Black voters: Harris still lags behind Biden’s 2020 margins but new CNN poll suggests she has room to grow support

Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by a wide margin among Black likely voters, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, but still falls short of Joe Biden’s winning 2020 margins with this group. Yet the poll suggests that Black likely voters currently supporting Trump or third-party candidates are not as locked into their choices as those Black likely voters who back the vice president.

CNN’s latest poll finds Harris leading Trump by 63 points among Black likely voters, 79% to 16%. That’s a considerable improvement over Biden’s 46-point advantage over Trump among registered voters in CNN’s June poll, which was its last with the president at the top of the ticket. But that advantage falls short of the Biden-Harris campaign’s 75-point margin among Black voters, according to exit polls from 2020.

Since Harris’ entrance into the race, enthusiasm among Black voters about the election appears to have grown. In the latest poll, 79% of Black registered voters say they would definitely vote, up from 68% in the June poll. For voters overall, that stood at 82% in the latest poll, about the same as in June. Black voters now are just as likely as other voters to say it is extremely important that they, personally, vote (both at 63%), while in June, Black registered voters were less likely to say the same (57% among Black voters, 66% overall).

Harris’ improvement over Biden’s margins from earlier this year comes as the poll finds broad support for her from the 40% of Black likely voters who view Biden’s presidency as a failure – Harris leads Trump 65% to 31% among these voters.

The poll suggests Trump’s improvements among Black voters relative to 2020 are driven largely by Black voters under the age of 60. Harris leads among Black voters aged 60 and over by 87 points, almost identical to Biden’s 85-point margin in 2020, according to exit polls for the same group. This shrinks to a 55-point lead for Harris among Black voters younger than 60 (Biden won this group by 71 points in 2020, according to exit polls). Trump performs best among Black likely voters younger than 40, with 22% support.

Still, CNN’s poll suggests that Harris has the potential to improve her margins. Her supporters are broadly locked in and unlikely to shift in the race – 92% of Black likely voters who support Harris say their minds are already made up. But among those backing other candidates, a third say they may yet change their mind.

Harris is also generally viewed more favorably among Black registered voters compared with registered voters overall, even after accounting for Black voters’ overwhelming Democratic lean. Nearly 8 in 10 Black voters view Harris favorably, and Black Democrats view Harris slightly more positively than others in the party, while Black voters outside the Democratic Party offer far more positive views of her than do independents or Republicans of other races.

Black voters who don’t consider themselves Democrats are more likely than non-Democrats of other racial backgrounds to say that Harris has improved their view of the Democratic Party; that they would be proud or excited if she wins the election; and that her views are generally mainstream, with Black Democratic voters offering similar or modestly more positive views than others in their party. Among non-Democrats, Black voters also rate Harris as more aligned with their vision of a president than do other voters across all the attributes tested in the poll, including temperament, ability to understand the problems of people like themselves and leadership skills.

That carries over to views of Trump too. Non-Democratic Black voters are more likely to view Trump’s presidency as a failure than other voters who share their partisan perspective and are less likely to trust Trump over Harris on handling each of the issues tested in the poll, including the economy and immigration.

While Black likely voters are largely focused on the same issues as the broader electorate, the CNN polling does find some differences among Democrats. Black likely voters are just as likely as all other groups to consider the economy their top issue (41%). Democratic Black likely voters, however, are twice as likely as Democratic likely voters overall to consider the economy their top issue (42%, compared with 19%). Democratic Black likely voters are also less apt than Democratic likely voters overall to say that protecting democracy or abortion and reproductive rights are their top issue.

When asked which economic issue is most important to them, Black voters across the political spectrum are generally aligned with the overall electorate and put inflation at the top of the list. But Black likely voters are more likely than other voters to name jobs and wages as the top economic issue and less likely to say federal spending.

Nearly 9 in 10 Black registered voters say the political system in the United States is in need of a major overhaul or major reforms, and a large majority (85%) say that the federal government does not do enough for Black Americans. Roughly half of Black voters (47%) say that the federal government does both too much for White Americans and too little for Black Americans. Still, Black registered voters are more likely than the broader electorate to say that they are satisfied with the influence people like themselves have on the political process (52%, compared with 38% overall).

The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS online and by telephone September 19-22, 2024, among 2,074 registered voters nationwide drawn from a probability-based panel. Likely voters include all registered voters in the poll weighted for their predicted likelihood of voting in this year’s election. The survey included an oversample of Black registered voters to reach a total of 579; this group has been weighted to its proper size within the population for all survey results. Results for the full sample of registered voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points; it is the same among likely voters and larger for subgroups. Results among Black registered voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 7.8 percentage points; among Black likely voters, it is plus or minus 7.7 percentage points.

CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy contributed to this report.