(The Center Square) – In the Peach State, almost all demographics had an increase in turnout from the 2020 election.
Only Black voters decreased in turnout, a possible contributing factor to Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in the state to Donald Trump. As a share of the citizen voting-age population, Black voters were the only demographic with a decline in turnout.
“If Black turnout instead went up by 1.9 percentage points (like white turnout did) that would mean 103,000 additional Black voters in 2024,” explained Dr. Bernard Fraga, professor at Emory University. “Trump won the state by 115,095 votes.”
That’s not to assume all would vote for Harris. Still, the numbers are intriguing.
In 2020, President Joe Biden had a 60.2% turnout of Black voters. In 2024, that dropped to 58.3% for Harris.
Dr. Alvin Tillery, a Democratic strategist, pollster and professor at Northwestern, told The Center Square that he does not believe it was a problem with Harris as a candidate, but a messaging problem from the party.
“Democrats ran a very undifferentiated campaign from Republicans,” Tillery said. “They gave her a Herculean task … Harris did everything asked of her.”
He also pointed to a general shift among younger Black voters.
“There’s generational change happening in the Black community, where the millennial and Gen Z Black voters are less committed to the Democrat Party,” Tillery said. “A lot of those turned out for the first time in 2020 to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but then they spent the entire four years being told their legislative priorities … couldn’t get done by the Democrats.”
This was a major concern for the Harris campaign going into the election, as experts began warning that her support among minority groups was waning.
This was not just a problem for Democrats in Georgia. According to exit polls conducted by CNN, minority voters played a role in Trump’s wins across the nation. He swept the seven consensus battleground states, racking up a 93-0 edge in the electoral college.
In 2020, 87% of Blacks nationally supported Biden, while in 2024 Harris garnered only 85% support.
While a seemingly slight difference, Tillery explained that it is significant.
“If they had hypermobilized Black turnout, and it wasn’t down 2-3% nationally, they would have won the election,” he said. “The Democrats’ message just really wasn’t landing on these younger Black voters, and they were the ones that stayed home.”
This all came despite record turnout of Black voters in early voting in Georgia.
Tillery said that moving forward the Democratic Party must move toward appealing to their key voting blocs, not more centrist policies. He warns that if they don’t, they will face similar losses in upcoming elections.
“The Democratic Party is divided,” he said. “I really think that they are going to try to run an even more center-right campaign the next time, and they’re going to lose again. Then the party is going to be facing decomposition.”
Other experts point to different reasons that the Democrats lost the election, saying it was actually a disconnect with the issues the “working class” cared the most about. Dr. George Yancey, a professor of sociology at Baylor University, voiced this argument in a lengthy thread on social media.
“In the past the Democrats were the party that was linked to the marginalized,” Yancey said. “Progressives have moved from the party of the masses to the party of the elites. They are the powerful in society today.”
Tillery said he believes the solution will be investing more in ensuring minority turnout.
“It’s clear that investing more in Black turnout would have won this election,” he said. “I didn’t see one ad centered on Black issues. So, I made my own and ran them in Georgia, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. We had very little resources, but we can already see that the ZIP codes we ran our ads in didn’t have turnout down as much as it did in others.”
Yancey said Democrats need more “self-awareness,” pointing out that they didn’t lose because of a lack of money spent. Instead, he said it was their “unlikability” that led voters to stay home.
“Democrats need to not just think about how they can communicate with the working class. They need to learn how to meet their needs according to their own understandings,” he said. “It is tempting for those on the Left to keep believing in their own superiority. To believe that people vote against them for their own racism, prejudice, ignorance or such. That belief will blind Democrats to their own failings.”
By Elyse Apel | The Center Square
Elyse Apel is an apprentice reporter with The Center Square, covering Georgia and North Carolina. She is a 2024 graduate of Hillsdale College.
