Georgia Democrats are facing challenges in engaging Black voters, many of whom are opting to stay home instead of participating in elections.

Nov 20, 2024 Story by: Editor

In Georgia, voter turnout increased across nearly all demographics from the 2020 election—except among Black voters, whose turnout dropped. This decline may have contributed to Vice President Kamala Harris losing the state to Donald Trump. Among the citizen voting-age population, Black voters were the only group with a turnout decrease.

In Georgia, roughly 5.3 million out of 7.3 million registered voters participated in the 2024 Presidential election. Among the African American population, nearly 2.2 million of the 2.5 million registered African American voters cast their ballots, resulting in a 315,000 vote turnout burden. These figures are based on unofficial ballot counts from the Georgia State Board of Elections.

“If Black turnout instead went up by 1.9 percentage points (like white turnout did), that would mean 103,000 additional Black voters in 2024,” said Dr. Bernard Fraga, a professor at Emory University . “Trump won the state by 115,095 votes.”

While not all additional Black voters would necessarily support Harris, the numbers are still significant. In 2020, President Joe Biden achieved a 60.2% Black voter turnout, but in 2024, Harris saw this figure drop to 58.3%.

Dr. Alvin Tillery, a Democratic strategist and professor at Northwestern University, attributed the loss not to Harris as a candidate but to the Democratic Party’s messaging.

“Democrats ran a very undifferentiated campaign from Republicans,” Tillery told The Center Square. “They gave her a Herculean task Harris did everything asked of her.”

Tillery also pointed to generational shifts within the Black community.

“There’s generational change happening in the Black community, where the millennial and Gen Z Black voters are less committed to the Democrat Party,” he explained. “A lot of those turned out for the first time in 2020 to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but then they spent the entire four years being told their legislative priorities couldn’t get done by the Democrats.”

Experts had warned the Harris campaign about waning support among minority groups. This trend was not limited to Georgia. Nationally, exit polls from CNN showed that minority voters contributed to Trump’s victories in several battleground states, giving him a sweeping edge in the electoral college.

In 2020, Biden earned support from 87% of Black voters nationally, but Harris received only 85% in 2024. While the difference may seem minor, Tillery emphasized its importance.

“If they had hyper-mobilized Black turnout, and it wasn’t down 2-3% nationally, they would have won the election,” he said. “The Democrats’ message just really wasn’t landing on these younger Black voters, and they were the ones that stayed home.”

This outcome occurred despite record early voting turnout among Black voters in Georgia. Tillery urged the Democratic Party to refocus its efforts on engaging key voting blocs instead of adopting more centrist policies.

“The Democratic Party is divided,” he noted. “I really think that they are going to try to run an even more center-right campaign the next time, and they’re going to lose again. Then the party is going to be facing decomposition.”

Other analysts highlighted different reasons for the Democrats’ loss, suggesting a disconnect with the working class. Dr. George Yancey, a sociology professor at Baylor University, argued in a social media thread that Democrats have strayed from their roots.

“In the past, the Democrats were the party that was linked to the marginalized,” Yancey said. “Progressives have moved from the party of the masses to the party of the elites. They are powerful in society today.”

Tillery believes the solution lies in greater investment to boost minority voter turnout.

“It’s clear that investing more in Black turnout would have won this election,” he stated. “I didn’t see one ad centered on Black issues. So, I made my own and ran them in Georgia, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. We had very little resources, but we can already see that the ZIP codes we ran our ads in didn’t have turnout down as much as it did in others.”

Yancey suggested that Democrats need to reflect on their approach and engage more authentically with voters.

“Democrats need to not just think about how they can communicate with the working class. They need to learn how to meet their needs according to their own understanding,” he said. “It is tempting for those on the Left to keep believing in their own superiority. To believe that people vote against them for their own racism, prejudice, ignorance, or such. That belief will blind Democrats to their own failings.” Source: The Georgia Virtue