Black Americans could decide the 2020 presidential election, particularly in key battleground states like Wisconsin and Florida. The battle for the White House approaches as Black Americans face the brunt of an unprecedented national crisis in which one in 1,000 having died of the virus and twice as likely to have lost a job.
Democrat Joe Biden’s road to the White House could hang on Democrats’ ability to turn out their most loyal bloc.
Although they’ve maintained a sizable advantage among African Americans over Republicans counterparts for decades, support for Democrats has slowly declined since the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency. That complicates Republican efforts to court these 30 million eligible voters ahead of 3 November.
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African Americans are often depicted as a single, unified bloc, and many analysts warn Democrats that therein lies the problem. As experts debunk the myth of the Black voter monolith, the path to victory may be dependent on Democrats’ ability to speak to Black voters’ diversity.
Here are factors that will shape Black voting turnout on election day, and their political power well beyond.
Migration puts more states in play
Since the 1970s, the US has experienced a reverse migration in which Black Americans move from northern cities back to the south. Most often, it’s to communities where they were born or where their families were rooted before the Great Migration – an era between 1916 and 1970 when 6 million African Americans escaped segregation and discrimination in the south, to pursue jobs up north.
Demographics
That makes states like Texas, South Carolina and Georgia more competitive.
“There’s a clear understanding that a growing, energized bloc of African American voters can be a tipping point for any electorate,” Bill Frey, a senior fellow and demographer with the Brookings Institution, told the Guardian.
“It’s an example of what we can see moving forward where many thought, and still think, that Georgia will eventually turn blue,” he added.
Along with Georgia, the top states for Black population gains include Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia – all swing or battleground states where the vice-president ramped up campaign efforts in the weeks leading up to 3 November. According to Pew, more than one-third of Black voters live in nine of the most competitive states.
The Brookings Institution also noted that while progressive attitudes are most often held by younger, college-educated blacks, the influence of retirees and older Americans from more liberal cities can also skew voting blocs left.
But that’s also creating a generational divide between more radical youth and their pragmatic elders.
A growing generational gap
Cedric Humphrey, a college student asked Biden at an October town hall, “Many people believe the true swing voters in this election will be Black voters under 30 – not because they’re voting for Trump, but because they won’t vote at all. Besides ‘you ain’t Black’, what do you have to say to young Black voters who see voting for you as further participation in a system that continually failed to protect them.”
Early voting data so far shows young voters turning out in record numbers but younger, Black voters are less likely to support Democrats. With anti-racism protests raging across the country, progressive activists have called on Democrats to go bold with policing and institutional reforms.
Although Biden’s Obama-era legacy sustained his loyalty primarily among Black elders, those under 30 overwhelmingly supported Sanders in the primary. Still, an overwhelming majority (nine out of 10) young voters told CBS pollsters they would never consider voting for Republican rival Donald Trump.
Democrats instead are in a fight to get the future of its party to show up, with young people historically less likely to turn out in an election. Young people will be critical, with four in 10 eligible Black voters being a millennial or from generation Z.
Wisconsin state representative David Bowen told the Guardian that the pandemic, recession and uprisings have sparked a “righteous anger” that should serve as “a wake-up call to Democrats. He calls on the party to “tap into the energy” of a youth-led movement for justice.
“We can’t piecemeal our way out of the problems that have accumulated over decades, or make small incremental changes to give people hope that this system will be accountable to them”.
Voter suppression unites diverse Black communities
No matter young or old, voter suppression stands to impact nearly every Black community across the country. But systemically barring Black people from the polls has been part of voting rights history in America for as long as they have been allowed to vote – first in the 1860s for men, and nearly a century later for women.
Those efforts accelerated in recent decades thanks to a supreme court decision striking down key parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Under mostly Republican governors, state election boards have limited access to voting ever since, disproportionately affecting communities of color and young people.
“If we shouldn’t vote or our vote didn’t matter then why are there so many forces investing resources to try to stop us from voting,” said Desmond Meade, a legal scholar and founder of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which advocates for returning citizens – or people with prior felony convictions – regaining their right to vote.
In late September, Channel 4 uncovered a data leak which revealed the Trump administration targeted as many as 3.5 million Black voters to stay home in 2016.
In Florida, an estimated 5.85 million Americans with prior felony convictions are barred from voting. Returning citizens had been stripped permanently of the right to vote until residents voted in favor of a ballot measure known as Amendment 4 — temporarily striking it down.
But in September, a federal appeals court ruled to uphold a Republican state senate bill requiring returning citizens pay restitution and settle all court debts before casting their ballots – which, advocates say, is the latest effort to suppress turnout.
On Tuesday, Meade will join a growing number of Black Americans voting for the first time. Against the backdrop of a pandemic and uprising, he says efforts to hold the Black vote is motivating communities to turn out even more. And they’re “not going to be just voting for someone because they have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ next to their name”
“We’re going to be voting for someone who recognizes and respects our humanity,” he said.
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