Kamala's Problem Is Not Black Men

You'll never guess who the real issue is

So it turns out that maybe Black men are not abandoning Kamala after all. I mean, I know that Black male abandonment of Kamala has been a major media theme of this race. I know Don Lemon has interviewed a slew of voters on the street, people chosen at random, and he told me he was shocked at how many Black men he found who were pro-Trump. I know Obama would not have gone out and criticized Black men if the Harris campaign’s polling and anecdotal data wasn’t telling them they need to do something to motivate that specific group. But there’s this new ABC/Ipsos poll that has me totally questioning this narrative.

Polls are best understood in context with other polls rather than as singular documents. This ABC poll is enlightening to me because it’s presented alongside ABC/Ipsos’s 2020 exit polling so we can see what direction certain groups are flowing in over time.

In 2020 Black men went for Biden 79% to 19%. A 60 point difference. Kamala, according to this poll, now has 85% of Black men to Trump’s 11%. That means Kamala is up 74 points with Black men and, more importantly, she’s getting a significantly larger share of the Black male vote than Biden did. She has improved upon his standing with that group by a whopping 14 points. That’s a major swing from one election to another. This is just one organization’s polling but I wonder if some of the caterwauling about Black men in this election is misplaced because if you dive deeper into the polling, you’ll see who Kamala is truly struggling with.

White women with college degrees are 61% for Kamala and that’s a 12 point improvement for the Dems versus 2020. That’s a huge migration. But then there’s white men with college degrees. What are y’all doing? They’re 50%-46% for Kamala which is a 7 point improvement over 2020 but compared to the 61% of white women with college degrees supporting Kamala, that 50% number is a significant red flag.

That’s the big hurdle. If white men with college degrees swing just 2-3 points in Kamala’s favor, the election is a runaway. But they’re close to tied while women with degrees have a much larger gap. The problem is white men with college degrees—Kamala does well with college-educated people in general—she’s doing 10 points better than Biden did with college-educated people. Trump is doing 9 points better than he did in 2020 with non-college educated people so her gain is canceled out. But in a world where 60% of college grads like Kamala but only 50% of male college grads support her you can see that there’s a significant number of educated white male voters who aren’t coming over.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Black men but the real challenge for Kamala is with college-educated white men because she could and should be doing better with that group.