President Joe Biden is losing support among Black voters, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
"I really did think he was going to help people in my situation," 2020 Biden voter Michelle Smith, 46, who earns $12.50 an hour working as a home health aide and makes Instacart deliveries for extra money in Philadelphia, told the Journal. "It's like all of them talk a good game until they get elected."
Smith told the news outlet that higher prices and spiking rent costs have driven her out of Biden's camp for the 2024 presidential election, a message similar to many minority voters across the country that helped Biden defeat former President Donald Trump in 2020.
According to the report, turnout for Black voters dropped in the 2022 midterms compared to previous midterm cycles as voters turn away from Biden's economic policies and leadership.
The economy and decreasing wage gains are impacting Black voters more dramatically, seeing full time wage growth of 4.2% in the third quarter of the year compared to 10.3% gained during the same period in the prior year.
While Democrats worry that these voters could shift to Republicans and Trump in 2024, Smith told the Journal it is likely she just won't vote at all.
"I think I'm not going to vote, period," she said in the report.
The New York Times reported Nov. 6 that recent polling shows Black voters are more disconnected from the Democratic Party than they have been for decades.
The outlet's recent poll with Siena College found Trump rising to 22% support among Black voters in the six most important battleground states, which the poll shows Trump leading Biden in five of them among all voters.
That is a sharp increase in support for the former president who only garnered 8% of the Black vote in 2020, the Times report said.
"I don't think we've been voicing what we delivered to the African American community and particularly among younger African American men," Celinda Lake, a Democrat pollster for Biden's campaign in 2020, said in the report. "We have to get the numbers up and we have to get African American voters out to vote, and we have to get the numbers up with young people, and we have to get them out to vote."
While polling shows an increase in the community for Trump, poll watchers and Democrat pundits are more concerned that the community will stay home and not vote at all in 2024.
"I'm not worried about Trump doubling his support with Black and Brown voters," Cornell Belcher, who worked as a pollster for former President Barack Obama, told the Times. "What I am worried about is turnout."
Charles Kim ✉
Charles Kim, a Newsmax general assignment writer, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years in reporting on news and politics.
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