A voter takes a sticker after casting an early ballot at a polling station Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
by Elizabeth Crisp – 12/12/23 11:32 AM ET
One in 5 Black voters say they would vote for “someone else” rather than President Biden or former President Trump in the 2024 presidential election, a new poll finds.
The GenForward survey, first reported by Politico and later provided to The Hill, could signal trouble for Biden as he seeks a second term. Black voters made up a crucial block in his 2020 election, with 92 percent casting their ballots for the Democrat, according to Pew.
The poll released Tuesday found that 17 percent of Black voters said they would vote for Trump, who is the frontrunner for the GOP nomination just over a month out from the Iowa caucuses. About 63 percent in the poll said they would vote for Biden.
“It is possible, and we’ve seen it before, that a higher number, in particular, Black men because of a kind of hypermasculinity of Donald Trump, could vote for Trump [again],” Cathy Cohen, the founder and director of the GenForward Survey project and a University of Chicago political science professor, told Politico.
The polling echoes findings from a New York Times/Siena College poll released last month, which found Trump drawing 22 percent support among Black voters across six battleground states. In that poll, 71 percent of Black voters backed Biden.
The GenForward survey found half of Black voters surveyed said they approve of how Biden has handled his job, while 29 percent said they disapprove and 21 percent had no opinion. Black voters listed inflation, gun control and racism as the most important problems in the country.
The latest poll also suggests that Biden is losing ground among Hispanic voters. Forty-two percent of Hispanic voters surveyed said they would vote for Biden, while 36 said Trump and 21 percent said they would prefer to vote for “someone else.” Biden won 59 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2020, according to Pew.
The Biden administration has recently set out to tout economic efforts aimed particularly at Black and Hispanic Americans.
The GenForward survey polled 3,448 eligible voters nationally online Nov. 8-30. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.