A new poll has shown what we all feared—fine, maybe it’s just me—but black folks, at least the ones polled, have declared that Vice President Joe Biden is the frontrunner out of all the Destiny’s Child members that make up the Democratic nominees vying to become president.
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Some “seventy-six percent of African American Democrats who answered the survey said they are enthusiastic about Biden, while 16 percent said they had some reservations or felt uncomfortable with his candidacy,” Politico reports.
The poll (pdf) notes that Biden is holding enthusiasm numbers with blacks while other Democratic nominees continue to make inroads when focusing on pocketbook issues that are of major concern to black voters.
While Biden is leading the Black Economic Alliance poll, “the next closest candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, drew enthusiastic views from 64 percent of black Democrats, but 28 percent said they had some level of discomfort with him,” Politico reports.
Both Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), garnered 53 percent and 43 percent of black Democrats, respectively.
From Politico:
The survey, which was conducted by two Democratic polling firms, Hart Research and Brossard Research, found a three-way split on the top issues on the minds of African American voters, with 77 percent of respondents each saying that affordable health care, college affordability and creating more jobs with benefits were “extremely important issues.”
Health care generally polls as the top policy issue among Democratic voters, regardless of race. But the memo accompanying the poll’s findings also stressed that black Americans feel they’re facing “significant economic challenges in their own communities.”
“Black Americans view the economic conditions in the United States as significantly worse for Black communities than for the country overall,” wrote the memo’s authors, strategists Guy Molyneux, Mario Brossard and Corrie Hunt. “Fully 72 percent of Black Americans say they are dissatisfied with the economic situation for Black Americans today (including 37% very dissatisfied), compared with 57 percent who are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy in general.”
The poll did show some promising numbers (not sure if you’ve noticed that I’m not the biggest fan of Biden), but the current president received a 13 percent approval rating from African Americans with 82 percent disapproving. I’m not sure who the 13 percent are, but they probably really like the Billy Ray Cyrus version of “Old Town Road” and know how to do this dance:
“Obviously, he’s a former vice president, he’s polling very high,” Akunna Cook, executive director of the Black Economic Alliance, told Politico.
“[Pete] Buttigieg is the lowest, but he’s also the least familiar of these candidates. So I think that as voters get to know these candidates, they’ll be in a position to really compare them.”
Basically, Biden is the Justin Bieber of the Democrats; black folks don’t know any of his songs, but we all know he’s famous and hangs out with black people.
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