Why is Biden losing support among Latinos, African Americans and young people for the 2024 presidential election?

US President Joe Biden began this election year with a decline among Latino, African American and young voters, the coalition that pushed for his victory in 2020, according to a survey released this Monday.

The survey, by USA TODAY newspaper and Suffolk University, also detailed that in a hypothetical presidential competition against former president Donald Trump (2017-2021), the Republican leads Biden by two percentage points (39% – 37%).

Biden, the poll notes, now has the support of only 63% of African-American voterscompared to 87% in the 2020 elections, in which he beat Trump.

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One in five African-American voters now say they will support a third-party candidate in next November's presidential election, the poll details.

The Democrat also fell among Hispanics, from 39% in 2020 to 34%, according to the survey who interviewed about 1,000 potential voters between last Tuesday and Thursday with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

In 2020, Biden had overwhelmingly outperformed Trump among this minority by a 65%-32% margin.

Among voters under 35 years of age, Trump now leads 37% to Biden's 33%according to the survey published by the USA TODAY newspaper.

The Republican primaries begin next January 15 with the Iowa caucuses, and Trump is the favorite according to all polls to face Biden again.

Biden's challenges to recover support in 2024

In the midst of this panorama, Joe Biden began the year with the mission of reviving the flame that allowed him to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 elections. and brought him to the White House with record levels of participation, especially among young people.

Regaining voter trust won't be easy for Biden, whose approval ratings sit at 34%. the lowest number of any American president seeking re-electionaccording to a Monmouth University survey.

Despite this, the campaign has tried to convey the idea that there is no reason to be alarmed, focusing on highlighting the president's economic successes, the investments made in infrastructure and its efforts to revitalize the middle class.

A fundamental strategy of the campaign is to highlight the differences between Biden and Trump, underscoring the current president's commitment to democracy in the face of the authoritarian tendencies of the man who will possibly end up being the presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

In an interview with Efe in October, Biden's campaign manager, Julie Chávez, granddaughter of the legendary union leader César Chávez, was confident that voters will recognize, just as they did in 2020the threat that Trump represents to democracy.

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“I can't think of a more consequential election than this when we consider all that is at stake. I never imagined I would witness in my lifetime the type of extremism we are seeing,” said Chávez.

Faced with such a threat, Biden is not wasting his time. According to a memo released by the campaign in December and titled 'Why Joe Biden will win in 2024,' High-ranking Democratic political operatives are already deployed in key states such as South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Efforts are also accelerating to reach Hispanic voters with ads in English, Spanish and even Spanglish.

The debates over Biden's age

But, more delicate for the campaign is to talk about the age of the president, the oldest in the entire history of the United States.

Biden himself has tried to downplay the issue with jokes, for example saying it was “hard to turn 60” on his 81st birthday this year.

However, more and more voters, including Democrats, are concerned about his ability to serve for four more years.

According to a survey published in September by ABC and The Washington Post, three-quarters of Americans considered Biden too old to run for re-election.

In contrast, only half of Americans believe Trump is too old to run for the White House.

Trump is 77 years old, only four years younger than Biden; but he has the advantage of spending less time in the spotlight of public opinion and voters tend to perceive him as someone with more energy.

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It doesn't help that Biden has stumbled several times in front of television cameras and is increasingly slurring his words when speaking, a difficulty that has its roots in the stuttering he experienced in his childhood and that has resurfaced over the years.

The Israeli offensive in Gaza

Apart from age, Another issue that could take its toll on Biden is the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, which has already left more than 21,600 dead.

Large cities such as New York, San Francisco and Washington DC have been the scene of massive demonstrations, where numerous young people who supported Biden in 2020 or are considering voting for the first time in 2024 now openly express their disappointment with the president.

“Biden will not have my vote, and I say that with complete certainty,” Aliaa Essaf, 21, of Moroccan origin, told Efe during a demonstration in Washington in November.

This sentiment extends to other voters, according to an October poll by the Arab American Institute. According to that poll, support for Biden among Arab-Americans, a crucial group of voters in key stateshas dropped considerably, going from a comfortable 59% in 2020 to just 17%.

However, Of all the challenges Biden faces, the most worrying is the lack of spark, of enthusiasm, among the electoratea Democratic source outside the campaign told Efe.

To solve this, the campaign is focusing on issues such as abortion, which touch some voters very closely and have already helped Democrats achieve better results than expected in the 2022 midterm elections.

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Vice President Kamala Harris, who will once again be Biden's running mate, plans to begin a “tour for reproductive freedoms” on the 22nd of this month in Wisconsin, shortly before the start of the Democratic Party primaries.

These primaries will begin on February 3 in South Carolina and will end in August in Chicago with the Democratic convention, where Biden will be officially established as the presidential candidate of that party.

Although Biden's nomination is not at risk, given that its contenders are barely knownit is undeniable that the primaries have great symbolic content.

They will serve to measure voters' enthusiasm for his candidacy and, above all, they will determine Biden's ability to revive the flame he will need so badly to defeat Trump in the November elections.

EFE