MACON, GA — If Donald Trump’s rally here on Sunday was a pie chart, and those wearing an “I’m Voting for the Felon” shirt were a demographic, they’d outnumber the Black men in attendance.
One of the biggest questions about Georgia is how many Black men will actually show up for Trump on Election Day — and how many Black voters will just stay home.
One-third of Georgia’s population is Black. And an energized Black electorate could very well tip the scales for Kamala Harris. But a more muted showing could swing Georgia’s 16 electoral votes Trump’s way.
In conversations with dozens of strategists, operatives and, of course, Black men, NOTUS found some reason to believe Harris has a problem.
Yes, everyone agrees most Black men will vote for her. And yes, Trump has made some pickups with the demographic. But the more troubling issue for Harris is that fewer Black men seem intent on voting at all — a possibility that has been playing out in slow motion in polling and early voting data.
During the initial phase of early voting, Black voters hovered around 26.5% of the electorate, shy of the 30% analysts believed Harris needed to reach for her best shot at winning Georgia. Now, with early voting closed, that number has dropped even lower to around 26.3%. It’s bad news for Harris, particularly if those voters don’t plan on showing up on Election Day.
But the Harris campaign isn’t quite buying the narrative. Or the data.
“With a very strong week of early vote, especially from Black voters, Democrats are now on track in Georgia — as long as we continue to see strong turnout on Election Day,” a senior Democratic operative in Georgia said after NOTUS asked the Harris campaign for comment. “Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans are just cannibalizing from their Election Day voters – their turnout does not signal anything about the enthusiasm among sporadic voters.”
The operative also disputed the secretary of state’s data due to delays, saying their own data shows Black voters make up 27% of early voting in Georgia, which would be comparable to Biden’s numbers in 2020.
The campaign also connected NOTUS with Chatham County state Sen. Derek Mallow, who said that many Black voters prefer to cast a ballot on Election Day rather than to vote early.
He also pushed back on the idea that regular, Black Democratic voters were going to sit at home.
“I bet you, by the time I finish knocking doors today and phone banking, if I call them, they’re going to be up and moving,” he said.
Mallow estimated the campaign had knocked on 10,000 doors over the past 72 hours in the Savannah area, and did so predominantly in Black neighborhoods.
“Call me tomorrow after Election Day and tell me that they still sat it out,” Mallow said. “Because I’m gonna be on their asses between now and tomorrow.”
But for the Black men and women at both candidates’ rallies this weekend, the idea that Black men are staying home was hardly questioned. It was more a question of why?
Trump has been courting votes in the Black community, specifically from younger males, for some time. Overall, Trump has taken special efforts to appeal to men, partly as a response to the overwhelming backlash he and Republicans have faced from women. But Trump has really gone after Black men, arguing he’s the superior candidate on economic issues.
Republicans in the state have also been trying to make inroads with Black men.
Greater Georgia, former Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s voter turnout group, has focused its outreach on minority voters for months, holding local events led by Republican minority leaders.
At Trump’s rally in Macon on Sunday, the Black men and women present told NOTUS they were proof Black voters would turn out for the former president. Many had already voted, and the rest planned to on Tuesday.
But by their own admission, within their community, Trump supporters are more mavericks than a movement.
“From the Black people that I hear, they want Kamala,” Aamar Jackson said at Trump’s rally.
“I’m the only one in my family,” Josh Johnson, a local firefighter, said. “I’ve had family members try to talk me out of it, like, ‘What’re you doing, what’re you doing?’”
The data is beginning to match the anecdotes. After months of polls showing Trump gaining ground within the Black community, recent surveys indicate the trend has reversed course after the Harris campaign made a concerted effort to increase outreach to Black men. Utilizing high-profile surrogates like former President Barack Obama and Sen. Raphael Warnock, the campaign has worked to win back Black men who had been considering Trump.
Still, even if these voters won’t support Trump, there’s a real question of whether they’ll come out in support of Harris.
To at least one Democratic operative, the idea that Black men would vote for Trump was always a mirage. For months, Georgia strategist David Brand believed Democrats weren’t fighting Trump for Black men; they were fighting the couch.
Right now, the couch is looking like Muhammad Ali.
At both rallies, attendees noted little difference between the men casting a Trump ballot and those literally sitting it out. In Macon, many who spoke to NOTUS had previously supported Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, before switching for Trump’s run in 2020 or 2024. They could understand why their neighbors wouldn’t vote for Harris even if they were unwilling to vote for the Republican.
Four years ago, Gregory Green filled in the bubble next to “Biden, Joseph R.” This election, he’s already banked his vote for Trump. He just never saw evidence that Harris would be any different from the sitting president he helped elect.
“I just see the difference in the economy, in the world, inflation, prices,” Green said, as if reading from a list.
“I gotta do what’s helping me and my family,” he added.
The Trump campaign’s closing message to Black voters emphasized the same issue that folks at his rally described as motivating their jump to Trump: the economy.
“Instead of recognizing the strength and dignity of Black Americans, Harris is calling on celebrities to tell us what to think,” Janiyah Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director, said in a video. “How can she fix the problem in our country that she spent the last four years creating?”
Then there’s Harris’ progressive social values, a trademark of the Democratic Party, but one that doesn’t align with the values of more socially conservative Black men. There’s also a general dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, the result of years of party-line voting that some feel hasn’t improved their lives.
But the most common complaint, raised by exasperated Harris rally goers and repeatedly acknowledged by Black men supporting Trump: She’s a woman. Many have a problem with that.
Almost like a metronome, when asked why Black men are hesitant about Harris, they kept coming back to biology.
“You still have a situation where some Black folks will not — Black men — will not want a female as a president,” Scott Ringer said at Harris’ rally on Saturday. “It doesn’t make sense at all.”
It’s an old story, according to Alison McGill, a campaign volunteer. She grew up in a family where women in leadership weren’t exactly welcomed.
“I do think that’s a possibility: Just a reluctance, or an unwillingness, to look at a Black woman as a leader, especially as the highest office of the land,” McGill said.
There was one Black Trump supporter at Harris’ rally in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward on Saturday. And when NOTUS asked him about reservations with voting for a woman, expecting that he might be defensive, Keon Young granted the premise.
“I 100% agree,” he said, with a “Fight, Fight, Fight” hat atop his head. “I don’t think she’d be respected.”
“I’m not trying to be sexist or anything, but I don’t want to vote for someone who bleeds three to seven days a month,” Young said.
While voters at the Trump rally in Macon were less vivid with their responses, they were just as revealing.
“We don’t want to see it because, you know, look at the mayors, the mayors all over the country that lead cities and run their cities into the ground,” Johnson, the firefighter, said. Most Black men feel like “most of these women that get into power like that, it’s just a means to live a lavish lifestyle that most women want to live anyways.”
“So they’re not there to serve the people,” he said, wearing a black-and-white “Black Americans for Trump” hat.
Despite the warning signs regarding Black voter turnout, state Democrats remain upbeat about Harris’ chances. Among them is the same operative who previously worried about excessive couch sitting.
“Politics evolve,” Brand told NOTUS. This election, he said, “defies all conventional wisdom of the past.”
“I’m not worried about this at all,” he said.
The optimism stems from what Brand and others believe is secret support for Harris among white voters and a superb showing from senior citizens.
Even if Black men fail to turn out for Harris at the same levels they did for Biden in 2020, these operatives believe Harris has allies in the Atlanta suburbs who will make up the margin. Moderate white women have long been a prime target of the Harris campaign and its messaging on reproductive rights.
During the homestretch, the campaign has concentrated its efforts within Atlanta’s collar counties. Harris surrogates have been a constant in Cobb County, where Gov. Tim Walz rallied Sunday afternoon, and Fulton County, the site of Harris’ Fourth Ward rally Saturday. The campaign has another Atlanta rally planned for Monday night.
The Harris coalition doesn’t end there, Brand said. It’s been bolstered by Asian voters excited to vote for a South Asian woman and a Latino community energized by the racist jokes at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally last weekend.
“Very offensive, because we both hail from Curaçao, a small island in the Caribbean,” Giuliano, who didn’t give his last name, said at the Harris rally. “He’s racist against Mexicans, against Latinos in general. So it’s a big reason we’re not voting for him.”
After leaving Trump’s rally on Sunday, as NOTUS staff checked into a hotel, we asked the man behind the counter if he’d be voting Tuesday.
“Hell naw, man. I’m letting the women do that,” Liddell, a Black man, said. “Ain’t neither one of ‘em good.”
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Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.