

But, said Sharpton, “I think that a combination of their not having the right messaging machine for what they have done and not being realistic about the expectation of black voters is what has led to a decline.”

Despite a drop in support for Biden, the Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that Biden’s standing among blacks remains higher than other groups and that they remain supportive of the Democratic party even as gas prices soar and inflation strains the economy.