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Howard poll: Black swing-state voters overwhelmingly back Harris — with key divides on age and gender

An overwhelming majority of Black likely voters in battleground states said they’ll vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November — though she needs to close the deal with some skeptical undecideds to reach President Joe Biden’s 2020 margins among Black voters.

The data, from a new Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion poll of 963 likely Black voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the seven core battleground states in the election — show 82% say they’ll vote for Harris, while 12% say they’ll vote for former President Donald Trump. Another 5% are undecided, and 1% plan to pick another candidate.

The findings are in line with 2020 exit poll results across the same battleground states, where 89% of Black voters supported Biden and 9% supported Trump, as well as other post-election research studying the 2020 vote.

Yet while Black swing-state voters are largely lined up behind Harris, there are some important differences among subsets of the Black vote.

“We have 100% Black voters in the poll, and that creates opportunities for us to drill down on the diverse representations of thought in Black communities,” said a co-director of the Initiative on Public Opinion, Dana Williams, dean of the Graduate School at Howard University.

“It’s important for the range of Black voices to be heard and to be known,” Williams added. “I think part of the responsibility of the mainstream media is to reflect the population, and as one of the largest-growing populations of voters, we need to spend a lot more time thinking about what’s on their minds so that legislative agendas, presidential agendas, messaging on all of those fronts don’t ignore a significant voting population.”

Overall, Black women and a similar 81% of Black men said they’ll vote for Harris over Trump. Older voters are firmer in their support for Harris, while younger voters are more divided.

While 89% of Black battleground voters ages 50 and over said they’ll vote for Harris and only 8% said they plan to vote for Trump, those ages 18 to 49 divided differently: 75% for Harris, compared with 16% vote for Trump.

The age shift was especially pronounced among Black men.

Among those polled, men under 50 support Harris by 50 points (72% to 21%), whereas the advantage for Harris among men 50 and over is 78 points (88% to 10%). Among young women, the margin for Harris is 65 points (78% to 13%) — but among older women, it’s 84 points (89% to 6%).

(Rounding accounts for any differences between the reported margins and the differences between the reported vote shares.)

Meanwhile, Black swing-state voters with college degrees support Harris over Trump by 73 points, while Black voters who aren’t college graduates support Harris over Trump by 68 points.

The poll finds that younger and less-educated voters are more likely to support Trump.

Just over a quarter (26%) of men under 50 without college degrees said they’ll vote for Trump, compared with 67% who said they’ll vote for Harris.

The voters in the poll said they were motivated to vote for Harris based on her positions, values and temperament, while they rated Trump’s positions, values and temperament as among the biggest factors making Black voters less likely to vote for him.

Black voters in the survey cited Harris’ temperament (79%), her positions and agenda on abortion and reproductive health care (79%) and her values (78%) as the topics that make them more likely to vote for her. Harris’ positions and agenda on immigration (19%) and the conflict in Gaza (17%), as well as her record as a prosecutor (15%), were some of the top reasons cited as making respondents likely to vote for her.

When it comes to Trump, voters said his positions and agenda on the economy (18%), his positions and agenda on immigration (17%), his record in business (16%) and his record as president (16%) will make them more likely to vote for him. The top reasons cited making voters less likely to back Trump were his temperament (81%), his positions and agenda on abortion and reproductive health care (80%) and his values (80%).

The Black voters polled most closely associated Harris with policies on abortions rights and reproductive health care (28%) and economic policies (26%). Views of Trump were more diffuse, with a 14% plurality saying they most closely associate him with border control and immigration policies.

The poll found that 84% of the Black voters who responded said they were concerned about a rise in hate or brutality against African Americans if Trump wins. Forty-five percent said that if Harris becomes the second Black president, they have the same concern about a rise in hate or brutality against African Americans.

“What the media tells us is important to voters drives the way that candidates respond to what they learn,” Williams said. “And if they aren’t learning what Black voters are thinking, they’ll continue to be driven” by reporting and polling that doesn’t delve as deeply into Black opinion.

The Howard Initiative on Public Opinion designed and administered the multi-modal survey of 963 likely voters who self-identified as African American or Black and indicated they were registered to vote in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. The survey was conducted Sept. 4-11 through text-to-web online surveys and telephone (landline and cellphone) interviews. The margin of error for likely voters is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.