(DCNF)—CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten expressed surprise Monday at the degree to which “young black men” are abandoning the Democratic Party

Former President Barack Obama on Thursday urged black men to support Vice President Kamala Harris while speaking at a Pittsburgh-area campaign office, asserting he believes a reason for their reluctance to back her is that they “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” Enten, on “CNN News Central,” said Obama was likely mistaken in his criticism as “young black men” have increasingly been leaving the Democratic Party over multiple elections against former President Donald Trump.

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“I look at the polls all the time and sometimes there’s a trend line, now, I never noticed before and make me go, ‘Woah.’ This is one of them. Alright, this is the Democratic margin among black men under the age of 45 in presidential elections. You go back to November of 2012, what do you see? You see Obama by 81, [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton only won ’em by 63,” Enten said. “Then we’re all the way down to [President Joe] Biden last time around by 53. A tremendous drop already. And then you take a look at the average of the most recent polls and Kamala Harris is up by only 41 points.”

“That is about half the margin that Obama won them by back in November of 2012. And this I think is, you know, when Barack Obama goes and last week when he was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to essentially talking to young black men, he made it seem like it was a Kamala Harris-specific problem,” he added. “Uh-uh. This is part of a longstanding trend of young black men moving away from the Democratic Party. And Kamala Harris is just the latest to face that magnitude of black, younger black men going towards Republicans.”

Black voters have shifted away from Democrats from 2016 to 2024, according to a Saturday New York Times/Siena College poll. During the 2016 election, only 7% of black voters favored Republicans, a number now at 15%.

While Trump is gaining traction with “working class voters,” including nonwhite Americans without college degrees and union members, Enten previously noted that Harris could offset his gains with her “ridiculously” strong support among college graduates, particularly “white college grads.”

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