AP reports that black support for GOP in 2022 election 'ticked up' (here's what that means)

Doug P. | 1:05 PM on December 31, 2022

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, then-candidate Biden reminded African American voters that “you ain’t black” if they voted for President Trump instead of the Democrat:

This had to be one of the most arrogant things a candidate ever uttered:

“I do that to white media and black media because my wife has to go on at 6 o’clock,” Biden said, referring to his wife Jill Biden apparently needing to use the broadcast studio they’ve built in their basement in Delaware as the coronavirus pandemic has knocked Biden off the campaign trail. Glancing at his watch, Biden said, “uh oh, I’m in trouble.”

Charlamagne told Biden that he should come to the studio in New York City for another interview, telling the former vice president that “we’ve got more questions.”

“You’ve got more questions?” Biden replied. “Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

It appears that kind of rhetoric and other factors caused more black voters to support Republicans in the 2022 midterms. Or, as the Associated Press frames it here, black support for the GOP has “ticked up”:

An AP VoteCast survey finds that Republicans made modest gains with Black voters in this year’s midterms. It’s too early to tell whether that reflects the start of a longer-term trend or whether it will hold during a presidential year. https://t.co/hkDtBCw0uH

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) December 31, 2022

“Ticked up” is one way to put it, though it was a fairly large shift:

Black voters have been a steady foundation for Democratic candidates for decades, but that support appeared to show a few cracks in this year’s elections.

Republican candidates were backed by 14% of Black voters, compared with 8% in the last midterm elections four years ago, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive national survey of the electorate.

In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp more than doubled his support among Black voters to 12% in 2022 compared with 5% four years ago, according to VoteCast. He defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams both times.

If that boost can be sustained, Democrats could face headwinds in 2024 in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where presidential and Senate races are typically decided by narrow margins and turning out Black voters is a big part of Democrats’ political strategy.

There wasn’t the massive “red wave” for the Republicans that many predicted, but the Democrats losing voters like this on a fairly consistent basis has to be of concern to the party.