Poll shows black voters drifting from Democrats, threatening Harris' bid

US Vice-President Kamala Harris has improved her party's standing among black voters since President Joe Biden left the presidential race, but she still significantly trails Mr Biden's 2020 share of that vital Democratic constituency, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of black likely voters.

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Nearly eight in 10 black voters nationwide said they would vote for Ms Harris, the poll found, a marked increase from the 74 per cent of black voters who said they would support Mr Biden before he dropped out of the race in July.

But Mr Biden won 90 per cent of black voters to capture the White House by narrow margins in 2020, and the drop-off for Ms Harris, if it holds, is large enough to imperil her chances of winning key battleground states.

Democrats have been banking on a tidal wave of support from black voters, drawn by the chance to elect the first black female president and by revulsion towards former president Donald Trump, whose questioning of Ms Harris' racial identity, comments on "black jobs" and demonising of Haitian immigrants pushed his long history of racist attacks to the forefront of the campaign.

Ms Harris is no doubt on track to win an overwhelming majority of black voters, but Trump appears to be chipping away broadly at a longstanding Democratic advantage.

His campaign has relied on targeted advertising and sporadic outreach events to court African-American voters – especially black men – and has seen an uptick in support.

About 15 per cent of black likely voters said they planned to vote for the former president, according to the new poll, a six-point increase from four years ago.

Much of the erosion in support for Ms Harris is driven by a growing belief that Democrats, who have long celebrated black voters as the "backbone" of their party, have failed to deliver on their promises, the poll showed.

Some 40 per cent of African-American voters younger than 30 said the Republican Party was more likely to follow through on its campaign commitments than Democrats were.

"They sweep table scraps off the table like we are a trained dog and say, 'This is for you,'" Mr LaPage Drake, 63, of Cedar Hill, Texas, just outside Dallas, said of the Democratic Party. "And we clap like trained seals."