Harris looks for Philly’s Black voters to deliver must-win Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA — Black voters in Pennsylvania’s most densely populated county aren’t as enthusiastic for Vice President Kamala Harris as they were for past Democratic presidential candidates, and it could dampen her chances of winning the state.

Polls in Pennsylvania show the race between Ms. Harris and former President Donald Trump is dead even. Some analysts are puzzled about the vice president’s lack of momentum, especially in historically Democratic turnout areas such as Philadelphia.

Significant Black voter support in the city helped President Obama and President Biden win in 2008, 2012 and 2020. Now, turnout is down.

Ms. Harris spent last weekend in Philadelphia courting the Black vote at a church, barber shop and bookstore in a bid to stop Mr. Trump and other Republicans from flipping the state.

“Victory runs through Philly, and it runs through Pennsylvania,” Ms. Harris told voters in the city.

Her message isn’t resonating with everyone.

One Black voter in Philadelphia shrugged off Ms. Harris’ overtures. “I won’t be voting,” said the man, who didn’t provide his name. “I don’t like either of the candidates.”

Despite being the first Black female vice president, Ms. Harris is battling low enthusiasm among Black voters nationwide. The decline matters most in the swing states, where a drop of just a few percentage points could tip the race to Mr. Trump.

A recent poll by AtlasIntel found Ms. Harris with only 68% of support among Black voters in Pennsylvania. That is a big drop from four years ago and suggests she won’t match Mr. Biden’s 90% support from the state’s Black voters in 2020.

The poll found 21.2% of the state’s Black voters supporting Mr. Trump — a record high for a Republican presidential candidate.

“I think PA is a big Trump state,” said Derrick Jones, a Black voter who manages a meat plant in Bethlehem. “They try to swing the votes and say there’s a lot of hate in PA for Trump, which is not true because PA is paying a big toll on everything.”

He said high prices and “too much hate” motivated him to vote for Mr. Trump.

“The price of gas is outrageous here. It’s like living in New York,” Mr. Jones said.

Nearly 70 miles south in Philadelphia, most Black voters will back Ms. Harris.

“I can see why people would defer from supporting Kamala,” said Alan Smith, a Philadelphia city worker. “At the end of the day, I believe he’ll end up screwing people over.”

Still, the cracks in the Democratic base are evident.

David Friedman, a Philadelphia construction worker, said he doesn’t like either candidate, but his friends are leaning toward Mr. Trump.

He said Ms. Harris didn’t align with his views and did little to fix the country’s problems as vice president.

“I really don’t see any good with her being in that position,” he said. “She allowed a lot of things.”

The raw data is worrying the Harris campaign.

The data firm TargetSmart reported that fewer Black Democrats are using advance voting in Philadelphia this year. Based on early vote returns, it found that about 50,000 Black registered Democrats had turned in ballots as of Thursday, a sharp decrease from the same time in 2020, when 109,000 registered Black Democrats had cast ballots in the city.

In 2020, advance voters cast more than 28% of the state’s total vote.

“The numbers coming out don’t show much enthusiasm for Harris,” polling analyst Ryan Girdusky wrote on Substack.

Pennsylvania is one of seven critical battleground states, and some analysts see it as among the most important in the election. If Mr. Trump captures Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, along with Maine’s 1st Congressional District, he will win a second term even if Ms. Harris picks up the remaining battleground states.

Mr. Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by 80,000 votes, or about 1 percentage point.

Mr. Trump, campaigning in New Mexico on Thursday, told a rally crowd that Black voters are angry about illegal immigrants who have flooded across the southern border on Ms. Harris’ watch. The migrants are taking Americans’ jobs, particularly jobs held by Black Americans, Mr. Trump said. He predicted Ms. Harris would lose significant support because of it.

“You’re going to see the worst African American numbers that we’ve ever seen,” he said.