The key voting bloc was needed to secure a win for Harris in a race in which polls in every swing state showed her and Trump neck and neck heading into Election Day.

Alvin Tillery, founder of the Alliance for Black Equality, told Newsweek that Harris underperforming among black voters shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

“The exit polls showing that black turnout was softer than normal and black voters in some of the swing states turned to the Right should surprise no one,” he said. “Many credible Democratic pollsters had been raising alarms about this for months.”

TRUMP EXPANDED HIS SUPPORT WITH HISPANIC AND LATINO VOTERS: EXIT POLLING

In Wisconsin, black voter support for Trump soared, doubling in some areas, according to exit polls. 

Trump’s support stood at 21%, while Harris’s was 77%. That’s up from four years ago, when Trump won just 8% of black voters in the Badger State, according to an NBC News poll. 

Nationwide, exit polls showed Harris trailed marginally behind her predecessors among black voters, pulling in 86%, down from President Joe Biden‘s 87% in 2020 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s 88% in 2016.  

About 8 in 10 black voters backed Harris, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of more than 115,000 voters nationwide. That’s a 10-percentage-point drop from 9 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020.

Black voters have played a pivotal role in races for the White House, Congress, and state legislatures from coast to coast. 

The number of eligible black voters in the United States is estimated to be more than 34 million, up 7% from the 2020 presidential election, according to the Pew Research Center. Black voters accounted for 14% of all eligible voters.

The Harris campaign faced challenges with the powerful voting bloc that was frustrated by inflation during the Biden administration and upset by a lack of progress on criminal justice reform. They also claimed the current administration catered more to Latinos and other immigrants and only focused on black voters during the last few weeks of the race. 

Harris, had she won, would have been the country’s second black president. She made engaging with black voters a priority on the campaign trail, often with the support of the country’s first black president, Barack Obama, but some said it was too little, too late.

During a rally in Pittsburgh last month, Obama delivered a blunt message to black men about supporting Harris.

“My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” he said.

That lack of enthusiasm for Harris, he said, “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”

He added that he thought the hesitation might be gender-based.

“Part of it makes me think, and I’m speaking to men directly, part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he said.

Obama chided the crowd and said black women had always supported black men and that it was time to return the favor.

Trump also sought to make inroads with the group, though he had been erratic and controversial at times in his approach. 

In Michigan, Harris lost 2 percentage points of the black vote following anti-Democratic sentiment in the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump made a 2-percentage-point gain.

North Carolina saw a huge shift in black voter sentiment from Democrats to Republicans, with a 5-point change from the 2020 election. Democrats pulled in 87% of the vote on Tuesday, compared to Republicans’ 12%. That’s far worse than how Democrats performed in 2020, when they saw 92% of the black vote and Republicans only picked up 7%. 

In Nevada, a state that has the highest unemployment rate in the country, Harris managed to make modest gains, picking up 82% of black voters this year compared to 80% in 2020. Trump support dropped from 18% in 2020 to 17% in 2024. 

In Georgia, Trump made a 1-point gain among black voters, according to exit polls. Georgia, one of the most crucial swing states in the 2024 election, was the first battleground to go Trump’s way. Democrats picked up 86% of the black vote in 2024 compared to 88% in 2020, while Republicans saw 12% in 2024 compared to 11% in 2020. 

Harris spent her 60th birthday in the Peach State, working to get black voters to show up at the polls for her. She told congregants at two churches outside of Atlanta that the election was between a country of “chaos, fear, and hate” and one of “freedom, compassion, and justice.”

But at the inaugural National Faith Summit in Powder Springs, as well as in rural black churches across the state, there had been signs that some black evangelical Christian voters would be voting for Trump.

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At the National Faith Summit, devout supporters asked for prayers for Trump and told reporters he was the moral choice. At the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Albany, a Democratic stronghold in a sea of red in the rural part of the state, Joseph Parker told Politico he would be voting for Trump.

“Trump’s a man of his word. What he says he’s gonna do, he does,” said Parker, a 72-year-old man who had never voted Republican in his life. “And everything is so high now — groceries high, clothes, everything, gas. And four years ago, it wasn’t that high. And so people see the difference in Kamala Harris and Trump, and they want some of what they had four years ago. And I do, too.”