Has Harris Changed The Election For Black Voters?
42:16 Share

Ryan Reynolds here from Int Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices

down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited premium wireless. How did you get 30, 30, how did you get 30, how did you get 20, 20, 20, how did you get 20, 20, how did you get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes each detail.

Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. In the spring of this year, we asked on this podcast whether there was a political realignment happening amongst Black voters. Gallup polling showed the lowest number of Black Americans identifying as Democrats, two-thirds, since its data collection began in 1999, and an 11-point drop just since 2020.

High-quality pollsters also showed President Biden losing ground to former President Trump, with Trump getting about 20% support among Black voters. If materialized, that would be the highest level of support for a Republican in the modern polling era, which has been about half a century.

Of course, since then, the presidential election has been upended. Vice President Harris is now facing off against Trump and would become the first woman, first South Asian, and second Black president if she wins. In the time since Harris has taken the helm of the Democratic Party, she appears to have improved Democrats' lot amongst Black voters, though it's not clear she's back to where Biden was in 2020, let alone 2008 or 2012 when former President Obama was on the ballot.

So today we're going to take an updated look at where Black voters stand in the 2024 election. And joining me to do that is Cheryl Laird, professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland College Park. She's also the author of the book Steadfast Democrats, How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior. Welcome back to the podcast, Cheryl. Thank you for having me. Also joining us is Kiana Cox, senior researcher at Pew Research Center, where she leads the National Survey of Black Americans. Welcome to the podcast, Kiana.

Thank you for having me. So depending on, and this is really nerdy here, but whether you're looking at exit polls or post-election studies, Biden received somewhere between 87% and 90% of Black voter support in 2020. And that's well within historical norms for how Democrats have done outside of Obama's history making election when he got 95% plus support and record high turnout.

There's a lot of data that we can draw on here. Some of it is conflicting, others not. But Kiana, just to kick us off, how would you describe where Black voters' preferences stand today? As of early September, in our latest polling data, we see about 84% of Black adults say that they would vote for Kamala Harris if the election were held today, and about 13% say they would vote for Donald Trump.

That's pretty on par with the nearly 80 percent who said the same right before the DNC when we polled in early August. But it's higher than the share who said they would vote for Biden in early July, right after the June presidential debate. So we've seen that support among Black voters for the top of the Democratic ticket has increased.

from around the time of that debate through the summer until now to early September. On the other hand, when we look at the shares of Black voters who say that they will vote for Trump, that's remained about steady throughout the summer at about somewhere between 13 to 15 percent from May through September.

Yeah. So in May of this year, according to Pew, Biden was getting 77 percent support amongst black voters in July shortly before he dropped out, just 64 percent. And that was obviously a particularly bad period for Biden right after the debate.

It looked like the electorate was shifting, and that was the environment in which we were talking about some racial realignment. What was happening at the time, to the best of your understanding? I think the image of Biden was most put into high relief for people in the summer from that debate, right? So if there were concerns that had already been bubbling up around

around his ability to serve for a longer period of time, you know, how he looks, how he performs, how he sounds. Not that his policy has particularly changed in any way, but just can he win, right? And I think that that's something that's a calculus of Black voters in terms of how they not only kind of decide on their collective group vote,

But particularly also like which candidates they see as viable. And they supported him. I think those who are particularly older voters who have more knowledge of him, who have had a longer history with him, younger voters who feel more at a distance with him, who were not only concerned about his age, but maybe also concerned about his policy position because of what's going on in various issues. But I would say the issues with Gaza and Israel going on and that that was something where already there was uncertainty.

something boiling there. And then the debate occurred and it wasn't, you know, that great for him in terms of how it was being talked about in the press. And I think that that shaped a lot of people in a concerned kind of fashion around him, even though he still maintained a significant amount of Black support, I would say like clearly the majority. It definitely wasn't as strong as one would have expected at that point.

Our data confirms a lot of what Cheryl was saying in terms of there being this sort of bifurcation there of support, but dissatisfaction with the race. So in early July, we saw that about half of Black voters, when we asked them, would you want to replace either of the candidates at the top of the ticket, about half of Black voters said they wanted to replace both Trump and Biden.

And then another third said, "Keep Biden and replace Trump." And overall, we saw that only about 30 percent of Black voters said that they were satisfied with the candidate field. When we asked that question again about satisfaction with the candidate field in August, that number is up almost to 60 percent. So right before the DNC, Harris is at the top of the ticket. We asked voters

to how satisfied are you with the candidate field now? And it's almost 60% among Black voters. So we saw that support for Biden was still at 64%, but the dissatisfaction sort of with the state of the race was also pretty high. And we've seen that dissatisfaction go down since the shift at the top.

And so since that time, from the best that I can tell, Harris has improved markedly over where Biden was. And this is the case for Black voters, but it's also the case for young voters and Latino voters, as we've discussed on this podcast before. Biden did not see as big of a drop-off amongst older or white voters as he did amongst voters of color and younger voters. And so there was maybe less ground for Harris to make up

there. But it seems like

similar to actually a trend that we've seen amongst Latino voters, is that Harris has not necessarily made all the ground back to be where Democrats were sort of prior to this three and a half year tenure of the Biden-Harris administration. And so recently, for example, the NAACP with Hit Strategies published some polling, a survey of 1,000 Black voters across the country in battleground states, specifically in August, and

and found that, I mean, this was pretty striking. This is quite low. And I think this has to do with being battleground states specifically, but 63% plan to support Harris compared with 13% for Trump.

The particular finding that was sort of highlighted was that 26% of Black men under 50 said they supported Trump versus 49% who backed Harris. For Black men above 50, it was 77%. And that's not that different from, I know, a recent Pew Research poll that you all conducted where it was 21% of Black voters under age 50 said that they were supporting Trump.

So if there is still some resistance to getting on board with Harris, maybe, it seems like that might be where it is. What's going on there? So there is an age reversal in some ways among Black voters, where just older Black voters, regardless of gender, are more on board with the Democratic Party in general and with Democratic candidates. Younger Black voters are more likely than older Black voters to

to want to vote for Trump, although it's nowhere near a majority, but they are still more likely than older Black voters to say that. And even before Kennedy dropped out of the race, we saw that there was a significant chunk of younger Black voters who weren't in that Kennedy camp.

when given that option. And then when he dropped out of the race, they moved to Harris. Younger Black voters are one of the markers that when we looked at how do people view Harris, do they view her favorably or unfavorably? And younger Black voters increased by almost 15 percentage points from May to August in terms of a positive view of Harris. So those were one of the groups that sort of in some ways came home, so to speak,

in terms of a positive view of Harris, along with them was Black women, not Black men. It was Black women who also had about a 15 percentage point increase in positive views and positive feelings towards Harris from May to August. So there are some gender differences there. There are no gender differences in terms of who Black

voters will support. Black men are just as likely to say that they would vote for Harris as Black women are. Black men are also just as likely to lean toward or align with the Democratic Party. That's been true since 1994. Just as likely as Black women to do that, but it's younger Black voters. And one other thing that's been sort of a consistent point is that younger Black voters are more likely than older Black voters to say that they're confident in Trump on the economy.

which was sort of a story within a story. Black voters are more confident in Harris than Trump overall. But sort of if you unpack some of that, about 40% of younger Black voters say they trust Donald Trump to make good decisions about the economy. Now, nearly 80% say they trust Harris to do that. But the difference between younger and older Black voters on those questions of trust, of support, when you think...

focus on Trump particularly, there are some differences there.

I would add, you know, from a theoretical argumentation of, you know, why we may be seeing some of those changes has a lot to do with, you know, how do people go about coming into their understanding of voting and how they come into their understanding of what they're going to do in a particular election? I think there's something to be said about those young people who have come of age during the Trump Biden era. Right. So, like, I teach in the college environment. Most of my students cannot remember the Obama administration.

You know, they can call it like I had a student put up something and he was showing his photo of himself at the inauguration. And he was he was a kid like he was like eight years old or something. Right. So they have lived through Trump without really a comparison point whatsoever.

of their electoral experiences with Republicans. They have lived through that in a period of crisis when we were dealing with things like the pandemic in that latter portion of his process and election. He also inherited economic gains that were on a trajectory upward. So attribution of who caused what,

could easily be something where I think people assume the president is who really affects the economy, like inflation and various things are directly affected of the president and who's sitting in office. In my own work, we think about the norms and particularly democratic norm cohesiveness within the Black community and how that has really impacted the collective support for the Democratic Party, something that is learned today.

behavior, something that comes along. And for the most part, the majority, like a large majority of Black people tend to do that. But I could see how a younger population would be more likely to deviate from some of those expectations, potentially because they don't like the idea of the expectation. They may see themselves as more independently leaning, even though in our data, my argument would be they're independent African-Americans.

typically also tend to lean democratically, then when you put them together with those who identify as Democrats, they tend to still perform similarly to what Democrats are doing. And it seems as though this trend of younger Black voters, I know some

folks have focused specifically on younger black men and Keanu, you're saying it's young black voters across the board. It seems as though this is a new trend. So Dan Hopkins, who is a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a piece actually for FiveThirtyEight about this. And he wanted to find a benchmark pre-Trump or Obama that

That would give us some sense of how black voters were choosing candidates across generational divides. And so he went back to 2008 and actually looked at a hypothetical matchup of Hillary Clinton and John McCain and found that there are absolutely no differences across generations in terms of black support. And it's overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton.

He then went and looked at polling earlier this year between Trump and Biden and found that there are really stark differences. And that by the time you look at the 25 to 34 year old cohort, again, this is of 25 to 34 year old black voters, not just men, they were actually split evenly between Trump and Biden. So is there something, I know we've talked about the pandemic a little bit, we've talked about

trends that could apply to any younger group of voters. Is there something that's happened over the past 15 years that might have caused this? I don't know necessarily what could have caused this, at least based on our data. But I will say just as a point of confirmation to what you're observing is that across our surveys, like, for example, in my research program in the National Survey of Black Americans,

not just on candidates, but across several different measures of, to Cheryl's point, in terms of cohesion among Black people. We see younger Black adults who are less likely to say that being Black is important to how they think of themselves. A majority still say it, but it's a much smaller majority, particularly for Black voters under 30, are less likely to say that being Black is important to how they see themselves. They're less likely to attend Black churches or other Black reunions

religious institutions, they are less likely to say that they feel informed about Black history. So not just in terms of candidate choice, there is something happening for younger Black adults in general. There is something that's happening, and we've seen it as a pattern across all of our data in terms of this cohesion between younger Black adults and older Black adults. There's something that's there in terms of

Dissociation might be a very strong word, so I'm hesitant to use it, but there is something certainly less cohesion there to Black identity, Black institutions, less knowledge of Black history. And we see that across all of our data, not just our data on candidate choice.

So the thing that I would say for 15 years, one thing I would put in is, you know, this social media component, right? And like this thing about like Facebook, TikTok, particularly Twitter. With this expansion in social media, simultaneously you can kind of hold people accountable. But it also means that the connection square, the connection space that people have with one another is very different. How one can build revenue, how one can gain popularity or how can one can engage in space differently.

is a new space. And it's not necessarily maybe as restrictive as it was for those who come from generations before where who you were in close contact with your day-to-day interactions, those things are kind of your main reliance.

Younger people can, you know, we have a work from home culture. We have, you know, like a whole bunch of things, a whole bunch of spaces where you would have some of that reinforcement is not as prevalent. And I would be curious about that. I think I would, if I was thinking of the next step from Hopkins work would be to look at, okay, well, how much are you interacting in those social spaces? Because I think that that would probably be one of the key mechanisms that would be saying why people are saying, oh, I'm doing something a bit different.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, based on your research, Cheryl, the conclusion is in some ways that for decades, you know, black voters, particularly black voters who may hold conservative views on things like abortion or tax levels or gun restrictions have still voted for Democrats at much higher rates than people who hold those views in other racial groups. So

For either Democrats who may want to reverse this trend or Republicans who want to double down on this trend, what is the approach? Because it would seem if Democrats conclude, well, we're not being liberal enough. That's why we're losing Black voters. That probably isn't true if the voters that you're losing are the conservative voters. Likewise, is there anything unique that Trump is doing? Or is it just, well, this group cohesion is breaking down and it doesn't really matter who the Republican is.

conservative Black voters have just sort of finally started voting more reliably as Republicans? So I would, you know, it's hard to say. And I would say only because this data section of what we're looking at is with Trump very much in it. And he is a particular type of Republican. Like, I'm not sure if his...

things that are happening with him are generalizable to the party? Or is it like a Trump type of phenomenon? I think he had prior connection with people within the Black community and awareness of good or for bad. But like there was a lot of awareness of who he was. I think that that

aspect of it is kind of one of those things that really makes it challenging for me to say, projecting-wise, is this a new thing? And is this a breakdown? But I do think that it would be wrong to assume that Black people are not distributed across the ideological spectrum. There's very conservative Black people. And how they then respond, though, is very much partisan. So they can maintain those ideological beliefs and still typically vote with the Democratic Party. I think Trump's

Trump's appeal, from what I've heard and seen of people talk, Black people talking about Trump, I've heard a lot, one about economics and particularly where they attribute the stimulus check, right? Like monetarily. And I don't want to like simplify those individuals, but more so like they're like, well, we got a check from Trump.

Right. Like he signed them. Right. And that that was significant. And I would say that that's probably for a lower information voter. Right. They're using that as like a signal to them about what's going on. I also have heard people kind of talking more about his, you know, business acumen. Right. He just seems more qualified in that capacity. And so those who lean, I think, more economically conservative would probably be the people who would be the most likely voters.

to people who are also in the belief of kind of a

I can pick myself up, you know, in an individualistic kind of a capacity, right? Like if I just get into my business mindset, you know, it's a mindset kind of thinking. It's a way in which, which I think why then you would see potentially Black men having a bit more of an affinity to that, right? I think Black men have often been conservative and we've typically seen them have some differences from Black women in their behavior. But again, you know, Kiana has the data on like the likelihoods there. But at the same time,

I also think that that is one of the big things that kind of plays in. Today's podcast is brought to you by GiveWell. You're a details person. You want to understand how things really work. So when you're giving to charity, you should look at GiveWell, an independent resource for rigorous, transparent research about great giving opportunities whose website will leave even the most detail-oriented reader stunned.

Busy. GiveWell has now spent over 17 years researching charitable organizations and only directs funding to a few of the highest impact opportunities they've found. Over 100,000 donors have used GiveWell to donate more than $2 billion.

Rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save over 200,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more. GiveWell wants as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about high-impact giving. You can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And you can make tax-deductible donations to their recommended funds or charities. And GiveWell doesn't take a cut.

Again, that's givewell.org to donate or find out more.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete with costs spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI.

OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds. It offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds.

If you want to do more and spend less, like companies Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash 538. That's oracle.com slash 538. The numbers, not the letters. oracle.com slash 538.

You know, Kiana, I was curious, you recently did a survey that focused on Black Americans' trust in institutions. And one of Trump's key messages of his political career has been, don't trust institutions.

And I'm curious if you saw any relationship there between what you found, which is that ultimately there is a lot of distrust or mistrust of institutions amongst black Americans, and that this is a message that is core to Trump's

In that particular data set, we didn't ask about candidate choice. So unfortunately, I can't compare Black adults on that particular question. But in that survey, we did ask about several different institutions in society and just writ large across the board.

Black adults say that they don't trust these institutions. In fact, they say that they believe that these institutions were designed, so intentionally designed to hold Black people back. So about 65% of Black adults say that about the economic system and the political system. 70% say that about different sectors of the criminal justice system.

And so, and this is, it kind of aligns with work that we did a couple of years ago where we asked Black adults, in order for Black people to be treated fairly, what needs to happen to these institutions? Do they not need to change? Should they change a little bit? Should they change a lot or should they be completely rebuilt?

And almost 90% said that these institutions needed major changes or complete overhauls in order to treat people fairly. So what that suggests to me is that there is a critique of U.S. institutions, certainly, in terms of fair treatment for Black people. But then with this most recent study that you're talking about, I think it provides some context for that critique, which is that

Black people think that these systems are not randomly unfair, but intentionally unfair. And to a point that Cheryl made earlier, racial discrimination plays a big role in that. So that if you are...

a Black person who has experienced racial discrimination, you are more likely to express these beliefs of mistrust than those who haven't. Yeah, and I don't want to get too carried away with this connection to Trump here, because obviously, the Democratic Party does very frequently speak to the idea that structurally, Black Americans are disadvantaged because of different institutions. So this is not

necessarily a tie to Trump, but could also certainly be a tie to the Democratic Party. But I want to talk about Harris specifically and how identity is playing into this election. So there have been plenty of reports on the campaign trail that,

You know, Harris shies away from talking about her identity. And here I'll quote a report from the Associated Press. They quoted Brian Brokaw, who managed Harris's winning campaign for California attorney general in 2010. He said, quote, her life story and identity and her background and her job experience have all been critical parts of her campaigns. He was on to say becoming the first.

That has never actually been part of her core rationale for why she should be elected to office. It just happens to be an important result of her elections. The AP goes on to note, quote, It's a different approach from Hillary Clinton's in her 2016 Democratic campaign for president when she put front and center her potential to break the glass ceiling. Harris's aides and allies say with no time to lose in a compressed campaign this year, it is perhaps more valuable to focus on voters voting.

rather than herself. And finally, I'll add here that when asked about the historic nature of her campaign by CNN, Harris said, quote, Listen, I am running because I believe that I am the best person to do this job at this moment for all Americans, regardless of race and gender. So it seems like this is a somewhat intentional approach. Does this approach fit with your understanding of how Americans think about race and gender?

I think it does, you know, in her decision to do this. Right. You know, she's in what we would call like the intersectional politics of what she's dealing with here. Right. Like so we have prior to her really the corollary, although we had Obama and we had Clinton prior. Right. Like Shirley Chisholm was like really like and Carol Moseley Braun. Right. Like we're the black women who were running on the major tickets and or trying to get into the major ticket space. Right.

She visibly, right, cannot deny anything about her physical phenotypic appearance, right? Like, it's undeniable. It's a matter of how much do you discuss it, right? And I think Clinton was trying to shift a narrative from her prior attempt at running, right? So she, you know, is trying to put that more forward because I think that that was in her mind and what her campaign was thinking, the platform.

to garner more support, right? To garner certain people to get on board. But what was learned from that is that some of the very people that I think were the hope of getting on board with that couldn't do so. And some of that, I think, was in part because she also has a lot of

similar to Biden, right? There is baggage, right? Like the Clinton couldn't just escape some of the long history of her and where she's been in the politics because she was first lady, she was a senator, she was secretary of state. Like she's served in so many roles. There's so much you could draw on. Even with the gender component, it just didn't play well. And so I think Harris is saying, you know, I don't need to do that. And she has to worry about

optics on this also for herself, right? And how people will perceive her because I think the Republican Party and the Republican campaign with Trump and Vance have really been trying to

kind of fling some of that gendered pieces at her, right? Trying to make it seem, you know, this is why we have this childless cat lady conversation going on. Trying to, you know, question her race and seeing if she takes the bait, essentially. Like, is she gonna try to engage in those conversations? And the best decision I think that she's done, because it's helped her to not really have to delve into that mucky space, is to just say,

I am who I am. And so I grew up where I've grown up. I have this background and take what you want from that. But I've never denied who I am and my background and who I am and what things I link myself to.

says enough, right? Like you can say all, she doesn't have to speak about necessarily being Black and being a woman. She's a member of a Black sorority, right? Like she went to a Black college. You know, these things are not as debatable. And I think with that, then she has just managed to kind of say, well, I'm just not going to focus on this because I'm going to give my attention to the people. And I think that that's a good strategy because it means that people who may be turned off by the race and gender issues

cue, right, like that being more explicit, are now more likely maybe to hear more of what she's saying because they're not being kind of already thrown away from her because she is bringing that conversation as part of the forefront of her campaign.

We asked this question in our early September survey to all voters, regardless of race and ethnicity, but we split the results out by race. And so we asked people, do you think that Kamala Harris's racial background, her being Asian and Black, would it help her, hurt her, or not make a difference?

in terms of the presidential election. And among Black voters, they're split on that question. So 40% said there'll be, about 40% said it won't make a difference, her being Asian and Black. But about an equal share said it would help her

So about 30 percent said that. And then another 30, almost 30 percent said that it would hurt her. And so there is not a clear consensus among Black voters about the extent to which her racial background would help or hurt her. It's interesting because I think the assessment that Black people are making, right, is that

what are white people thinking of her, right? Like, if we know that she's going to get a lot of the Black vote, like the large majority of that, or a large majority of votes even from other communities, right? It is, what do white people think of her? And how are they going to see her? Because she's in an at-large contest. She's not the descendant of...

of American slavery, right? Like, she doesn't come out of the Southern region of the United States. She doesn't come from that history. And so some would say that that makes her distinctive, right? That makes her a bit more palpable to white audiences. Even her phenotypic characteristics, how she appears to people, makes her someone who could be more likely to appeal to voters that may not want to hear about that race and gendered piece. And I think she's, again, really, because she talks about

about these. She talks about various issues. She talks about things like maternal health. And she that was something that she's been very, you know, open about speaking about her role in the vice presidency with Biden's proposals and plans for various things and has continued to champion that and has even recently brought up, you know, what was discussed in a recent pro-publical article about a young woman passing away from not being able to get access to treatment for a situation with her reproduction in Georgia. So she's having

having those conversations, she's just not really centering it around her identity. But it does tone down the me historic moment more so. I am a person who fits these things and you guys can take what you want from that, but I'm going to be for you. Yeah, I was really curious about this approach as well. And so I was trying to look up any data that could give me an indication about how voters might react if she talked more about her role

race and gender. And so I'll say I found somewhat mixed results, right? Americans overall in surveys express discomfort with identity being the rationale for things like college admissions or jobs. And that goes across different groups and persuasions and the like. And also, according to a Pew poll, a majority, 50% of Americans say the increased focus on race and racial inequality in the

country since 2020 has not improved the lives of Black people, and that includes 58% of Black respondents. So there's some indication of people saying, we don't feel comfortable talking about it or talking about it isn't accomplishing much. But, however...

I found a really interesting experiment that the pollsters at Fairleigh Dickinson did. And basically they had three different groups that they polled. One was where they primed respondents to think about Harris's race. Another where they primed respondents to think about her gender. And another that was the control group.

And what they found is that when they reminded respondents of Harris's race before asking the preference question, you know, do you support Trump or Harris, that she improved her standing with voters of color, notably to the point where it took the sort of end result from being basically a tie to a Harris lead.

these experiments are always difficult because they're so controlled and you don't actually know like the type of campaign that you would run if you were going to try to prime people to think about your race or gender is just an entirely different campaign and what kinds of effects would that have? But it's like on one hand, Americans are saying, we don't want to prioritize this stuff. We don't like this being a rationale. But on the other hand, it seems like

particularly for voters of color. And the strongest response was amongst Black voters here, which I think probably gets at some of your research, Cheryl, was when you remind people and prime people about sort of the historical nature of the campaign, there is more of a tendency towards that group voter behavior. Does that make sense?

It does. It does. And I mean, the research on this, my co-author has work even before our book that talks about, you know, activating of something known as linked fate. Right. And so, you know, when that is activated, it often leads to shifts in behavior and people's assessment of various things. Right. So in his case, he looked at policy and he varied the type of policy that was being discussed accordingly.

and changed just the language of if it was referring to low-income people or Black people and saw that there was more support for particular things when it was being referenced as Black than when it was just kind of in a more general classification based off of class.

And so that speaks a lot to this idea that making race salient, right, activates things like linked fate, the salience of racial identity. Those who are high in that sentiment, which is a lot of the Black community, are then going to be much more inclined to respond then to that invocation. But that may also, at the same time, it's helping with people of color,

it could be turning off a whole host of other people who are not as identity, I wouldn't say necessarily centered, but more identity inclined to want to have that being referenced, right? If what you are trying to operate more from is that identity doesn't matter or identity is not as much of an important thing

thing, then you may be less inclined to be as drawn to that type of appeal. It could be quiet signaling a little bit, like explicitly, right, you activate linked fate, but she can also do so through other things that she talks about and discusses.

And so it may not have to be just centered around her. It could be centered around other things that she speaks about that then makes people feel like, okay, she's going to do X, Y, and Z, or this is going to be something that's going to be important to people of color or to Black people specifically. Yeah, our polling data on...

Black people and how they view identity confirms a lot of that. So a couple of years ago, we published a report that was about Black identity and how important is being Black to you. I mentioned that a little earlier. But we found that the answer to that question, so almost 80% of Black adults say that

being Black is an important part of how I see myself. And that's even including multiracial Black people. So people who, that Black is one of their races among two or three that they named for us through self-report. So even among multiracial people, being Black is an important part.

of how they see themselves. But the answer to that question predicted a whole host of things that we asked about. It predicted different types of linked fate. Do I feel, does what happened to people in my neighborhood, in the country, to Black people around the world, does that affect my life? So this idea that being Black is a significant part of how I see myself, that's a predictor of all kinds of

connections within the Black community, back to the conversation about cohesion. It's a predictor of all kinds of political attitudes in terms of even everything from how important is voting to defund the police that we asked about a few years ago when those topics were really relevant. And

The significance or the importance of Blackness is also, to a lesser extent, is less true for Black Republicans than Black Democrats, but still a majority of Black Republicans say that being Black is important to how I see myself. My ancestry is important to how I see myself, a majority majority.

Yeah. And to that end, looking at the polling, you know, you can ask the question of what issues are important to Black voters. It's largely the issues that are important to everyone. The cost of everything.

everyday goods, inflation, housing, crime and safety, and the likes. But if you also ask about rights and Black civil rights in particular, that also rates as quite important when thinking about political campaigns. So my final question is, you know, on one hand, I'm sure Democrats would argue that having Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats 90% plus for decades is

has been positive for them because they've been able to achieve political power and gains through the Democratic Party. There is also the argument that it's the swing voters who are the squeaky wheel who get all the attention in politics. There's a reason that politicians have spent so much time in the upper Midwest talking to working class white voters over the past 10 years. And it's because of the truth and the perception of the role that they have played in

swinging the electoral college over the past couple election cycles. And so I'm curious from a theoretical perspective, where do the advantages lie? You know, maybe Donald Trump never would have enacted criminal justice reform had he not thought he was making gains with Black men. At the same time, probably, you know, there would not have been a first Black president if not for the Democratic Party.

So how do you try to straddle, one, wanting to be the squeaky wheel that gets the grease and being a swing voter and being perceived as an opportunity for both parties to make your pitch to versus sort of being captured by one party, but then maybe being able to use that party for political gains? So I would say, I mean, we have work on the electoral capture conversation, right? And Ishmael and I kind of push back a bit on the capture idea because we're like, you know, the decision about Democratic voting for Black people is like a strategic decision.

option that you have to kind of do in a system where you're a racial minority as well as an empirical minority and you're trying to leverage power and realized power, meaning gaining representation, has been felt to have come from putting, you know, much of the collective effort into democratic support. Right. And so you really have to get them to pay attention to that. And

feel as if, you know, without doing noticeable types of policies that would benefit people broadly, but particularly have large benefits for Black people, that you might not have that vote share, right? And I think Biden was kind of dealing with, although he's done policies, right, like the mobilization issue was, I think, going to be his greatest concern, right? And so now he had to really kind of

figure out how do you make this appeal, right? Do you appeal to Black voters and how is he going to try to roll that out? And a lot of that was like, you know, being in particular spaces, having certain endorsements, getting the backing of particular entities within government, trying to put forward things that sound like policies like where we just saw that on the HBCU funding increase, right? Like all of those things are happening and are trying to, you know, show Black voters that these policies are speaking to their concerns, right?

And so it's a challenge. I think it's a challenge. But I think Black voters are very much not quite as captured as some might argue. I think that they are really intentional in their decision making about where they're standing and also then getting some responsiveness from elected officials in regards to that with the recognition that they might not have the vote share that they need, especially even in key states, if they're not showing some responsiveness to this.

All right. Well, I think that's a good place to leave things today. Thank you so much for joining me today, Cheryl and Kiana. Thanks for having me. Thank you for having me. My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Tritavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, give us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.