Black voters' support for abortion access in Tuesday night's elections gives hope to Democrats that President Joe Biden can fend off a Republican challenger despite waning support for the president on several critical issues and within the demographic as a whole.
Biden sits at 41% approval in the RealClearPolitics polling average, down from 55% when he entered office in 2021, and former President Donald Trump overtook Biden in several recent general election polls, including those from the New York Times, CNN, and CBS.
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Biden's support among black voters, a critical pillar of his 2020 winning election coalition, has slipped in recent months. CNN's latest poll showed Biden carrying 73% support from black voters, a dip of 20 points compared to his performance in the 2020 general election. A similar sampling from the New York Times showed Biden at 71% among black voters and Trump at 22%, 10 points higher than any other Republican presidential nominee over the past five decades, according to the paper.
Still, following 2022's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision that overturned national protections for abortion, Democrats have pointed to the issue as a top motivator for voters, regardless of race.
And following Tuesday's elections, Democrats again credited abortion access with helping secure wins in Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia.
Democrats voted in favor of a constitutional amendment codifying the right to abortion in Ohio, reelected a Democratic governor in Kentucky, and flipped the House of Delegates in Virginia, ostensibly blocking threats from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) to sign restrictive abortion legislation.
Black voters in particular helped pass Ohio's abortion initiative, with 83% of the demographic voicing approval in exit polls, 20 and 10 points higher than white and Latino voters, respectively.
"Black voters are not a monolith, and Democrats aren't taking any votes for granted," one Democratic official told the Washington Examiner. "But Tuesday night's results showed that President Biden and national Democrats are putting forward real policies that will directly help black families."
"It's natural for voters to sour on incumbents to some degree, especially amid multiple wars and lingering economic aftershocks of the coronavirus pandemic," that person continued. "Still, when compared with the extreme MAGA agenda that will roll back progress on the economy and further endanger reproductive rights, Biden becomes the clear choice for voters."
Still, Tuesday wasn't all good news for the president.
Incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) successfully held off a well-funded challenge from the Trump-backed Daniel Cameron, arguably Democrats biggest win on Tuesday, but several Democratic aides suggest his win is emblematic of the problem with Biden.
Unlike the president, Beshear is young and "doesn't sound like he has dementia," a swing state Democratic aide said.
"Just like 2022, Democrats are jubilant about victories that happened despite Joe Biden, not because of Joe Biden," a Democratic official additionally told NBC News. "We still have a problem at the top of the ticket — an unliked president who is not able to use the bully pulpit to inspire people on domestic issues and who seems weak in the Middle East conflict."
Biden was largely absent from the campaign trail in the lead-up to Tuesday night. That is at least partially to do with the ongoing wars in Israel and Ukraine, plus a looming government shutdown, all vying for the president's attention, but dating back to the 2022 cycle, vulnerable Democrats shied away from Biden.
Furthermore, Tuesday's elections were, overall, a low turnout affair, and there's indication those who stayed away from the polls aren't fans of the president.
"Biden’s numbers among the kinds of voters who only show up in presidential elections are much weaker,” added Cook Political Report's David Wasserman. “The voters who did not show up [Tuesday] but will in 2024 skew younger, they skew noncollege, a little bit more nonwhite than the electorate overall, and they skew independent. Those voters in surveys are quite anti-Biden at the moment, and are surprisingly open to voting to Trump.”
The White House and Biden campaign, however, are choosing to ignore Biden's poor polling and instead focus on what they see as positive trends stemming from Tuesday.
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"President Biden's values and agenda won big across the country last night," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at Wednesday's briefing. "In Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and in Virginia, voters once again sided with President Biden's agenda to stand up for fundamental freedoms and build an economy for the middle class and protect democracy.
"We have always said that voting matters and polls do not," she said.