WaPo: It's not just older voters who are giving Joe Biden his lead with black Americans

[highplainsdem]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/16/its-not-just-older-voters-that-are-giving-joe-biden-his-lead-with-black-americans/

Conventional wisdom has emerged that former vice president Joe Biden’s lead with black voters is due in large part to older black voters who are familiar with the former lawmaker.

Since launching his campaign, multiple polls have regularly shown that Biden is popular with black voters. But the photos of him campaigning, particularly in states such as South Carolina, regularly show him embracing older black women in churches or shaking hands with older black men on the trail who are throwing their support behind the man who was the number two for America’s first black president.

And much ink has been spilled on younger black voters attempting to persuade their parents and grandparents to abandon the former vice president. But the latest data from a Washington Post-Ipsos poll shows that it is not just older black voters backing Biden over his competitors, but that a sizable percentage of younger voters are choosing him, too.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is leading the field with the youngest group of black voters. More than 4 in 10, 42 percent, of black 18- to 34-year-olds are backing the lawmaker.

But Biden earns about the same level of support among older millennials and voters from Generation X — ages 35 to 49 — at about 41 percent. And the candidate’s support with the youngest group of black voters isn’t insignificant. Thirty percent of black 18- to 34-year-olds name Biden as their first choice, and an additional 19 percent in the youngest age group say Biden is their second choice. More broadly, 64 percent of black Democrats under 35 have a favorable view of Biden, while 19 percent are unfavorable.

-snip-

While the plurality of young black Democrats support Sanders, Biden fares slightly better on the question of electability: 39 percent of black Democratic adults under 35 say Biden is the candidate with the best chance of defeating Trump, while 31 percent say Sanders is, with no other candidate reaching double digits.

Many black voters, including those in their 30s and 40s — and even 20s — share this view, said Keneshia Grant, a political professor at Howard University who focuses on black voters.

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Grant said that while younger voters may align more ideologically with the Democratic Party’s more liberal wing on issues such as Medicare For All, many may be willing to temporarily sacrifice ideology for the sake of electability.

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Antjuan Seawright, a millennial and Democratic strategist based in South Carolina, said that older black millennials and Gen Xers may be backing the moderate candidate because their own politics may be more moderate on economic issues. And black voters in their 30s and 40s may support collaborating with the various factions of the left — and even conservatives — in ways that the youngest black voters may not.

“I think (support for Biden) is more about being able to articulate the issues that matter and understanding that in order to get something down the road, it has to be done or laid out in such a way that includes all corners of the Democratic Party, and some buy in from the other side to get things done. Nothing in Washington, D.C., gets done on purely partisan basis — particularly in the moment we’re in now.”

-snip-

[tirebiter]

1. 48% of any group has to cover a pretty wide age range

Substantially

[Sloumeau]

2. highplainsdem, thanks a bunch for posting this! :)

This is good news for Joe Biden!

[Thekaspervote]

3. Great article! I see a lot of what they are talking about on twitter

[Demsrule86]

4. I heard a commentator on MSNBC...some polls according to him show only 8% more of young AA voters

support Sanders...don't recall his name, but that surprised me. I don't see how anyone can be the nominee with such dismal numbers of AA supporters.

[Cha]

5. That's what I keep reading.. Thank you for

this article, hpd.