Black women voters in the US are enthusiastically rallying around Vice President Kamala Harris, who is on the cusp of becoming the first woman of colour to run for the presidential election.
African American voters have long been the Democratic Party‘s most loyal and reliable electorate, and black women in particular have shown they can provide the winning edge for candidates in recent elections.
“They do play an enormously important role, certainly, in this election,” René Lindstädt, professor of government and data science at the University of Birmingham, told i.
“And I think this is where Harris, being at the top of the ticket, gives the Democrats a real boost.”
Black women had the highest voter turnout rate among all racial, ethnic and gender groups in 2008 – a historic first – when an overwhelming number (96 per cent) voted Democrat and propelled Barack Obama to winning the race to the White House. In 2012, black women again voted at a higher rate than any other group and played a key role in Obama’s re-election.
Support for the Democrats remained at a high level in subsequent elections, with 94 per cent of black women voters supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 90 per cent for Joe Biden in 2020.
Dr Richard Johnson, senior lecturer in US politics and policy at Queen Mary University of London, said one of the arguments for why Clinton lost some swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was because African American turnout had not been as high as it had been when Obama was on the ballot four years earlier.
“One of the mistakes that the Hillary Clinton campaign made in 2016 was that it assumed that she would be able to mobilise close to equivalent levels of black turnout that Obama had been able to mobilise in 2012, and she just simply wasn’t able to do that,” Dr Johnson told i.
“If she had been able to mobilise African American voters to similar levels that Barack Obama had done in those three states alone she would have been elected president.”
In a tightly fought race, women of colour could play a pivotal role in deciding outcomes of key 2024 elections, including in Georgia, a swing state, where black people account for a third of eligible voters.
“That is the one state where we’re already seeing some indication that Kamala Harris, being at the top of the ticket, could actually make a difference in terms of her support,” said Professor Lindstädt.
A poll by the University of Georgia for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution released on Sunday, just hours after Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race, showed Republican nominee Donald Trump slightly ahead of Harris, at 51 per cent and 46 per cent respectively. Two per cent of the 1,000 voters surveyed last Friday said they were undecided, while 1 per cent said they would vote for a third-party candidate and another 1 per cent said they were not voting.
Top Georgia Democrats, including in the state’s legislative Black Caucus, had been steadfast in their support for Biden before he stepped down, and now they are shifting their energy to Harris.
“I am all in for my sister in service, VP @KamalaHarris! I am proud to wholeheartedly endorse her as the next President of the United States,” Georgia representative Nikema Williams, who also chairs the Georgia Democratic Party, posted on X.
That enthusiasm has spread nationwide, with more than 40,000 black women participating in a Zoom meeting on Sunday organised by a group called #WinWithBlackWomen, which raised more than $1.5m for the Harris campaign.
More donations poured in from across the country, with her campaign raising $81m in under 24 hours making it the single biggest day for online Democratic contributions in history.
But some black voters have expressed concern over the prospect of Harris becoming the Democratic nominee, as they questioned whether the US was ready to vote for woman of black and Indian descent as president.
“People really don’t like women, especially black women,” Mary Jameson, 46, of Atlanta, Georgia, told Associated Press. “If a white woman can’t win, how can a black woman win?”
Carrington Jackson, 23, a chiropractic student from Marietta, Georgia, said Harris was a great candidate, but she worried about her facing not only Trump’s popularity but the prejudices of the American public.
“With me being a black woman, I understand that she’s at the intersection of sexism and racism,” she said. “I think now that’s going to be a whole other battle, as well as competing against Donald Trump’s supporters.”
How the Harris campaign will be able to allay some of those worries may come down to who she chooses as her running mate, said Professor Lindstädt.
He noted two strong options – Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, who is a “formidable candidate and well liked”, and Wes Moore, the Governor of Maryland, a rising Democratic star. Both, however, have said they are not interested in the role.
Still, Harris has time to choose her vice president knowing her opponents are Trump and his running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance – both white men.
Barely a week after being announced as Trump’s choice for vice president, Republicans are reportedly questioning whether Vance was the right pick, with many pointing to the disparaging comments he has made about women.
In a 2021 clip that has gone viral online, he told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was being run by “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.
Naming Harris, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he said: “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it.”
Harris is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s children, Cole and Ella, who call her “Momala”.
A poll by AP-NORC shows seven in 10 black adults have an unfavourable view of Trump, but his numbers have improved since early 2021.
His efforts to win over more black voters may unravel with Harris on the Democratic ticket, said Dr Johnson.
“I think the support for her will be quite strong amongst African Americans, and, even though Trump had been picking up a little bit of support, I think Harris will probably be able to reverse some of that,” he added.