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Can Kamala Harris help Democrats regain lost Black votes?

Some Black voters have gravitated away from the Democrats in recent years, but will Kamala Harris be able to pull them back?

Barely a week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the United States presidential race, his deputy Kamala Harris emerged as his replacement atop the Democratic Party ticket.

Just this week, she was confirmed as the official Democratic Party nominee, following a string of key endorsements, including from former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Harris, a 59-year-old former California prosecutor, could potentially become the first woman — and the first African American-Indian candidate — to make it to the White House.

But experts wonder whether Harris will be able to reverse a troubling trend for Democrats.

Recent opinion polls suggested that Biden had been losing the support of Black voters before his withdrawal from the race. And their support had proven crucial in his 2020 election victory.

That year, 87 percent of Black voters opted to support Biden. But in May, a Pew Research poll of Black voters found that only 77 percent indicated that they would choose Biden over Republican nominee Donald Trump for president in this year’s elections.

So, can Harris turn this downward trend around before the November election?

What is the history of Black voter support for the Democratic Party?
From the mid-20th century onwards, support for the Democrats has traditionally been high among Black voters, reaching a peak of 95 percent during Barack Obama’s election in 2008, according to exit polls.

The Great Depression in the 1930s is often cited as a turning point. As poverty rose, many voting demographics started to turn against President Herbert Hoover, a Republican.

His successor, Democrat Franklin D Roosevelt, offered an alternative. Roosevelt first won the presidency in 1932 and served a historic four terms in office.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has compiled data from that time period about Black voting trends. While there is no data for 1932, the centre found that Roosevelt gained 71 percent of the Black vote in 1936.

Black communities strongly supported Roosevelt’s New Deal programmes, which attempted to reduce inequality in the wake of the Great Depression.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA), Public Works Administration (PWA) and other programmes provided jobs for millions of Americans, including African Americans. Employment rates rose, though critics point out that rampant discrimination limited how effective the New Deal programmes were for Black communities.

Furthermore, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was also an advocate for civil rights, helping to cement Black support for Roosevelt.

Still, a sizable segment of the Black population continued to support the Republican Party. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies estimates that, until 1964, one in four identified as Republican.

But the fight for civil rights was heating up in the US, and that too shifted the political dynamics.

Roosevelt’s successor, Democrat Harry Truman, made the decision to integrate the military in 1948, and white segregationists like South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond responded by switching parties, joining the Republicans.

Later Democratic presidents, like John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, would make civil rights a centrepiece of their campaigns, drawing significant Black support in the 1960s. The signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for instance, marks a leap in Black identification with the Democratic Party.

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