Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock speaks at the opening of a Democratic Party office in Detroit’s Livernois fashion district on October 18, 2024. Credit: Dominic Gwinn—Middle East Images via AFP via Getty Images

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Raphael Warnock arrived on Detroit Fashion Avenue in his SUV, wearing blue jeans and a dull olive green vest, ready to make his speech to the predominantly black audience. The Democratic senator from Georgia is among a group of high-profile Kamala Harris supporters working around the clock to appeal to Black male voters who fear they could cost her the election, not so much by endorsing Donald Trump, but by not bothering to vote in absolute.

“We cannot afford to stay at home. That’s the real threat,” Warnock said in a store quickly converted into a field office for Democrats. “There is no such thing as not voting. If you do anything other than vote for Kamala Harris, then you are bringing that man closer to the White House, and we cannot afford to have him return.”

Warnock’s words were similar to his message earlier that day at a magnet school with a student body that is three-quarters black and includes Diana Ross as a student. It is the same warning that is being given daily until election day in the undecided states, on the radio, on television, in HBCU homecoming games — everywhere, really — in the hope that the outcome won’t be dictated by the lack of enthusiasm of low-propensity voters, especially black men.

“I don’t think there are going to be large numbers of black men voting for Donald Trump. I don’t think so,” Warnock told a crowd at an inner-city high school. “We are not a monolith, like anyone else. There will be some; “There have always been some.”

Low propensity voters—those who are registered but have no guarantee of showing up on Election Day—have become the overall prize for Democrats at this late hour. Harris’s advisers are making the strategic bet that her diehard supporters have already cast their ballots early when possible and that most of those inclined to back Trump are not persuadable. Instead, the focus in the final push has been on those low-probability voters with knocking on their doors, with digital ads targeting specific demographics and incessant phone calls. On Saturday alone, the Harris campaign said they had volunteers in Pennsylvania knocking on 2,000 doors every minute.

Harris’ team has made no attempt to hide the aggressive effort to increase voter turnout, especially among black men. And that effort is especially strong in key cities in the very, very white area. blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all of which appear to be close to being decided by narrow margins. Special efforts have been made in markets such as Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. Black voters are the backbone of the Democratic Party, but, frankly, efforts to secure their support have failed. languished when the democrats thought they were stuck with President Joe Biden running for a second term. Once Harris took over the ticket in July, the team he inherited and then augmented went into overdrive to make up lost ground.

In 2020, Biden dominated the Blue Wall states among black voters, winning 92% each in Michigan, Wisconsinand Pennsylvania. But they represent only 6% to 12% of the overall electorate, meaning that a couple thousand black voters staying home may actually be the whole game for Democrats. To keep those states, Harris requires participation and discipline.

In the southern states at stake, it is more urgent; About 30% of the electorate in Georgia is expected to be black and 25% in North Carolina. None of the states are essential, but they are part of the seven-state constellation that is the most realistic battlefield map. And in the last presidential race, Biden won 88% of black voters to win Georgia in 2020, but the 92% he won in North Carolina was insufficient.

For his part, Harris has barely juice difficult to obtain: he has published an Agenda of Opportunities for Black Men and flooded the media and black personalities. Attendees have organized events such as Black Men Huddle, Black Men For Harris, a barbershop tour called Cuts and Conversations, and specific canvases branded as Step, Stomp, and Stroll. Musical acts like Beyoncé, Usher, John Legend, Lizzo and Cardi B have united Harris events in the last month. Oprah, Stevie Wonder and Magic Johnson were also present. Actress Kerry Washington is practically living on the campaign trail these days, and the Congressional Black Caucus has been a traveling show for the campaign.

Oh, and a certain former president named barack Obama and an appointed first lady Michelle have left the dock in important ways.

It’s one of the most transparent and targeted efforts to reach these potential voters in recent years, and it may still fall short. Black men “are not in our back pocket,” Harris told the National Association of Black Journalists in September. Trump’s strategists, of course, understand this and have been surgical in his campaign for the young male vote across all racial groups. It has set in motion one of the most unexpected subplots of the 2024 campaign.

“What you’re seeing is Kamala Harris’s recognition — admittedly — that no one can be taken for granted,” Warnock tells me in a parking lot after one of many pep talks in Detroit. “She knows she has to fight to earn the votes of black men, white women, white men and all the other voters. And she is fighting to achieve it.”

Celebrity and identity politics may be important in voter registration and mobilization among low-propensity voters, to be sure, but ultimately there has been a product beyond the packaging. Harris certainly doesn’t lack substance, but the energy her campaign radiates at in-person events is often not felt by those who consume that content in clips and soundbites. Their demonstration in Houston late last month. rivaled any recent sporting or musical event on my mind, calling memories from Obama’s 2008 acceptance speech in Denver. (Beyoncé’s introduction of her didn’t hurt either.) But from the outside, those moments can be drowned out by the daily buffet of Trump’s outrageous bombast.

Still, the messaging to these voters has been a bit disjointed at times. Many in Democratic circles questioned Barack Obama’s wisdom. calling Black men for being lukewarm to Harris because of latent sexism. (“Part of that makes me think that, well, you just don’t fancy the idea of ​​having a woman president, and you’re proposing other alternatives and other reasons for it,” Obama said in Pittsburgh.)

Harris, a day before Election Day, has a solid footing in the polls. Final NBC News poll shows 87%-9% split among black voters, undoubtedly an explosion. But it’s worth remembering that Hillary Clinton got 89%-8% lead also among black voters in 2016.

“If he doesn’t win, it will be because of racism. It’s that simple,” says Keith Williams, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party’s Black Caucus and former Wayne County commissioner. “She’s running against a convicted felon who doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and she’s still close. There’s only one way to explain that.”

Retired engineer John Watkins, who took a minute out of his Friday to listen to Warnock and pick up Harris’ signs, had a slightly different opinion. “People here don’t take Trump seriously,” says the 67-year-old Detroit resident. “Half the country simply won’t vote for a black woman. We have to remember that reality and work twice as hard.”

Democrats remain uneasy about the black male vote, but they are less worried than they were around Labor Day. An NAACP survey released last week black men under 50 were found returning to the Democratic Party; Support for Trump fell from 27% to 21% compared to the previous month. Meanwhile, support for Harris rose from 51% to 59%, which remains a challenge in a voting bloc that any Democrat needs to rack up tallies.

Overall, among all black voters, Harris enjoys about 73% support in the NAACP poll, also up about 10 points from the previous month. By comparison, Biden won the votes of about 90% of Black voters in 2020, and Obama won about 95% of those votes in his two campaigns.

“It’s better, but not good,” says one veteran strategist, encouraging his friends outside the Harris campaign. “We are out of the Biden danger zone, but this will still depend on what our aunts say at church last weekend.”

So while Warnock, like so many other Harris allies in the final days of the campaign, repeats his speech to every group of potential voters he can find, it is rooted in both aspiration and pragmatism.

“We won’t see waves of black men voting for Donald Trump,” Warnock insisted. “The real threat we face, what we really need to address is apathy.”

That is precisely why Harris’ team has spent the final weeks of the campaign in overdrive, and will remain there until the last voting centers close in just a few hours. They’re not looking for die-hard supporters, but for indifferent Americans who may not even know that Election Day is finally around the corner.

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write to Philip Elliott at [email protected].