A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of Black voters in Michigan shows that while President Joe Biden enjoys a clear majority of their support, it may not be enough to win the state again as more voters have moved to backing former President Donald Trump and third party candidates than appeared to do so in the 2020 election.
The poll, for which 500 registered Black voters selected at random were surveyed in Michigan from last Sunday through Thursday, indicated 54% support Biden, compared to 15% for Trump, 8% for independent activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 6% for independent activist and philosopher Cornel West and 1% for Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee. Another 15% were undecided or refused to answer.
That level of support is well beneath what Biden had from Black voters in Michigan in 2020. According to exit polling that year, Black voters in Michigan, who made up 12% of all voters in that election, supported Biden 92%-7% over Trump. Biden went on to win the state overall by just under 3 percentage points, or about 154,000 votes.
But assuming the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll’s measure of Black support for Biden at present is correct, even adding to the Democratic president’s margin the 45% of third-party supporters who said he would be their second choice and splitting the undecided vote proportionately between him and Trump, it wouldn’t be enough for Biden to win Michigan holding all else equal to the exit polling and vote totals from 2020.
“There are two problems for Biden,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, which performed the survey with input from the Free Press. “One is the third party candidate support and the other is a slight, but significant, improvement by Trump.”
The poll’s release comes just ahead of the Juneteenth holiday on Wednesday at a time when the campaigns are focused on attracting Black voters in Michigan, a key battleground state likely to help determine the outcome of the election. Biden’s campaign has begun a vast outreach effort targeted to Black voters in Detroit and across the state; on Saturday, Trump held a roundtable discussion at Black church in the city.
While Black voters, a significant voting bloc for Democrats, are surveyed in other Michigan polls, the total number contacted is usually small relative to the number of white voters contacted throughout the state, meaning the margin of error for gauging the levels of support among Black voters is statistically speaking far greater than for the entire voter sample. By doing a poll only of Black voters, the margin of error was far less, at plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. The poll was done by live callers to mobile and landline phones.
Suffolk was also polling Black voters in another key swing state, Pennsylvania, for USA Today and the Gannett media network.
Clearly, Biden enjoys widespread support in Michigan. Lucell Trammer, 43, who lives in West Bloomfield and runs an Information Technology consulting business, said he had always considered himself more of a moderate but “as the Republican Party has become more extreme and more exclusionary to the real needs and wants of the African American community, it’s pushed me further and further away from them.”
But the Michigan poll also bolstered what other polls and anecdotal reports have suggested could have a bearing on the election that is not in Biden’s favor: While just 9% of Black women voters support Trump, 22% of Black male voters do. Among younger Black voters age 18-34, 19% support Trump and 22% support a third party candidate with just 42% supporting Biden − 12% off his support among Black voters as a whole in the state − though more than half of those younger voters would support Biden as a second choice.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed considered themselves Democrats and among them, Biden had the support of 79% compared to 11% for third parties and 3% for Trump. But among the 25% who consider themselves independent voters, 28% supported third-party candidates, compared to 25% for Biden and 21% for Trump. Another 25% of independent voters were undecided. (Self-described Republicans made up 10% of the survey, they backed Trump 71% to 15% for Biden, 8% undecided and 6% for third-party candidates.)
Biden’s campaign could still see support among Black voters surge by fall.
Among the 12% polled who said they did not vote in 2020, 38% support Trump compared to 28% for Biden (with 15% going to third-party candidates and 19% undecided). But the fact that they did not vote that year, when turnout was up statewide, could suggest they are less likely to follow through with voting this fall. Younger voters also often turn out at lower numbers than older voters, with whom Biden enjoys a clear and stronger advantage.
And it is possible that undecided Black voters, if they vote, could break more strongly for the Democratic president, given the party’s longstanding ties to that voting bloc, than the Free Press’ proportional model suggests. If the Biden campaign’s much-touted advantage in infrastructure and staff is better at turning out Black voters than Trump is, it could make a huge difference as well. Democrats have also outperformed expectations in many recent elections.
But the warning signs are there for Democrats: Among the Black voters who said they backed Biden in ’20, only 67% plan to do so again right now, with 17% preferring a third party candidate at this stage − 8% each for the independents Kennedy and West and 1% for Stein and 11% undecided. Four percent said they were backing Trump.
Among those who voted for Biden four years ago but were contemplating voting for someone else this year, age (he is 81, Trump turned 78 on Friday) and the president’s mental state was cited by 14% as a factor. But more − 36% − said more simply that they thought he had done a poor job as president.
Seventy-nine percent of the much smaller number of Black voters who supported Trump four years ago said they would do so again, with 6% voting for Biden, 4% for third-party candidates and 11% undecided. That shows that the third-party candidates are eating much more into Biden’s support right now than Trump’s among Black voters. Among Trump’s 2020 Black supporters who are looking at another candidate this year, 22% said he was a “clown” or a “loser” but it was a very small subset of the poll.
Many voters not thrilled with choices, inflation is top concern
Most voters contacted who said they were supporting Biden or Trump indicated they were “very motivated” to do so, with that number dipping below 50% for the third-party candidate supporters. But many of the voters who took part in the survey who were contacted by the Free Press suggested they weren’t overly excited about their choices in this election.
Nate Moore, a 43-year-old construction worker who recently bought a home in Detroit, said he’s backing Biden as “the lesser of two evils” and believing that third-party candidates don’t stand a chance in a national election. As for why he’d back Biden over Trump, he said Biden “doesn’t say things that make you worry about democracy, like (talking about) locking up political opponents, (or threatening) physical violence.” Even given Biden’s verbal gaffes, he said, “He’s more stately.”
But Moore said he faults Biden for making promises − like a sweeping student debt proposal that was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court − that Moore believes were “tailored to sound good” rather than succeed.
Ellaniece Shephard, a 68-year-old Detroiter who retired from the line at Ford Motor’s Wixom Assembly and is a loyal Democrat and union supporter, said, “I’m going to go with Biden even though I think he’s up in age.” Biden, she said, is more of a friend to working people and she finds Trump’s bellicose behavior and name-calling “rude.”
“You don’t have to be rude because you’re a millionaire,” she said of Trump. “There’s nothing wrong with being nice.”
Ambria Harris, a 45-year-old former exotic dancer who studied political science at Oakland University and lives in Southfield, said she would “definitely back Biden” before Trump, even though she considers herself an independent. “I don’t believe in the Republicans because they’re not fiscally conservative,” she said.
Harris said she voted for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson in the 2016 election, when Trump won Michigan by two-tenths of a percentage point. If she had it to do over, she said, she would have voted for the Democratic nominee that year, Hillary Clinton.
But Trump has decidedly made inroads with some Black voters. Mourice Windham, a 40-year-old forklift operator and truck driver in Detroit, began considering himself a Republican some years ago, believing Democrats haven’t lived up to the promises they have made to the Black community. He also believes Trump is right to crack down on illegal immigration, concentrate on helping American workers and keep the U.S. out of foreign wars.
Windham also appreciates Trump’s way of simplifying and breaking down issues when he speaks. “He’s been a standup guy,” he said. “I can’t take anything from him.”
Adelayo Akinfenwa, a 34-year-old first-generation American who lives in Ypsilanti and runs a home health care business with his brothers and mother, said he’s still weighing his options but for now, it’s Trump over Biden. He lived in Texas for a time and appreciated how more Republican-leaning states didn’t have the shutdowns and mandates to the same level seen in Democratic-leaning ones.
He also thinks Biden’s “competency level has dwindled with his age a bit.” Akinfenwa also said illegal border crossings are a huge issue, noting that his family immigrated from Nigeria legally and others should too.
When it comes to the issues motivating voters, however, the poll of Black voters was starkly revealing, A few months ago, Suffolk did a national poll with USA TODAY, which showed 29% of voters considered inflation and the economy their major issue, closely followed by immigration at 24% and threats to democracy at 23%.
Among Black voters in Michigan, 43% cited inflation and the economy. Threats to democracy was next at 15%, health care at 14%. Abortion was next at 8%.
“The biggest issue is inflation,” said 32-year-old Chavez Clemons, a Detroiter who works in information technology. “I’m tired of going to the store and seeing ground beef for $10 a pound” and repairs to his car going through the roof in cost. He plans to back Biden and says he could never vote for Trump but that something needs to be done about runaway costs. “I’m sitting here being crushed, I’m being crushed,” he said.
In Jackson, 34-year-old Elizabeth Isaac, a single mom with two kids who works as a certified nursing assistant, said she’s not even sure she’ll vote this year, though she voted for Biden four years ago. “I have more stress on paying my bills day-to-day than on who is going to run the world,” she said. Rent is up, gas prices are up, food prices are up. She thought about a second job but says her kids need her in their lives too.
“When you’re worried about all that how can you worry about who is being voted in?” she said. “I’ve got children to feed. I got to get to work every day.”
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Exclusive: Poll of Michigan’s Black voters show Biden support lagging
