Opinion
Black Voters Start To Abandon Biden After Vaccine Mandate
President’s net approval rating among key Democratic constituency is down 12 points since Sept. 9 announcement
- 71% of Black voters approve of Biden’s job performance, down 5 points since the federal vaccine mandate, while the share who disapprove rose 7 points to 24%.
- Biden’s net approval rating among unvaccinated Black voters has plummeted 17 points since before the rollout of the mandates.
- 61% of Black voters approve of Biden’s handling of coronavirus, down 9 points since the end of August.
President Joe Biden’s sweeping federal rules to mandate vaccines hasn’t hurt him with the overall electorate, but it appears to have spurred a weakening of his standing with one of the most reliable pieces of the Democratic Party’s coalition: Black voters.
Since Morning Consult Political Intelligence surveys conducted immediately before Biden’s Sept. 9 mandate announcement, the president’s net approval rating – the share who approve of his job performance minus the share who disapprove – has fallen 12 percentage points among Black voters, driven by a 17-point drop among unvaccinated Black voters.
The September erosion accounted for more than two-fifths of the decline in perceptions of Biden’s job performance to date among Black voters, providing a stark warning sign for Democrats ahead of next year’s midterms. While Black voters, who helped push Biden over the top against President Donald Trump in key states last year, are unlikely to abandon the Democratic Party en masse to back Republicans on the ballot next year, low turnout from the group could have dire consequences for Democrats in Congress, who already face an early enthusiasm gap.
Biden is still popular with most Black voters, with 71 percent of them approving of his job performance, including 37 percent who do so strongly. But since Sept. 8, the share who disapprove of Biden’s job performance has increased 7 points, to 24 percent, and 14 percent said they “strongly disapprove.”