As Election Day approaches, the campaigns are putting significant time and attention toward courting Black men, seen as a crucial — and potentially movable — voting bloc in a tight presidential race. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have rolled out policies, dispatched key surrogates and held events targeted at winning over these coveted voters.
To get a sense of the challenges each campaign is facing, NBC News asked seven Black men from across the country how they plan to cast their ballots and what concerns they have about the candidates. A majority said they intend to vote for the vice president, but some said they initially had some trepidation about Harris while others said they felt inspired to vote for her as a tribute to the women in their lives. One man supporting Trump said his wariness of Harris’ work as a prosecutor in California solidified his choice.
In several key battleground states, Black turnout could help make the difference. A slight shift among some Black men — and a historic gender gap, with Trump performing better with men of all races — has put Democrats on alert.
In a new Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion poll of 981 likely Black voters in battleground states, 81% of Black men of all ages said they would support Harris. However, that number drops to 68% for Black men under 50, compared to 21% who support Trump. Meanwhile, 88% of Black men over 50 say they support Harris versus 10% who are for Trump.
A less pronounced age gap among Black women has been closing, with 13% of those under 50 saying they will support Trump versus 6% of older women.
In 2020, 80% of Black men supported Joe Biden, according to NBC News exit polling. That figure was only slightly lower than Hillary Clinton’s 82% in 2016 but much lower than Black men’s support for Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008.
Dana Williams, the dean of Howard University’s graduate school and co-director of the Initiative on Public Opinion, attributes this gap to younger people, who increasingly get their news not from mainstream sources, which can underserve Black audiences, but from alternatives like social media and podcasts, which may be popular but are not necessarily run by professional journalists.
However, Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a nonpartisan group that engages the Black electorate, said he has long been deeply skeptical of reports about this shift toward Trump. The shift, he said, is not significant enough for all the hand-wringing.
The Harris campaign has been ramping up its efforts to court Black men.
“It’s very important to not operate from the assumption that Black men are in anybody’s pocket,” she said during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in September.
More recently, Harris has rolled out a policy agenda aimed at helping Black men, including forgivable loans for entrepreneurs, more opportunities for job training, and legalizing recreational marijuana while also allowing more possibilities to enter that industry. She also did a town hall with popular syndicated radio host Charlamagne tha God and went on the “All the Smoke” podcast hosted by former NBA players Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes.
For Trump’s part, efforts to reach Black men voters through campaign surrogates or Trump himself have lessened in recent months. He does tout rappers like Lil Wayne and Waka Flocka Flame as supporters; Trump has also said that in addition to economic points in his favor, Black men are drawn to him because he has been through the criminal legal system.
NBC News interviewed seven Black men of various ages and professions from different parts of the country to gauge their thoughts on the election, Harris’ viability and the questions around Black men’s support. Their positions were just as varied, but mostly they said Harris’ presidency would benefit the country.
‘She’s qualified and she’s tough when she needs to be’
Pierce Hodges, 23, will cast his second presidential vote in November.
He voted for Biden in 2020, but as a Howard University graduate like Harris, he feels more connected to the current candidate.
His mother and sister are Howard graduates and both are members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, as is Harris.
“It’s powerful,” said Hodges, now a Columbia University fellow studying enterprise risk management. “She is the representation of that strong African American woman who is not afraid of Donald Trump, not afraid of a bully. She’s qualified and she’s tough when she needs to be.”
When Harris became the nominee, Hodges said his cellphone lit up. “In every case, young Black men were excited,” he said. “We’re a very progressive group, my friends, so there was no talk of supporting Trump even before this and definitely not after Kamala Harris moved to the top.”
Hodges said discussions with friends have centered around “not letting Trump get back in office and Project 2025, which is scary. We’re just coming into our adulthood and we’d rather not have a dictator.”
Hodges was only 7 when Barack Obama was first elected, “so I don’t know what the scene was then.” But he said his circle is “full throttle” for Harris. “We have a woman who could break the glass ceiling as the first Black woman and Asian American president,” he said. “I could see someone in the White House who looks like my mother and my sister and my girlfriend. This is a huge moment.”
‘I was really hesitant about her’
Jimmy Hill, whose son, Jimmy Atchison, was shot and killed by an Atlanta police officer in 2019, was disappointed in Biden and Trump, citing their lack of action on police reform. But then during a recent interview, Trump said he “didn’t know much about Sonya Massey,” who was shot in the face by an Illinois sheriff’s deputy.
“I knew he was lying,” Hill said. “That really just turned me away. I said then I could never vote for him, because him lying says he doesn’t care what police do to us.”
He added that his son’s mother died “from a broken heart” two years after his son was slain. “So, it’s been tough. People need to be held accountable.”
Harris has gained his support. Just barely.
“I was really hesitant about her,” he said. “She needs to do more than lowering drug costs. I don’t think she’s said much about police shootings. There’s no police reform, which is important to me. But we have a better chance with her. She was a prosecutor and so I think she understands what needs to be done. And we have a chance to calm things down because she wants to help everyone. Vote for Trump, and if you get burned by him, that’s your fault. He’s made white supremacists bold. He’s shown you and told you who he is.”
‘I will never forgive Kamala for her record’
Al Bartell, 68, a communication management consultant in Atlanta, said he supports Trump for three reasons, based on his previous term as president: increasing access to capital for Black Americans, decreasing barriers to employment for Black people, and examining the role of arrest to incarceration.
Though Trump supports controversial policies like stop and frisk and granting complete immunity in cases where law enforcement shoots civilians, Bartell said neither party “genuinely cares” about Black people.
But he also bristles at the idea of supporting Harris for what he said was overcriminalizing Black men when she was attorney general of California, even though there is no data to support that notion. Bartell also pointed to Kevin Cooper, a Black man on death row for killing a white family, as well as marijuana convictions of Black men.
Harris’ record as attorney general is controversial. There had been concern that she did not fight against wrongful convictions secured via police misconduct, and she faced calls to take a more active role in efforts toward criminal justice reform. At the same time, her record reveals she was not a tough-on-crime top cop and that she implemented the Back on Track program, which provided nonviolent offenders — many of whom were low-level drug dealers — with the chance to receive a high school diploma, job training and access to available work, instead of prison sentences. Still, Bartell was resolute in his position.
“I’m not talking about who she personally prosecuted,” Bartell said. “The attorney general has accountability for the entire state. I will never forgive Kamala for her record in the state. And that’s what she’s going to have to deal with: unforgiving Black men.”
‘My daughter made me see that Kamala would be great for the country’
James Douglass, 52 of Detroit, said he was disheartened by the news that Harris would take over for Biden — at first. It “felt like they bullied Biden out.” Then, after a few hours that Sunday, his daughter, Maurissa, 27, called him.
“The energy in her voice was evident; she was thrilled,” said Douglass, an automotive factory worker. “And I knew right then I had to recalibrate.”
“I still think it was wrong the way Biden was moved out, but my daughter made me see that Kamala would be great for the country because the country has a way of keeping us down” through systemic racism, he said.
The economy, the southern border and other issues concern Douglass. But “most of all, I’m concerned about democracy,” he said. “Biden did a good job of transitioning from Trump. But now that Trump is running again, I’m worried about him dividing the country even more. I’d rather the country have problems, but not give up democracy and be so divided like it would be under Trump. He does not seem to believe in unifying the country.”
Douglass said Harris is capable of bridging divides and inspiring others.
“Obama lifted us up because he was a president with dignity and represented us in a positive way and let Black boys see they can get to be president, too,” he said. “Kamala Harris can do the same thing and really let Black and brown girls — and Asian girls — see the possibilities, see that despite everything, there are no limits. I understand how big that is. I want that for our country.”
‘You want to be president that people around the world will respect.’
Stone Ramsey, a Californian who relocated to Atlanta, sees Trump as a force against foreign adversaries like Russian and China. He said it’s his top reason for supporting the former president over Harris.
“The president has to be a strong person. And we’ve noticed that Trump’s … arrogance sets him aside from most presidents,” said Ramsey, who leads Street Groomers, an organization that mentors young Black men.
He pointed to Russian aircraft that flew in close proximity to U.S. planes and China’s spy balloon that flew over America during Biden’s term. Other governments “understood” that Trump “is not to be played with because he’s dangerous,” Ramsey said. “You want to be president that people around the world will respect. Kamala Harris doesn’t have that respect.”
Ramsey repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ first name, as Trump has on many occasions. He also repeated Trump’s debunked claim that Harris did not identify as Black before she became the Democratic nominee. Trump walked back this claim shortly after it received blowback from voters.
Ramsey also said rhetoric that Trump is a racist rings untrue. “You take Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather,” he said. “Mike Tyson said Donald Trump is the man. Do you think they would be around him if he was racist as people say? I don’t believe it, and I think he’s ready to do a job Kamala Harris can’t do.”
‘The change has ignited the party’
Scientist Patrick Oates, 60, of Philadelphia did not think that Biden’s debate performance against Trump was enough reason for him to leave the ticket.
“I looked at it just as a bad night, which we all have,” he said. But when the calls for him to step aside became louder, and from prominent Democrats, Oates knew where things were headed.
“But the change has ignited the party,” Oates said, “because Kamala Harris has the wherewithal, the experience, what it takes to build upon the work that that Obama engaged in, and that Biden followed, focusing on the economy, focusing on getting men and women to work, workforce development programs, focusing on the middle class.”
“One party wants to take away DEI. Kamala Harris wants to keep it and create tangible programs that empower our communities. She understands and embraces the challenges of working-class citizens, and she has the intellect and the emotional intelligence to be able to take on these challenges.”
Further, Oates said, Harris resonates. “I have a 20-year-old daughter who sees herself in the vice president. She empowers young people in a way that no book, no lecture, no experience can. There’s no perfect politician, no perfect mayor, no perfect governor. All you hope for is the needle to be moved in your favor. And Kamala Harris does that.”
‘Both parties are ignoring the most significant challenge in the communities that matter the most to me’
For Kevin Newell, 40, founder of Royal Capital Group in Milwaukee, the Democrats’ “values and principles align with mine, making Trump never an option.”
He said Obama’s presidency made “all of our walks easier, because even in corporate America they saw him in me and I was viewed not as a unicorn, but as someone who could be competent.”
Newell said he believes Harris can have a similar impact. “She can be transformative,” he said. Black men’s support for Biden waned prior to him stepping aside. They have turned to Harris in a resounding way — and that fact has not been noticed by many. “The narrative is twisted. You hear, ‘Black women are all in.’ And then they talk about Black men and they say, ‘Oh, a lot of them are voting for Trump.’ And that’s not only an unfortunate narrative, but I don’t believe that’s true.”
Still, Newell wants Harris to take on less-discussed issues like education.
“Both parties are ignoring the most significant challenge in the communities that matter the most to me, and that is our education system,” he said. “I am in support of school choice, public charter schools and all those different programs that bring about different opportunities for inner-city youth.”
Harris could deliver on that and other issues specific to Black people because “she’s lived it,” Newell said, referring to Harris’ experience of being bused as a young student and attending an HBCU. “I’m not voting simply off of fear of the other guy. I’m voting on things that I believe that can really transcend and take the country forward.”
