CNN reveals 'historically weak' performance by Kamala Harris among African Americans

Kamala Harris has a problem with African-American voters. This was recently acknowledged by Barack Obama, who returned to the campaign trail to try to help the Democratic candidate with this demographic group, which polls show could deliver many votes to Donald Trump in the presidential election in November.

"We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all corners of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. Now, I also want to say that that seems to be more pronounced with the brothers. (...)It makes me think, and I'm speaking to men directly ... 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," Obama said recently from Pennsylvania.

Harry Enten, senior data analyst for CNN, put numbers to that sentiment from the former president. He compared the performance of recent Democratic candidates and the result was not very encouraging for Harris.

He started with young African-American voters, ages 18 to 44, among whom Harris is far behind her predecessors. For example, Obama scored an 81-point difference against Mitt Romney in 2012. Hillary Clinton reduced that number to 63 points in 2016 and Biden lowered it again in 2020 with a 53 percentage point difference. However, Kamala Harris is averaging just a 41-point difference with Donald Trump among this demographic.

"That is about half the margin that Barack Obama won back in November of 2012. (...) This is part of a longstanding trend of young black men moving away from the Democratic party and Kamala Harris is just the latest to face [it]" Enten said.

The data is also not the best among men of color overall. While Obama had a gap of 85 points, Clinton 71 and Biden 69, Harris drops to 54 points difference with Trump.

"The bottom line is Kamala Harris with younger black men and black men overall, putting in a historically weak performance for a democratic candidate," Enten added.

On the other side, the journalist remarked that currently Trump would be getting the highest numbers for a Republican among voters of color since Richard Nixon in 1960.

"The bottom line is this. At this particular hour... Donald Trump's going to put up the best performance with Black voters since Richard Nixon in 1960... Among Hispanic voters, Donald Trump's going to put up the best performance for a Republican since 2004," he said