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No, young Black men aren’t to blame if Trump wins the election
Commentators and politicians alike are laser-focused on young Black men as a voter demographic, believing that the numbers show they could swing the election away from Kamala Harris and toward Donald Trump. There’s just one problem: the data is deeply flawed
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Young Black men in the US are more likely to be stopped by the police for no reason, to be unduly perceived as overly aggressive, or to be unfairly deemed disrespectful and defiant by teachers and other institutional representatives, resulting in them being disproportionately disciplined, expelled, arrested, or killed by the police. And, as it turns out, young Black men are also more likely to be disproportionately scrutinized in the current US election campaign.
Young Black men have even been described as a “key voting bloc” by numerous commentators — despite accounting for a mere 0.8% of the US adult population (and 0.6% of the voters in the 2020 election.) Indeed, young Black men have been mentioned on 24/7 TV news seven times more frequently than young white men, who represented 2.9% of registered voters in 2020.
Several news outlets have reported that Black men and, more specifically, young Black men are increasingly likely to vote for Trump. And earlier in October, in his efforts to ramp up support for Kamala Harris, Barack Obama said at one high-profile Democratic campaigning event that he was disappointed to see less energy among them than during his own White House campaigns, prodding them to step up their game. His comments have proved controversial, with some Democrats angry with Obama for singling out men of color in this way.
Their anger is understandable. The evidence to back any of the claims for young Black men’s increased support for Trump is deeply flawed, perhaps even non-existent.
In the US, where election polls have a mixed record in part often due to small poll sample sizes, there are no surveys with samples big enough to accurately predict the voting intentions of 0.6% of the registered voter population i.e. young Black men. It is therefore worrying that some reports have erroneously referenced findings concerning young Black male voters based on a poll by The New York Times or the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion’s Black American Battleground Voter poll. Neither of these two polls actually break down the data for young Black men.
Other reports have misstated some findings from an NAACP survey based on 1,000 registered Black voters across the US as relating to young Black men. In reality, the survey only distinguishes between Black men under and over 50.
The limited quantitative research available on young Black men’s voting intentions actually points to them supporting Trump in 2024 at levels similar to 2020. According to a survey conducted by The University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics in August 2024, 28% of Black male respondents aged 18-40 reported voting for Trump in 2020. The same proportion said they would vote for him in 2024.
Robert Cialdini, one of the godfathers of the science of persuasion, argues that our actions are deeply impacted by social proof and validation from others. We are likely to make similar choices to those we perceive to be like us, a phenomenon known in voting as the bandwagon effect. Therefore, when media reports create a false social proof of a particular voting pattern, this may indeed sway young Black men to vote in that particular way.
Research shows that the US public tends to engage most deeply with election campaigns and news coverage in the final days before polling day. There is, therefore, still time for politicians and commentators to correct this error by focusing on different groups proportionately to their size and needs. In the case of young Black men, this simply means stopping directing their critical gaze towards them and just let them be.
Richard Addy and Luba Kassova worked together on the AKAS US Election Media Tracker, which tracks 750 terms used in the US election campaign using the GDELT news database
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