Opinion: Black voters helped make Joe Biden the Democratic front-runner. Will they keep him there?
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden takes photos with people at a campaign event in Columbia, South Carolina, Saturday. By David Byler David Byler Data analyst and political columnist focusing on elections, polling, demographics and statistics Email Bio Follow Data analyst and political columnist May 7 at 3:52 PM Since he formally entered the race, polls have confirmed what many observers long assumed: Joe Biden is the front-runner for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Public polls don’t always have a large sample size, so it can be tough to get pinpoint accuracy on the opinions of racial groups. But these numbers suggest Biden has significant backing from some African American voters. And despite Biden’s less-than-progressive record on issues such as busing and crime, the support he is getting from these voters shouldn’t be surprising.
Not all African Americans explicitly identify as Democrats, but overwhelming majorities of black voters regularly cast their ballot for Democratic candidates. There are issues black voters care about that could make Biden a mismatch for them — 77 percent of African Americans believe “discrimination against blacks by police and the criminal justice system” is a problem, and Biden had a hand in crafting that system through the 1994 crime bill. But African Americans aren’t necessarily unified on other issues that have been hailed as the marker of a racially progressive candidate.
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