You can almost call this the issue nobody is talking about but yet everybody knows it. There have been rumblings in the mainstream media that Pete Buttigieg has a black voter problem. Even prominent democrats like Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina admit it.
Clyburn suggests much of it is due to the fact that Buttigieg is gay, which is a problem with older black voters according to Clyburn.
Another very bad metric for Buttigieg is a Washington Post/Ipsos poll that shows Buttigieg getting a mere 2% of registered black Democratic voter support. A terrible number and one that spells disaster for the Democrats if he gets the nomination.
Another issue that Buttigieg needs to deal with is that almost nothing about his life story is relatable to average black voters (or any voters). He went to an Ivy League college, got a job at the CIA connected think tank/consulting firm known as Mkinsey & Company. After that he went into Naval Intelligence where by his own admission was given a cushy job as what he described as a “military Uber driver”. Nothing about his history is even remotely normal, and in fact is a bit strange.
The more one digs into Buttigieg’s life story the less relatable it becomes to most Americans, not just black voters. For example, he was able to earn so much money in less than two years at Mkinsey that he said he lived off his savings while running for mayor of South Bend, Indiana for two years. So working only two years out of college then having enough money to not work and run for mayor, while living off of savings does not at all sound typical for most people. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, so Buttigieg’s story is so unrelatable it can almost sound fake at times.
All of this is a perfect storm to create historic low turn out among black voters this fall. Buttigieg doesn’t appear to be the one to energize black voters and get them enthused to show up at the polls and wait in line to vote. If anything, the best he can hope for during the campaign is to simply get black voters to accept him.
To add to all this, we have Trump’s growing popularity with black voters. A strong economic record that has minority unemployment at historically low levels speaks directly to those voters Buttigieg can’t seem to connect with. Trump is making the lives of black voters better and he has the numbers to prove it.
But it gets even worse for Buttigieg. Trump has more than doubled his support with black voters since he won in 2016. According to a recent Zogby poll, his support has gone from 8% to 22% overall among black voters.
So while Buttigieg appears to be experiencing a surge in the Democratic primaries, it could spell disaster for Democrats this fall.
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