Barack Obama attracted well over 90% of the African-American vote during his presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, effectively garnering 13% of the electorate based on a sole demographic. Reasons given for the support were the opportunity for an African-American president. A May 2016 poll showed Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton with 84% among African-American voters in the 2016 presidential election.
Bernie Sanders, the other leading Democratic presidential candidate of the election cycle, was believed to have lacked support from Black voters in the Democratic Party primaries due to Black voters having a tendency to be socially conservative, unlike the white voters that gave large support to his campaign. In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump increased his share of the Black vote compared with his performance in 2020, reflecting a modest shift within a demographic that has historically supported Democratic candidates by large margins. According to national exit poll data, roughly 15–16 % of Black voters supported Trump in 2024, up from about 8 % in 2020. The gains for Trump were particularly noticeable among some subgroups such as Black men, where support was higher than among Black women. According to national exit-poll data from the 2024 U.S. presidential election, about 21% of Black men reported voting for Donald Trump. This figure comes from aggregated exit poll results showing that among Black male voters nationally, roughly one-fifth supported Trump while the majority still backed Kamala Harris. These shifts fit into an overall trend in which the Republican Party under Trump expanded its appeal slightly among a few minority voter groups in 2024, including Hispanic and Asian-American voters, contributing to the coalition that helped him win the presidency. == See also ==