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In Poll, Black Voters Indicate Disappointment in Lack of Progress on Joe Biden’s Campaign Promises

The president’s promises to reform policing and provide voting rights protections have been hampered by the Democrats’ inability to overcome a filibuster.

A recent Washington Post-Ipsos found that Black folks approve of President Biden, but there are frustrations about how little progress Democrats have made on issues of voting rights and policing in the U.S.

The poll asked about 1,200 Black Americans about their opinions of the president. It found that 70 percent of respondents approve of how Biden is handling his job, but just 23 percent “strongly approve.”

Some 60 percent of respondents said they were disappointed or angry about Democrats’ failure to pass voting rights legislation. However, more than 80 percent of those people also said they blame Biden “not at all” or “a little,” according to the Post.

When asked if they think Biden is sympathetic to Black Americans’ problems, the numbers declined from 74 percent in 2020 to 66 percent. 75 percent of the people polled say they feel Biden has done “a little” or “nothing” to reduce discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Despite the poll showing weakened support from Black voters, the demographic’s support for the president remains the highest. Biden overwhelmingly carried Black voters in the 2020 presidential election, Pew Research Center attributes 92 percent of the Black vote as going to the democrat. This made Biden the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Georgia since 1992.

Almost 90 percent of respondents said they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their congressional district in November.  However, the same poll found that about half say the outcome of the midterm elections matters “a great deal” to them. Just 62 percent said they would “absolutely” vote this year, compared to 85 percent in 2020. The decrease in the number of Black voters who said they would definitely vote was 23 points compared to a 12-point drop for white voters.

RELATED: Kyrsten Sinema’s Refusal to Consider Changing the Filibuster Could Doom Voting Rights Legislation

The Post poll found that respondents seem to be frustrated with the failure of the White House to advance Biden’s campaign promises. While the president has backed several pieces of legislation on police reform and voting rights, the evenly-divided Senate has allowed Republicans to block those measures.  Vice President Kamala Harris serves as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, but without 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and move legislation forward, the stalemate remains.

Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have repeatedly refused to vote to eliminate the filibuster.

The Hill reported that when federal police reform legislation failed in the Senate, Biden signed an executive order to create a national database of officers who were fired for misconduct, to limit chokeholds and no-knock warrants, but the order would only be applied only to federal officials, not state or local officers.

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