The Biden 2024 campaign is banking on winning Georgia’s electoral college votes as part of its reelection strategy. After all, the Peach State went Biden’s way in 2020, and the last two senatorial elections went to the Democrats (although those two elections were outlying contests that could have just as easily gone to the GOP).
Georgia is a curious case in modern politics. The vast majority of the state is solidly red, although there are pockets of the state that trend blue — think urban areas like Atlanta and Savannah, as well as a more moderate-to-conservative Democrat pocket in the southwest corner of the state.
The leftward tilt of some parts of the state has traditionally had to do with the black vote, which trends Democrat, as well as college towns like Athens and hipster enclaves in metro areas. It’s the black vote that the Biden camp is particularly interested in, but there might be some bad news on that front.
It turns out that not all black voters in Georgia are ready to hand the keys to the White House back over to Joe Biden for a second term, unsurprisingly for many of the same reasons that voters in other demographic blocs have their hesitations about the president. Some black voters are considering alternatives, be they GOP candidates or third-party options, or sitting out the 2024 presidential race altogether.
“In the Atlanta metro area — home to the second-largest Black population in the U.S. – Black residents said the pain of inflation and setbacks on policies such as student loan forgiveness have left them with misgivings about Biden’s candidacy,” reports Bloomberg. “The tepid sentiment is a vulnerability for the president in an election that will likely hinge on voter turnout in a handful of swing states. It highlights the risk that uninspired Black voters stay home or look to third-party alternatives.”
An Ipsos poll from June shows that one in five black voters aren’t thrilled with the idea of a second Biden term, and the attitudes toward the president aren’t encouraging.
“About half of Black Americans (49%) feel President Joe Biden’s policies have made no difference for Black people,” the pollster points out, adding that “only 28% of Black Americans feel that President Biden’s policies have helped them personally, with about one in ten (11%) saying his policies have hurt them personally.”
Bloomberg’s reporters found similar sentiments among black voters they spoke to in Atlanta. Even when the report tried to paint a rosy picture of low unemployment and inflation creeping downward, the outlet had to acknowledge that the economy is worse for black families than for other demographic categories.
“The cost of living is going up, and this is affecting everybody, but whenever the economy is bad for everybody, Black America feels it the worst,” one young man told reporters.
Other voters believe that Biden made certain promises to the black community that he hasn’t followed through with. One voter even referred to those promises as “things that he pandered to us as Black people” about.
Money woes and failed promises are enough to give black voters pause when it comes to Biden 2024, but that’s not discouraging the voter turnout organizations whose reps spoke to Bloomberg. These groups are still playing the same old song-and-dance about Republicans attempting to squelch the votes of black people. Fact check: The claim of “voter suppression” in Georgia is a lie.
One factor that Bloomberg fails to acknowledge in its piece is that black voters are trending toward the Republican Party, albeit in small numbers. In last year’s Georgia gubernatorial election, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) captured 12% of the black vote on his way to handily dispatching Stacey Abrams, who made being black a centerpiece of her campaigns in 2018 and 2022.
Whether Georgia’s black voters are considering jumping ship to the GOP, looking at third-party candidates, or sitting on their hands and not voting for Biden, it’s clear that the Peach State is far from a lock for the president’s re-election campaign.
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