The Biden campaign is stepping up efforts to win over Black voters as polls show former President Donald Trump gaining ground with them.

On Wednesday, two Black radio stations in battleground states aired interviews with Biden that were recorded a day earlier. 

Biden campaign officials and surrogates, including Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., also have been taking to the airwaves to talk up the president to Black voters.

The campaign has reportedly deployed Kamala Harris, the first Black vice president, in ways it did not four years. For example, she has made frequent appearances in Black media, campaigned in the Philadelphia suburbs with “Abbott Elementary” star Sheryl Lee Ralph and asked Black finance leaders for their ideas, CNN reported.

The campaign also announced Thursday a seven-figure ad buy targeting Black, Latino, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Island voters. 

Asked in interviews with WVEE in Atlanta and WGKB in Milwaukee what he’s done to help Black Americans, Biden touted that Black unemployment is down while wealth and homeownership is up. He cited student debt relief, investments in historically Black colleges and universities, reduced health care costs, and a crackdown on junk fees, among other initiatives. 

The president also lobbed attacks at Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in November’s election.

He said Trump will again try to cut the Affordable Care Act if elected. He noted that the former president wrongly accused the “Central Park Five” — Black teenagers convicted and later exonerated — of a 1989 rape in New York and that Trump led the “Birther” movement that cast doubt on Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president. 

Biden argued that Black unemployment increased under Trump, that his 2017 tax cuts “reinforced discrimination” and that the “botched” COVID-19 response left “Black people dead, Black-owned business shuttered.”

“A great deal’s at stake” in November's election, Biden told WGKB. “All the progress we’ve made is at stake.”

Polls show Trump and Biden locked in a tight race. While Biden still maintains a strong lead among Black voters, a large number of defections among them — as well as young and Hispanic voters — could be devastating to his reelection chances.

In 2020, Biden won 92% of the Black vote, compared to Trump’s 8%. But a New York Times/Siena College poll published Monday found Trump with 14% support from Black voters when minor-party and independent candidates were included, and 23% in a head-to-head matchup with Biden.

According to NBC News, Trump’s national polling average among Black voters since April 1 was 18% as of last week During the same period in 2020, he was polling at just 9%. Biden’s support was 76% four years ago, and 69% today.

No Republican presidential candidate has received more than 12% of the Black vote since 1964.

The New York Times reported that a sense shared by many young, Black and Hispanic voters that Biden would do little to improve the nation’s fortunes in a second term is hurting his support among those groups.

For years, Trump has pointed to criminal justice reform legislation he signed and low Black unemployment during his presidency for reasons why Black voters should support him.

But in recent months, he’s also claimed Black people like him because he has now faced discrimination in the legal system — his four criminal indictments — which they can related to. Some have called the comment racist.

“A lot of people said that that's why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” Trump said during the Black Conservative Foundation gala in February. “And they actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against. It's been pretty amazing.”

Biden and Trump both regularly claim they drove down black unemployment, and both have valid claims. Under Trump, the Black unemployment rate reached a then-record low 5.3% in August 2019 before it skyrocketed early in the pandemic.

Biden inherited a 9.3% Black unemployment rate from Trump, which hit a new record low of 4.8% in April 2023. Today, it sits at a still-low 5.6%.

Despite low unemployment overall and a strong stock market, many voters give Biden low marks for the economy in polls, a view likely driven by stubbornly high inflation. A Gallup poll earlier this month found that just 38% of surveyed adults have confidence Biden will do the right thing with the economy, among the lowest numbers Gallup has recorded since 2001.

In his WVEE interview, Biden complained “it’s hard to get legitimate information” out to voters about his record. 

“Notice there's very few people that watch the nightly news. Very few people,” he said. “They get their information from all different sources.”