Can Warren Win the Nomination Without Majority Black Support?
Interviews with Black female pols suggest there’s an opening for her and other Democrats to cut into Biden’s lead among a critical voting bloc.
By LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ and ALEX THOMPSON
10/18/2019 05:06 AM EDT
Joe Biden’s advisers have repeatedly downplayed the need for him to win in predominantly white Iowa and New Hampshire — while boasting of his strength in Southern states where black voters often dominate.
And the polls, to date, back up their theory that that's his path to the nomination.
But if Biden’s firewall ever cracks — and there are some signs it’s softening in recent surveys — it will likely start with young black women, according to interviews with a dozen African American female organizers, lawmakers and activists who are heavily involved in the Democratic primary election or closely tracking the mood of black voters.
Their consensus: No candidate, Biden included, has a lock on African American voters in key early primary states. And Elizabeth Warren is gaining traction among black female voters under 50, while Bernie Sanders has a significant following among young black voters as well.
The anecdotal reports from African-American activists on the ground offer a reason for skepticism that Biden has already clinched the Democratic Party’s must-win voting bloc. The state of play is more fluid than assumed, they said, offering hope not just to Warren but to other candidates hoping to mount a late surge in the primary should Biden collapse.
Nse Ufot, executive director of the voter registration group New Georgia Project, said the notion that black voters are behind Biden no matter what is nonsense.
“In the rural black belt,” she said, “the candidate that says they have those voters locked up and that they have pledged some sort of unending fealty is the candidate that is asking for a big surprise and preparing to get their feelings hurt.”
Ufot, whose group has registered some 400,000 minorities in Georgia, has a different beat on the race than the one reflected in polls. And fellow black women organizing voters in key primary states like Alabama agree with her.
The current state of the race reminds LaTosha Brown, the cofounder of Black Voters Matter, of 2008. Black voters were behind Hillary Clinton unti Barack Obama won Iowa, when, Brown said, her “phone blew up.”
“Iowa is a template of what white people will do,” said Brown, whose group played a key role in rallying black voters to the polls in Democrats’ upset win in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. “And I hate to acknowledge it, but it influences how black people see a candidate, too.”
“So if [Warren] wins Iowa or New Hampshire, it's a ball game changer,” said Brown.
Warren’s support among black women, according to Morning Consult, has inched up from 8 percent three months ago to 13 percent in a survey released this week. Biden currently has 42 percent support among black voters, the poll showed. Morning Consult is one of the few polls that provides breakdowns of their findings by gender and race.
Alisha Thomas Cromartie, a former Georgia state representative and host of the “Fearless Chic” podcast, said establishment black elected officials have flocked to Biden because he’s a known entity linked to Barack Obama.
But “it is a mistake to assume that because local elected officials support a candidate that black voters will follow suit,” she said.
Thomas Cromartie, who is 41, hasn’t endorsed a candidate but spoke admiringly of Warren and Kamala Harris and said black women her age and younger are still shopping around.
Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, disagreed that Warren is gaining momentum with black voters. "Numbers do not lie," he said, referring to polls.
Black voters trust "honesty, authenticity and genuineness," Seawright said, and "Biden represents all of those things for older, battle-tested African-American voters, people known to show up in elections. Could the temperature change? Absolutely."
But female African American pols interviewed for this story said the growing interest in Warren among black women presents an opportunity for the Massachusetts senator to upend Biden’s strategy. In states like Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia — all influential in the primary — black women under 54 outnumber black men of the same age group. And black women consistently vote for Democrats more than most other demographic groups.
Polls have captured a gradually expanding base for Warren. In the last few months, her support has expanded beyond white, college-educated to women of color, according to the Morning Consult and Quinnipiac polls — though she still trails Sanders among black voters in certain surveys.
Warren also has a big cash advantage over Biden — with $25.7 million in her war chest compared to just $8.9 million for Biden — that could allow her to add campaign staff and engage more black voters in Southern states where the former VP is strong.
Biden's campaign pushed back against reports that they've lowered expectations for Iowa and New Hampshire and rejected the notion that he is is taking any state or voting bloc for granted.
"We have and will continue to invest significant resources into Iowa, New Hampshire and all the early contests to compete aggressively and win those states," said Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo, noting the candidate's heavy campaign presence in both states.
"The VP is the only candidate in this race who can assemble the kind of broad coalition it takes to be successful and start Democrats on the path to victory in November 2020," Ducklo added.
Biden’s campaign continues to trumpet his strength among black voters, and their commitment to him. And a key piece of Biden’s African American support is their ability to deliver crucial delegates needed to win the nomination.
“If someone like Biden can hold onto the black vote and do well enough with the non-black vote that means they have a pretty strong path to the nomination."
- Elaine Kamarck, DNC member and author
“The biggest delegate districts in the country are the majority-minority districts,” said Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic National Committee and the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates its Presidential Candidates.” “African Americans because of their loyalty to their party have a large share of delegates.”
“If someone like Biden can hold onto the black vote and do well enough with the non-black vote that means they have a pretty strong path to the nomination. It’s not absolute but it’s definitely pretty substantial,” Kamarck added.
It is similar to the strategy Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton followed in 2008 and 2016, respectively, to win the nomination. Harris’ team also hopes to perform well on Super Tuesday with a focus on Southern states and her home turf of California in what one adviser dubbed “the SEC primary meets the West Coast offense.”
“What we’re staying focused and disciplined on is that this is a race for delegates,” Biden’s campaign manager, Greg Schultz, said on former Obama adviser David Plouffe’s Campaign HQ podcast in September.
Biden is leading the field among black voters nationally at 50 percent, and 27 percent among all voters, according to an October Quinnipiac poll. A Fox News poll of South Carolina this month showed Biden with 50 percent support among black voters. But Warren has slowly gained in surveys of black voters: In the same October Quinnipiac poll, Warren jumped from 10 percent to 18 percent among black voters nationally and took the lead with all Democratic voters and some independents at 30 percent. In South Carolina, Warren is at 8 percent and Sanders at 9, a statistical tie.
Biden’s campaign has called attention to Warren’s lack of support among minorities in polling. In late August, his deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said on MSNBC: “No Democrat is going to win the nomination for president of the United States without African American support. Nor should they.”
Warren’s campaign has kept quiet about their game plan, leading some Democratic operatives to wonder whether she’ll try to plot a different course for amassing delegates that relies less on winning black votes in the South.
In a memo to supporters last month, Warren campaign manager Roger Lau wrote vaguely that the campaign intends to focus on states like Minnesota, Maine, Michigan, and Georgia. He did not mention any of the Super Tuesday states, including ones with large black electorates like Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Over the past two months, the Warren campaign confirmed hiring state directors in California and Texas, but have been mum on others.
“We are organizing in all 57 states and territories, but we're not going to telegraph our entire strategy here to everyone,” the campaign told POLITICO when asked about their Super Tuesday strategy.
Warren’s campaign did acknowledge hiring a state director in North Carolina, Maggie Thompson, who has been on the job for at least one month. Warren’s team also sent organizer Chelsey Cartwright to Alabama last week, where she attended and helped organize events on maternal health for rural black women and historically black colleges and universities, according to her Twitter posts. Warren organizers have also mobilized potential supporters in Arkansas in recent weeks.
The activity suggests the campaign is making at least modest efforts to organize in the Southern Super Tuesday states.
Aimee Allison, cofounder of She the People, a group aimed at boosting women of color in politics, called Biden’s support among black voters “very soft” and said Warren has been gaining momentum. But, she added, “It is true that Elizabeth Warren has a lot of work to do in the South and Southwest in the states that are majority people of color.”
Some of Biden's loyal supporters, like Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who endorsed the former vice president last month, insist Warren can't beat Biden in South Carolina even if she triumphs in Iowa. He argued that Warren as the nominee could spell doom for Democrats: "The states, I could just line them up that we're gonna lose" with her at the top of the ticket.
Warren could conceivably win the nomination without a majority of black voters, though it would be exceedingly difficult. She would need to keep to Biden’s margin among African Americans narrow, while winning white voters handily. Warren would also need the Democratic field to shrink dramatically.
A recent Morning Consult poll captured the potential for Warren’s candidacy if the field winnows. A majority of voters who currently favor Biden, Harris or Buttigieg named Warren as their second choice. Sanders and Warren supporters named Biden as their no. 2 preference.
Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice whose research covers racial identity in electoral politics, recently crunched the numbers in a hypothetical match-up between Biden and Warren, based on the assumption that everyone else running dropped out.
“If [Warren] can stay within 20 points of Biden on the black vote, then she's got a shot,” Johnson said. “She can't afford to get wiped out by 40 or 50 points with black voters in the Southern states,” he added, “or in the urban areas in [states like] Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan.”
By LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ and ALEX THOMPSON
10/18/2019 05:06 AM EDT
Joe Biden’s advisers have repeatedly downplayed the need for him to win in predominantly white Iowa and New Hampshire — while boasting of his strength in Southern states where black voters often dominate.
And the polls, to date, back up their theory that that's his path to the nomination.
But if Biden’s firewall ever cracks — and there are some signs it’s softening in recent surveys — it will likely start with young black women, according to interviews with a dozen African American female organizers, lawmakers and activists who are heavily involved in the Democratic primary election or closely tracking the mood of black voters.
Their consensus: No candidate, Biden included, has a lock on African American voters in key early primary states. And Elizabeth Warren is gaining traction among black female voters under 50, while Bernie Sanders has a significant following among young black voters as well.
The anecdotal reports from African-American activists on the ground offer a reason for skepticism that Biden has already clinched the Democratic Party’s must-win voting bloc. The state of play is more fluid than assumed, they said, offering hope not just to Warren but to other candidates hoping to mount a late surge in the primary should Biden collapse.
Nse Ufot, executive director of the voter registration group New Georgia Project, said the notion that black voters are behind Biden no matter what is nonsense.
“In the rural black belt,” she said, “the candidate that says they have those voters locked up and that they have pledged some sort of unending fealty is the candidate that is asking for a big surprise and preparing to get their feelings hurt.”
Ufot, whose group has registered some 400,000 minorities in Georgia, has a different beat on the race than the one reflected in polls. And fellow black women organizing voters in key primary states like Alabama agree with her.
The current state of the race reminds LaTosha Brown, the cofounder of Black Voters Matter, of 2008. Black voters were behind Hillary Clinton unti Barack Obama won Iowa, when, Brown said, her “phone blew up.”
“Iowa is a template of what white people will do,” said Brown, whose group played a key role in rallying black voters to the polls in Democrats’ upset win in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. “And I hate to acknowledge it, but it influences how black people see a candidate, too.”
“So if [Warren] wins Iowa or New Hampshire, it's a ball game changer,” said Brown.
Warren’s support among black women, according to Morning Consult, has inched up from 8 percent three months ago to 13 percent in a survey released this week. Biden currently has 42 percent support among black voters, the poll showed. Morning Consult is one of the few polls that provides breakdowns of their findings by gender and race.
Alisha Thomas Cromartie, a former Georgia state representative and host of the “Fearless Chic” podcast, said establishment black elected officials have flocked to Biden because he’s a known entity linked to Barack Obama.
But “it is a mistake to assume that because local elected officials support a candidate that black voters will follow suit,” she said.
Thomas Cromartie, who is 41, hasn’t endorsed a candidate but spoke admiringly of Warren and Kamala Harris and said black women her age and younger are still shopping around.
Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, disagreed that Warren is gaining momentum with black voters. "Numbers do not lie," he said, referring to polls.
Black voters trust "honesty, authenticity and genuineness," Seawright said, and "Biden represents all of those things for older, battle-tested African-American voters, people known to show up in elections. Could the temperature change? Absolutely."
But female African American pols interviewed for this story said the growing interest in Warren among black women presents an opportunity for the Massachusetts senator to upend Biden’s strategy. In states like Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia — all influential in the primary — black women under 54 outnumber black men of the same age group. And black women consistently vote for Democrats more than most other demographic groups.
Polls have captured a gradually expanding base for Warren. In the last few months, her support has expanded beyond white, college-educated to women of color, according to the Morning Consult and Quinnipiac polls — though she still trails Sanders among black voters in certain surveys.
Warren also has a big cash advantage over Biden — with $25.7 million in her war chest compared to just $8.9 million for Biden — that could allow her to add campaign staff and engage more black voters in Southern states where the former VP is strong.
Biden's campaign pushed back against reports that they've lowered expectations for Iowa and New Hampshire and rejected the notion that he is is taking any state or voting bloc for granted.
"We have and will continue to invest significant resources into Iowa, New Hampshire and all the early contests to compete aggressively and win those states," said Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo, noting the candidate's heavy campaign presence in both states.
"The VP is the only candidate in this race who can assemble the kind of broad coalition it takes to be successful and start Democrats on the path to victory in November 2020," Ducklo added.
Biden’s campaign continues to trumpet his strength among black voters, and their commitment to him. And a key piece of Biden’s African American support is their ability to deliver crucial delegates needed to win the nomination.
“If someone like Biden can hold onto the black vote and do well enough with the non-black vote that means they have a pretty strong path to the nomination."
- Elaine Kamarck, DNC member and author
“The biggest delegate districts in the country are the majority-minority districts,” said Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic National Committee and the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates its Presidential Candidates.” “African Americans because of their loyalty to their party have a large share of delegates.”
“If someone like Biden can hold onto the black vote and do well enough with the non-black vote that means they have a pretty strong path to the nomination. It’s not absolute but it’s definitely pretty substantial,” Kamarck added.
It is similar to the strategy Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton followed in 2008 and 2016, respectively, to win the nomination. Harris’ team also hopes to perform well on Super Tuesday with a focus on Southern states and her home turf of California in what one adviser dubbed “the SEC primary meets the West Coast offense.”
“What we’re staying focused and disciplined on is that this is a race for delegates,” Biden’s campaign manager, Greg Schultz, said on former Obama adviser David Plouffe’s Campaign HQ podcast in September.
Biden is leading the field among black voters nationally at 50 percent, and 27 percent among all voters, according to an October Quinnipiac poll. A Fox News poll of South Carolina this month showed Biden with 50 percent support among black voters. But Warren has slowly gained in surveys of black voters: In the same October Quinnipiac poll, Warren jumped from 10 percent to 18 percent among black voters nationally and took the lead with all Democratic voters and some independents at 30 percent. In South Carolina, Warren is at 8 percent and Sanders at 9, a statistical tie.
Biden’s campaign has called attention to Warren’s lack of support among minorities in polling. In late August, his deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said on MSNBC: “No Democrat is going to win the nomination for president of the United States without African American support. Nor should they.”
Warren’s campaign has kept quiet about their game plan, leading some Democratic operatives to wonder whether she’ll try to plot a different course for amassing delegates that relies less on winning black votes in the South.
In a memo to supporters last month, Warren campaign manager Roger Lau wrote vaguely that the campaign intends to focus on states like Minnesota, Maine, Michigan, and Georgia. He did not mention any of the Super Tuesday states, including ones with large black electorates like Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Over the past two months, the Warren campaign confirmed hiring state directors in California and Texas, but have been mum on others.
“We are organizing in all 57 states and territories, but we're not going to telegraph our entire strategy here to everyone,” the campaign told POLITICO when asked about their Super Tuesday strategy.
Warren’s campaign did acknowledge hiring a state director in North Carolina, Maggie Thompson, who has been on the job for at least one month. Warren’s team also sent organizer Chelsey Cartwright to Alabama last week, where she attended and helped organize events on maternal health for rural black women and historically black colleges and universities, according to her Twitter posts. Warren organizers have also mobilized potential supporters in Arkansas in recent weeks.
The activity suggests the campaign is making at least modest efforts to organize in the Southern Super Tuesday states.
Aimee Allison, cofounder of She the People, a group aimed at boosting women of color in politics, called Biden’s support among black voters “very soft” and said Warren has been gaining momentum. But, she added, “It is true that Elizabeth Warren has a lot of work to do in the South and Southwest in the states that are majority people of color.”
Some of Biden's loyal supporters, like Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who endorsed the former vice president last month, insist Warren can't beat Biden in South Carolina even if she triumphs in Iowa. He argued that Warren as the nominee could spell doom for Democrats: "The states, I could just line them up that we're gonna lose" with her at the top of the ticket.
Warren could conceivably win the nomination without a majority of black voters, though it would be exceedingly difficult. She would need to keep to Biden’s margin among African Americans narrow, while winning white voters handily. Warren would also need the Democratic field to shrink dramatically.
A recent Morning Consult poll captured the potential for Warren’s candidacy if the field winnows. A majority of voters who currently favor Biden, Harris or Buttigieg named Warren as their second choice. Sanders and Warren supporters named Biden as their no. 2 preference.
Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice whose research covers racial identity in electoral politics, recently crunched the numbers in a hypothetical match-up between Biden and Warren, based on the assumption that everyone else running dropped out.
“If [Warren] can stay within 20 points of Biden on the black vote, then she's got a shot,” Johnson said. “She can't afford to get wiped out by 40 or 50 points with black voters in the Southern states,” he added, “or in the urban areas in [states like] Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan.”
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