How Black Voters See Donald Trump and Kamala Harris Before the Vote

African Americans gave former President Donald Trump a 5% positive rating, cited economic issues as their top concern and had more trust in small businesses than churches, according to a large-scale survey released Thursday that calls itself the Black Census Project.

Black Futures Lab, a think tank based in Washington, DC, launched this research project in 2018 to capture the full spectrum of Black experiences, opinions and needs. According to the organization, this information is often diluted or overlooked when data is collected from the broader population.

“No other survey sheds light on Black people’s attitudes and beliefs across demographics and geography like the Black Census,” Natishia June, the lab’s field director, said in a call with news outlets Thursday. “Every day, policies are made about us, without us. We launched the Black Census to transform that.”

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While the first Black Census yielded just over 30,000 responses, more than 200,000 African Americans submitted questionnaires this time around, June said. Those submissions yielded the 181,109 high-quality responses used to derive the census results.

This is the kind of grassroots effort needed to “take the pulse of what’s happening” in Black America, said Kristin Powell, the leader of Black Futures Lab. The survey captured Black views of political leaders, U.S. institutions and the Supreme Court, and it also revealed the issues African Americans see as the country’s most pressing challenges.

“With the 2024 presidential election just four months away, we know that Black votes matter. Black people do, Powell said. “The presidential election will depend on what Black voters want and whether they believe candidates can deliver.”

African Americans strongly support Democratic Party policies

Among black women, 75% identify as Democrat and 16% identify as independent but lean toward the Democratic Party. Black men are more likely to identify as independent, 25%, who lean toward Democratic policies. Six in 10 black men said they were Democrat.

In a close election year like this, Powell said, these independent voters matter. While some previous research has suggested that these independent votes are up for grabs for Republicans or Democrats, Powell said the Black Census data and additional focus groups show that’s not the case.

“What the data shows is that black voters lean Democratic, and if they feel like they’re not being helped, they won’t vote at all.”

What do black voters value when it comes to policy?

The Black Census shows that economic issues are discussed most often, such as increasing the availability of affordable housing, raising wages to a level where parents can support their families and lowering health care costs.

“Focus group participants explained in their own words the role wages play in their lives,” Powell and her team wrote in their report. “They expressed concerns about inflation and rising living costs. Even as news and other reports show signs that the economy is improving, many working people haven’t felt the ‘relief.’ Housing, food and transportation are expensive, and jobs don’t pay well enough to keep up.”

Next on the agenda for survey respondents: Leaders should stop police from killing unarmed black citizens and using excessive force against African Americans. They say they want law enforcement officers to be held accountable for these crimes.

They want something done about the violence in their communities, including white supremacist violence, the killing of black people by vigilantes, anti-transgender violence, gun violence, and violence against women.

Finally, key issues also included calls to restore fundamental rights and the rule of law: respondents expressed disapproval of the abolition of abortion as a health care measure, new laws or regulations making it harder to vote, and the deportation of illegal immigrants.

How Black Census Data Can Help Get Voters to the Polls

The Black Census data allowed researchers to dig deeply into the needs of Black people and possible solutions, said Ranada Robinson, research director at the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan group working to register and civically engage a large and growing population of Black, people of color and young voters in the Peach State.

This kind of deep reservoir of knowledge is crucial to influencing whether people vote, Robinson said. Her group has found that voters can like candidates but still not trust them to represent their interests. In that scenario, Robinson said, voters won’t vote for those candidates. But if a candidate knows what voters want and can compare their voting record to that of the other candidate, Robinson said, they can get voters off the fence.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many voters lost their jobs and needed financial help, Robinson said, so they wanted the stimulus checks. Protests also broke out across the country and the world over the police killings of George Floyd and other African Americans, so racial justice was at the forefront of people’s minds.

“What we did was we created ads that focused on the issue and created a choice framework,” Robinson said, “so one was about the stimulus check and we said, ‘OK, you have a choice between senators who are committed to making sure you get your stimulus check (or) senators who have already voted no and plan to vote no again.”

In another ad, Robinson’s team ran an ad about racial justice, presenting a choice between Senate candidates who supported the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and those who had voted against it and planned to vote against it again.

Likewise, the Black Census survey results provide a wealth of data on how voters feel about political leaders, American institutions, and the Supreme Court. That information can also be used to frame choices and understand what drives voter sentiment.

This study was conducted before President Joe Biden announced he would no longer run for president and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. However, it shows that his support would have gone down well with black voters. Harris had the highest positive rating, 71%, matched only by former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, scored a 4 percent favorability rating among survey respondents, the only political leader to score lower than Trump. About 7 in 10 respondents had an unfavorable opinion of the Supreme Court.

When it comes to institutions, respondents showed the greatest trust — “a great deal” or “extremely much” — in small and medium-sized businesses, followed by the U.S. military, labor unions, black elected leaders, and the church or organized religion.

“This poll tells us what black people want and what our talking points should be,” Powell said. “We need to be able to talk about the economy, gun violence, education, how their vote matters, what issues got their vote or what issues didn’t happen because we didn’t hold certain officials accountable or because there wasn’t a vote.”