Shortly before Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential candidate, several national polls and primary voting results indicated that Donald Trump had peeled away one of the party’s most reliable voting blocs – people of color.
Each of these apparent political shifts came at a time during the Democratic primaries when President Biden was losing the support of Arab American voters – another reliably Democratic political bloc.
Though the candidacy of Harris has excited Democratic voters across the nation, she is still not immune to the effects of Trump’s appeal to voters of color. An August 2024 Pew Research Center poll found that 77% of all Black voters supported Harris, while 13% supported Trump.
Among Black voters under 50, Harris still led with 68% support – but 19% supported Trump.
In a presidential election that is expected to be close, turning out voters of color is once again crucial to victory in many battleground states, much like the 2020 election that Biden won. Biden won by fewer than 45,000 total votes across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, the three states that put him over the top in the Electoral College.
To win in 2024, Harris and Trump must mobilize communities of color that are already inclined to vote for Harris in large numbers – despite the slight inroads that Trump has made in this often fragile political coalition.
Similarity principle
Since 2020, my research lab at UCLA has conducted five national experiments with Black, Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern and North African voters to study what psychological factors play a role in the voting of individuals from these distinct groups.
We have also explored the factors that undermine these shared perspectives in two additional large-scale studies.
Our evidence suggests that despite their many political and social differences, communities of color tend to vote for candidates who support policies that help remedy racial injustices against all groups, not just their own.
Shortly before Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential candidate, several national polls and primary voting results indicated that Donald Trump had peeled away one of the party’s most reliable voting blocs – people of color.
Each of these apparent political shifts came at a time during the Democratic primaries when President Biden was losing the support of Arab American voters – another reliably Democratic political bloc.
Though the candidacy of Harris has excited Democratic voters across the nation, she is still not immune to the effects of Trump’s appeal to voters of color. An August 2024 Pew Research Center poll found that 77% of all Black voters supported Harris, while 13% supported Trump.
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