Three construction foremen taking a break in an alley on a recent Wednesday are among the country's most coveted voters: middle-aged, union-member black men who live in Pennsylvania, the largest swing state.
They don't seem enthusiastic about it.
“Any president we’ve had in office over the last 42 years, it’s never affected anything in my home,” said Desmond Chandler, who is 43 and lives in Philadelphia.
Vice President Kamala Harris must win by large margins in big cities with large Black populations to overcome Donald Trump's advantages among rural white voters. Above, Philadelphia's Independence Hall in 2022.
(Ryan Collerd/Getty Images)
His friend Mike Gray was equally disillusioned. Vice President Kamala Harris is a “white puppet,” but he would never vote for former President Trump, who made his ties in China, used nonunion labor for construction projects and pitched voters with terms like “jobs for blacks,” he said.
Interviews conducted in recent weeks with more than two dozen Black men in two of the most decisive battleground states — Pennsylvania and Georgia — offer a broader context than polls have shown. Harris is likely to win an overwhelming majority of Black voters, despite extensive efforts by the Trump campaign to appeal to Black men in particular.
But Harris still has work to do in what is expected to be an extremely close election. She needs to further expand her majority among Black voters, to match President Biden’s winning ticket from 2020. Just as important, she also needs to motivate people like Chandler and Gray to turn out to vote.
A recent Howard University poll of Black voters in seven battleground states showed Harris leading Trump 82% to 12%. Other polls showed Harris with slightly smaller leads, including an August Pew poll showing a 77% to 13% lead nationally and a Suffolk University poll of Black voters in Pennsylvania conducted in August showing a 70% to 9% lead.
No credible poll shows Trump living up to expectations, but Biden won among Black voters by an even larger margin in 2020 — 92% to 8% nationally, according to a post-election analysis by Pew.
The biggest gap? Black men between 18 and 49 are Harris' weakest link, according to Howard's poll, which found they supported her 75 percent to 16 percent.
The difference may seem small, but it could be decisive, given the tight margins in the states that decided the 2016 and 2020 elections, and the need for Harris to win by large margins in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit and other big cities with large Black populations to overcome Trump’s advantages among rural white voters. Black voters have tended to make their decisions closer to the election in past elections, giving Harris room to grow.
Biden and Harris won in 2020 with concentrated efforts to boost Black voter turnout in recent weeks, especially in Pennsylvania and Georgia, where the state also elected Raphael Warnock as its first African American senator. Black voters accounted for about a third of eligible voters in Georgia and about a tenth in Pennsylvania.
In interviews, Harris supporters most often cited Trump’s character and a belief that Harris’s economic policies would be better for the working class. Those who expressed doubts about Harris were the most likely to mention inflation and, in some cases, Harris’s career as a prosecutor or questions about her racial identity, which Trump has brought up in an attempt to divide her support.
Harris, whose father was from Jamaica and her mother was born in India, has written that her mother raised her to identify as black. She attended Howard, a historically black university, and has emphasized her ties to the powerful network of black sororities.
Gray, the 49-year-old construction foreman, has voted for Democrats in previous elections, including for Biden in 2020, but said he is not sure he will vote this time. He is frustrated with inflation, especially with child care costs.
Mike Gray, a 49-year-old labor foreman from Philadelphia, said he's not sure he'll vote for Harris, but he definitely won't vote for Trump.
(Noah Bierman/Los Angeles Times)
Like most voters, he hears the news in bits and pieces.
For example, I was unaware of Biden and Harris’ failed attempts to cap child care spending at 7% of income as part of their signature 2021 spending bill. Harris is trying to get the word out, and in a rare interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia last week, she vowed to revive the plan if elected.
Gray was also not enthusiastic about the possibility of electing the first black woman president. “We’ve already had a black president,” he said, referring to Barack Obama. “If we have another one, great.”
More than a fifth of Black Americans, especially younger ones, are “legitimately cynical” — they shy away from politics because their experience makes them feel government can’t improve their lives — and are the group of Black Americans least likely to vote, according to the 2024 Black Values Survey, which measured views on social trust, perceptions of power and racial solidarity.
“It's like a big game,” said Brian Clark, a 32-year-old security guard from Philadelphia who said he prefers Trump but will not vote for either candidate.
Brian Clark, a 32-year-old security guard from Philadelphia, said he prefers Trump but probably won't vote because it's all “a big game.”
(Noah Bierman/Los Angeles Times)
“It’s just placebo or another placebo,” said Cassius Martello, a 23-year-old social media consultant from Gwinnett County who said he will vote for Harris.
Harris has a stronger position among older, more educated black voters, especially those who identify with the legacy of the civil rights era. Many have particularly disliked Trump’s character and rhetoric, and have expressed excitement at the prospect of a black woman leading the nation.
Robert Mitchell, a 65-year-old human resources director in Atlanta, finds it shocking that any black man would consider Trump, who is running “to avoid jail,” or that any voter would say he is undecided at this point.
Robert Mitchell, 65, a human resources director in Atlanta, is excited to vote for Kamala Harris.
(Jenny Jarvie/Los Angeles Times)
“I don’t know if it’s because men are misogynists that they just don’t see a woman in charge,” he said. “I don’t understand it. I can’t wait for a woman to be president!”
She spoke about abortion access for her daughter and granddaughter “if anything ever happened to them” and about Trump’s own history of racial incitement, pointing to the full-page ad Trump ran in 1989 demanding the death penalty for five black and Latino children who were wrongfully convicted of raping a female jogger in New York.
Ivan Turnipseed, a 55-year-old hospitality professor in Philadelphia, isn’t all that surprised by the resistance to Harris, despite his own enthusiastic support. He sees it in his own family in Mississippi.
Ivan Turnipseed, 55, a hospitality teacher in Philadelphia, comes from a conservative family. He supports Harris but thinks his father, a pastor from Mississippi, will likely vote for Trump.
(Noah Bierman/Los Angeles Times)
“I don't know if it's just the idea of a man being the head of the household from a religious perspective, again, from a father who is a minister,” who is expected to vote for Trump, he said.
She noted that black men won the right to vote and served on the Supreme Court before women of both races had the opportunity.
“This is what we do as a country,” Turnipseed said. “We can get past the idea of, ‘Well, maybe, you know, this black guy will be OK,’ but it’s hard for us. We have entire institutions that don’t allow women to lead.”
Misogyny, however, does not fully explain Black men's resistance to voting for Harris. Some Black men who expressed reservations about voting for Harris this year also abstained from voting for Biden in 2020.
Polls show Trump is unlikely to win much of the support of black men in key primary states where it matters. His comment questioning Harris’s racial identity seemed more geared toward dampening turnout than winning votes. But even a handful of Democratic defections could matter.
And the reasons black voters are open to supporting Trump sound almost identical to those of other supporters.
Bobby Wilcox, 47, a tax assessor in Atlanta, will vote for Trump.
(Jenny Jarvie/Los Angeles Times)
“Americans, we did very well under the Trump administration,” said Bobby Wilcox, 47, a tax assessor in Atlanta. “Prices were not as high and people could afford housing. Now people, particularly seniors, are struggling.”
“He’s on the side of the people,” said Sam Williams, 37, a manager at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in downtown Atlanta who also works at Jersey Mike’s Subs. Last year, as he struggled to pay his $1,800 monthly rent, he took on a second job.
He has no interest in Harris, he said. “I just don’t get his vibe.”
Bierman reported from Philadelphia, Jarvie from Atlanta.
