Black Voters Helped Put Biden in the White House in 2020. They May Help Take Him Out in 2024

Black voters are considered the most loyal voting bloc for the Democratic Party and, rightly or wrongly, by party affiliation, they identify as Democrats more than any other demographic group in the United States. It was this loyalty that helped then-candidate Joe Biden win South Carolina in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary by 61% and salvage what looked like a collapsing campaign following losses in Iowa and New Hampshire and poor polling elsewhere. 

However, a lot has changed since that surprise revival of Biden’s political fortunes, which ushered him to the Democratic nomination and lifted him to the presidency in that general election.

Democrats’ most loyal voting bloc is now having buyer’s remorse. Unlike in 2020, when Biden received 92% of the Black vote, his current approval rating among Black voters is now 61%, down by more than 30%, with 34% of those polled saying they disapprove of him, according to an NBC News opinion sampling. 

In short, Biden is in serious trouble and, if these numbers persist, his reelection bid is in serious jeopardy without the strong support of Black voters.

The current political condition overseen by President Biden is fraught with disappointment and frustration among Black voters. Charlamagne tha God, host of the popular and influential radio show The Breakfast Club, recently lamented about his disappointment with the Biden/Harris administration. In 2020, Charlamagne used his influential perch to endorse then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, stating: “I’m voting for Kamala Harris, I’ll tell you that in a heartbeat. I’m not necessarily voting for Joe Biden, I’m voting for Sen. Kamala Harris.” 

However, that vote for Harris was indeed a vote for Joe Biden. And it was one that Biden believed he was owed, which he made abundantly clear when he stated to Charlamagne during the 2020 campaign that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or [Donald] Trump, then you ain’t Black.” That very statement may come back to haunt Biden this year, as many Black voters are frankly not interested in what he’s selling. 

During a taping of The Breakfast Club, Charlamagne said he regrets supporting Biden and Harris and learned a valuable lesson about using his platform, which reaches 8 million Black listeners a day. In reference to Vice President Harris, he stated: “I’ve learned my lesson from doing that. Once they got in the White House, she kind of disappeared.”

His unwillingness to support the Biden/Harris ticket in this presidential cycle points to a growing sense of disillusionment among many Black voters about the Biden administration specifically and Democrats in general. From inflation — from which Black households have suffered the most — to flat-out anger over the influx of illegal immigrants moving into mostly urban neighborhoods where resources are already scarce, Black voters have had enough. 

The simple fact is that without Black voters in 2020, there wouldn’t be a Biden presidency today. And if Black voters in 2024 opt to vote for someone else — whether it’s Donald Trump or one of the several third-party candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West, Marianne Williamson or Jill Stein — or if they decide to just stay home, Joe Biden will be a one-term president. 

As pointed out by professor Rayshawn Ray at the Brookings Institution, Black voters helped Biden win several key battleground states — in particular, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania — and were a strategic asset to Biden in other battleground states, such as Wisconsin and Arizona. In Georgia, Blacks provided more than half of all the state’s Democratic vote, despite being just 33% of the state’s population, according to Brookings’ data; they comprised 20% of all Democratic voters in Michigan and 21% in Pennsylvania, where they are just 14% and 12% of those states’ populations, respectively.

Four years ago, Biden said “you ain’t Black” if you didn’t vote for him. Yet he may be in for a severe reality check on what Blackness really is — because the reality of what the Biden administration has meant for Black Americans is on their doorsteps, and I think it’s time that it knocks on his, too. 

Shermichael Singleton is the host of “The Shermichael Singleton Show” on SiriusXM and has worked as a strategist and consultant to numerous Republican candidates, including three presidential campaigns.