Black LGBTQ+ voters could influence Biden in the 2024 election

Election polling data and turnout trends amongst Black and LGBTQ+ voters signal the significant impact these two groups could play in the final result of the 2024 presidential election.

Black LGBTQ+ voters, who sit at the intersection of those two influential voting blocs, could be crucial to President Joe Biden’s re-election.

“Both the Black and LGBTQ communities are key parts of the Biden-Harris coalition, which played an important role in the president’s victory in 2020 and will be crucial to his victory in November,” said Florida State Sen. Shevrin Jones, a member of the Biden Party-National Advisory Council Harris 2024 and the first black member of parliament in Florida to openly admit to being homosexual.

In addition to the proven fact that more Black Americans voted in 2020 than in some other presidential election since President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, the variety of voters identifying as LGBTQ+ in 2020, a growing population (no less than 20 million) , reached its highest level (7% of the electorate) in US history.

Understanding the crucial impact that Black and LGBTQ+ voters can have in this 12 months’s election, the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign launched early, investing tens of millions of dollars in ads targeting Black voters. The campaign recently launched the OUT for Biden national organizing and engagement program to mobilize LGBTQ+ voters.

So far, several LGBTQ+ organizations have endorsed President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for a second term, including those led by Black LGBTQ+ leaders like Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization.

Pointing to battleground states like Texas, Georgia and Florida, which include a few of the country’s states The biggest Black populations and highest growth in LGBTQ+ voters, the social justice advocate added: “Black LGBTQ+ voters are doing this better than any other community. We are a huge voting bloc.”

The winner of TIME’s 2024 Most Influential People Award said the HRC PAC endorsed Biden and Harris because “the contrast is stark” between them and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“The Biden-Harris administration has been the most pro-equal administration in the history of the United States,” Robinson said, noting President Biden’s signing of the Respect for Marriage Act, which enshrined same-sex marriage in federal statute for the first time in U.S. history — and the administration’s expansion of protections against discrimination.

In contrast, she said, Trump “has led some of the most anti-LGBTQ+ efforts in American history,” including enforcing the military’s trans ban. Robinson also expressed dismay at Trump’s campaign promise to “support a hateful ban on transgender health care access and (and) a promise to fund hospitals and criminalize doctors for providing health care.”

Black and LGBTQ+ voters overwhelmingly favor Biden over Trump, in accordance with polls. March 2024 vote conducted by GLAAD found that 68% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer voters prefer Biden in comparison with 15% preferring Trump. Likewise the New York Times/Sienna vote conducted in April found that 69% of black voters support Biden in comparison with 16% who support Trump. An additional 15% remained undecided.

While support for the president and vice chairman amongst Black and LGBTQ voters dwarfs support for Trump, the Biden-Harris re-election campaign is in search of to widen that gap through mobilization efforts like OUT for Biden and attack ads aimed directly at Black voters.

Robinson said the remainder of the work to mobilize Black and LGBTQ+ voters falls on organizations like HRC.

“We have an obligation to be there to bridge the gap and let them know that we see the things that matter most to them in their communities,” she said. “And sharing how the Biden-Harris administration… is pushing forward legislation and policies that will make a difference.”

Earl Fowlkes, president and CEO of the Center For Black Equity, a black LGBTQ+ social justice organization that also endorsed the Biden-Harris campaign, said he personally speaks to voters, including his younger nieces and nephews who’re of voting age to vote and who “come to (him) with some concerns.”

The longtime political organizer said his “job” is to “provide evidence” to voters about the Biden-Harris record, including $147 billion in student loan cancellations, record low Black unemployment and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, including bridges, highways and Dear.

“(Biden) doesn’t get praised for these things. So we need to remind people how bad things were under the previous administration,” Fowlkes said. “If we don’t re-elect a president and vice president, we will be fighting battles we thought we had already fought and won.”

Kenyatta, Pennsylvania’s first openly gay lawmaker of color, said seeing “50-year-old precedents overturned” like Roe v. Wade “certainly” didn’t make him and others “feel safe” in the relationship with other precedents corresponding to Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court that recognized same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.

The 33-year-old state lawmaker, who chairs President Biden’s advisory committee on advancing educational equity and economic opportunity for Black Americans, said Black and LGBTQ+ people “are becoming victims of intimidation” from leaders like Trump.

“Instead of being able to solve real problems for real people, Donald Trump demonized people,” Kenyatta said. “Joe Biden, on the other hand, has been an outspoken and unapologetic supporter of all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation.”

He also noted key Black LGBTQ+ appointments in the Biden-Harris administration and presidential campaign, including himself, Senator Jones and White House press secretary Karine-Jean-Pierre.

“All hands will be on deck,” Jones said. “The contrast between President Biden, who has worked to lower costs, create good, family-sustaining jobs and keep our families secure, and Donald Trump, who is set to deprive Americans of their freedoms and gut Social Security, could not be more stark. and Medicare, which is able to undo the progress revamped the past 4 years.

Fowlkes, who argued that campaigns encouraging voters to vote early “will make a difference,” said: “The black LGBTQ population will once again stand up and crush everything.”

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