By Sunita Sohrabji

AcoM

About 90% of Black voters backed Democratic House candidates in 2026, compared with roughly 80% who supported Kamala Harris in 2024, according to the AP Voter post-election poll, with 61% saying they cast their vote specifically to express opposition to President Donald Trump.

Similar voting patterns emerged among Latino and Asian American voters.

Among Black men, about one in 10 voted for a Republican House candidate this year, compared with roughly one in four who supported Donald Trump in 2024, according to the AP poll. Black candidates also fared well on election night Nov. 3, creating many firsts.

A poll released Nov. 4 by BSP Research, noted that 69% of Black voters had a very unfavorable opinion of Trump; 57% also had a very unfavorable opinion of Republicans in Congress.

Black voters, along with Latinos and Asian Americans, delivered the margin of victory in many battleground states, resulting in a “Blue tsunami,” which delivered a resounding Senate majority for Democrats — 53-47, and the House, 250-157. In a key race in Mississippi, which had yet to be called Nov. 9, Black Democrat Scott Colom holds a razor-thin lead against Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. (It has since been called for Scott Colom)

101 years later

For DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy, the 2026 mid-term election results were a sign that the arc of the moral universe was indeed bending towards justice.

“My great-grandfather got killed trying to go vote in 1927 in Newport, Tennessee,” Cooper told a post-election briefing Nov. 4, hosted by Word In Black.

Historians have never established a comprehensive count of Black Americans killed for attempting to vote or register others. But documented cases over the past century note that Cooper’s grandfather’s tragic demise came amid several decades of attempts to suppress the Black vote.

The Center for Popular Democracy, and its partner organizations, knocked on more than 2 million doors across the US, made more than 1.5 million phone calls, and had conversations with more than 300,000 people, said Cooper. The key to building a reliable electorate is consistent engagement with voters, not just during the election cycle.

For Dr. Keisha Dickinson, an assistant professor of political science at Morgan State University, that work includes helping young Black voters understand the political process and the power of their participation.

In conversations with young people in Mississippi and Maryland, Dickinson found that many knew their ancestors had fought for voting rights but were less familiar with the offices and decisions shaping their daily lives. Some did not know the difference between a governor and a lieutenant governor, she said.

At Morgan State, students organized a march to the polls. An estimated 200 to 300 students participated, Dickinson said, with many registering and voting for the first time.

The issues that mattered

Sixty percent of Black voters said they were most concerned about inflation, and the cost of living, according to a new poll released Nov. 4 by BSP Research. Closely following were jobs and the economy, affordable housing and rent, and affordable healthcare, according to poll results. In contrast to most midterm election analysis, gas prices ranked 6th among Black voters’ concerns. Universal childcare was supported by 59% of Black voters in the survey.

More than 73% of Black voters in the survey believe democracy is under attack, and 82% say they would support a new voting rights act.

Such fears are not unfounded: between 2020-2022, more than 19 million people were purged from voter registration rolls, according to data from US Election Assistance, and cited by the Brennan Center for Justice. In Mississippi alone, more than 230,000 voters were deactivated ahead of the mid-terms, while in South Carolina, 1.2 million voters have been marked inactive since 2022, according to data from the ACLU of South Carolina.

The US war with Iran and foreign policy at large did not figure as top concerns for Black voters. Full poll results can be viewed at: 2026electionpoll.us

“Democracy is back where it belongs: in the hands of the people,” said Marc Philpart, executive director of the California Black Freedom Fund, at a Nov. 4 news briefing organized by Mosaic California. “The results we saw last night reflect years of organizing and working to ensure our voices are heard.”

He noted that over $24 million was invested in the mid-term election cycle to get Black voters engaged in table top issues. He echoed Cooper’s comments, noting that organizers must continue engagement with communities year-round.