Black voters matter.
A new wave of voting restrictions at the state and federal levels are preventing Black Americans from exercising our right to vote.
Black Americans will account for 14% of all eligible voters in the November 2024 elections, according to Pew Research Center. They project that 34.4 million Black Americans will be eligible to vote in November. That’s up 7% since 2020, when Black voters represented 13.5% of eligible voters. Black voters continue to be a critically important voting constituency and need sustained investment to turn out the vote.
Black people and communities of color more broadly have been hit harder by inflation and other economic struggles. In 2020, when the pandemic caused unemployment to spike, unemployment was considerably higher for Black workers than the country as a whole. When you added that to pre-existing wage and wealth gaps, those inequalities were felt even more. In more recent times, as inflation has caused prices for food, housing, and gas to rise sharply overall, researchers have shown Black and Latino communities have been disproportionately affected. Black voters need to hear about economic policies that have benefitted and damaged our communities and how voting can impact those policies.
Our democracy is stronger when all voters can participate and make our voices heard.
But entrenched structural racism and voter suppression efforts continue to create barriers to voting for communities of color, and especially Black communities. We need to expand outreach into Black communities by educating voters and turning out the vote.