PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Black voters in the state’s most densely populated county aren’t as enthusiastic for Vice President Kamala Harris as they were for past Democratic presidential candidates, and it could dampen her chances of winning the state.

Polls in Pennsylvania show the race between Ms. Harris and former President Donald Trump is dead even, which left some analysts puzzled about the vice president’s lack of momentum, especially in historically big Democrat turnout areas like Philadelphia.

Significant Black voter support here helped President Obama and President Biden win in 2008, 2012 and 2020. Now, turnout is down and Ms. Harris spent last weekend in Philadelphia courting the Black vote at a church, barber shop and bookstore in a bid to stop Mr. Trump from flipping the state back to the Republicans.  

“Victory runs through Philly, and it runs through Pennsylvania,” Ms. Harris told voters in the city. 

Her message isn’t resonating with everyone. 

One Black voter in Philadelphia shrugged off Ms. Harris’ overtures. “I won’t be voting,” the man, who didn’t provide his name, said in an interview. “I don’t like either of the candidates.”

Despite her position as the first Black female vice president, Ms. Harris is battling low enthusiasm among Black voters nationwide. The decline matters most in the swing states, where a drop of just a few percentage points could tip the race to Mr. Trump.

A recent poll by AtlasIntel found Ms. Harris with only 68% of support among Black voters in Pennsylvania. It’s a big drop from four years ago and suggests she won’t match Mr. Biden’s 90% support from the state’s Black voters in 2020. 

The same AtlasIntel poll found 21.2% of the state’s Black voters supporting Mr. Trump — a record-high number for a Republican presidential candidate.

“I think PA is a big Trump state,” Derrick Jones, a Black voter who manages a meat plant in Bethlehem, said. “They try to swing the votes and say there’s a lot of hate in PA for Trump, which is not true, because PA is paying a big toll on everything.”

He said high prices and “too much hate” motivated him to vote for Mr. Trump.

“The price of gas is outrageous here. It’s like living in New York,” Mr. Jones said. 

Nearly 70 miles south in Philadelphia, most Black voters will back Ms. Harris. 

“I can see why people would defer from supporting Kamala,” Alan Smith, a Philadelphia city worker, said. “At the end of the day, I believe he’ll end up screwing people over.”

Still, the cracks in her base are evident.

David Friedman, a Philadelphia construction worker, said he doesn’t really like either candidate, but his friends are leaning toward Mr. Trump.

Ms. Harris, he said, doesn’t align with his views and did little to fix the country’s problems while serving as vice president. 

“I really don’t see any good with her being in that position,” he said. “She allowed a lot of things.” 

The raw data is worrying the Harris campaign. 

Fewer Black Democrats are voting early in Philadelphia this year, the data firm TargetSmart reported. Based on early vote returns, it found that as of Thursday, about 50,000 Black registered Democrats had turned in ballots, a sharp decrease from the same time in 2020, when 109,000 registered Black Democrats had cast ballots in Philadelphia. 

In 2020, early voters cast more than 28% of the state’s total vote.

“The numbers coming out don’t show much enthusiasm for Harris,” polling analyst Ryan Girdusky wrote on Substack. 

Pennsylvania is one of seven critical battleground states, and some analysts see it as among the most important in the election. If Mr. Trump captures Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, along with Maine’s 1st Congressional District, he wins a second term even if Ms. Harris picks up the remaining battleground states. 

Mr. Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by 80,000 votes or about 1%.

Mr. Trump, campaigning in New Mexico on Thursday, told a rally crowd that Black voters are angry about illegal immigrants, who have flooded across the southern border on Ms. Harris’ watch. The migrants are taking Americans’ jobs, particularly jobs held by Black Americans, Mr. Trump said, and he predicted Ms. Harris will lose significant support because of it.

“You’re going to see the worst African American numbers that we’ve ever seen,” he said.

• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.

• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.