Biden Has Been Losing Black Voters. Will Bloomberg's Bad Debate Change That?

[Celerity]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/biden-has-been-losing-black-voters-could-bloombergs-bad-debate-help-stop-bidens-slide/?ex_cid=2020-tracker

After poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, Joe Biden’s campaign is pinning its hopes on South Carolina — in particular, the black vote there. The rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the polls has corresponded with a Biden decline, but South Carolina will be the first state to vote where most of the electorate is black, and black voters have disproportionately supported the former vice president for most of the campaign (before people actually started to vote).

So two questions: How well is Biden holding up among black voters in the wake of the first two contests? And how much could the debate on Wednesday night in Las Vegas, which seemed to go poorly for Bloomberg, shift the race in the last few days before Nevada and South Carolina vote?

Two answers: Not particularly well. And maybe quite a bit.

In an average of national polls, Biden’s support among black voters has dropped about 12 percentage points from before the Iowa caucuses to the post-New Hampshire period.1 Conversely, during the same period, Bloomberg and Sanders (the two other candidates averaging double-digit support among black voters in recent national polls) each gained 10 points among black voters. And recent polls show Biden dropping fast among all voters while Sanders and Bloomberg are gaining ground. So if the Nevada debate really hurt Bloomberg, Biden stands a decent chance of winning back a lot of voters. Not only are he and Bloomberg both running in the same “moderate” lane, but it appears that a lot of voters left Biden for Bloomberg after Iowa and New Hampshire.



Biden’s 12-point drop among black voters is particularly bad considering how much his nomination hopes rest on support from that voting bloc. Black voters account for about one-fifth of the national Democratic primary electorate but make up a disproportionately large share of Biden’s potential electoral coalition — about a third, most likely.2 Indeed, Biden has dropped 10 points in our national polling average since the Iowa caucuses — from being the national polling leader to finding himself behind Sanders and in a battle with Bloomberg for second — and roughly a quarter of that slide is likely due to his drop among black voters specifically. Proportionally, Biden has actually lost more white support than black support, but he still lost around one-fourth of his support among black voters nationally since Iowa voted.

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[MaryMagdaline]

1. Yes