Over the last month, Freddie Hicks, 23, has received dozens of Republican mailers addressed to him at his home in deep-blue DeKalb County, an Atlanta suburb.
The messaging was largely consistent, painting Vice President Kamala Harris as a “failed leader” with “dangerously liberal” views on crime and abortion, and former President Donald J. Trump as supporting a “common sense agenda” on abortion and immigration.
But it was the sheer quantity that alarmed Mr. Hicks’s father, Fred Hicks, 47, an Atlanta-area Democratic strategist. No one else in his family was being inundated like that, including him. And nothing similar was arriving from the Democrats or Ms. Harris.
Mr. Hicks’s son is one of Georgia’s most sought-after voters this election: a young Black man. Mailers are only one mode of campaigning and often not the most effective way to reach voters. But anecdotes of their uneven distribution have been enough to rattle some Democrats who see lagging Black male support as a warning sign for the vice president’s campaign in the key battleground.
“They are young, they’re volatile with respect to their opinions and their voting decisions and they don’t have inherently the same loyalty to the Democratic Party that say, you know, their parents do,” Fred Hicks said of young Black men like his son, whom he described nonetheless as a staunch Democratic voter. “This is concerning to me not just for the 2024 election, but the payoff, I think for Republicans could come well over the next 20 years.”
Black men are rivaled only by Black women in their high turnout and loyalty to Democrats. In recent surveys, the gap in support for the party between Black men and women is the narrowest of any race. Yet, more Black men under 50 have expressed in polling and conversations their openness to voting for Mr. Trump or staying home altogether — scenarios that could decide the election in hypercompetitive states, including Georgia.
Interviews with more than a dozen Black male voters, influencers and strategists show that some Black men’s diminishing support for Democrats — and Ms. Harris — at the margins reflects a broader frustration that the political party they have long supported is no longer working for them. It is creating an opening for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party to court their vote or depress it.
In focus groups and conversations with party leaders, Black men have stated repeatedly that their material conditions have remained unchanged under Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. Buying a home, opening a business and providing for their families have also gotten more difficult, concerns that track broadly with the reasons some young men say they are drawn to Mr. Trump because of the economy.
In late August, at Invest Fest in Atlanta, a convention for fans of the financial literacy podcast “Earn Your Leisure” that is popular with Black men, Kenneth Clark, 43, said he was a lifelong Democrat but leaning toward writing in a candidate for president this November. Mr. Trump’s first presidential term sowed disunity in the country, he said. But he struggled to identify any directly negative effect on his personal life.
“What did it exactly do to us? What did it do to our communities exactly?” said Mr. Clark, a cybersecurity manager and entrepreneur. “Did it empower us? Did it hurt us? We were in the same position as we were before.”
His business partner and friend Clinton McKinnis, 44, an Atlanta-area entrepreneur and cellphone company employee, shared those frustrations. Often, he said, he felt that election-year campaign promises rarely result in substantial policy changes.
“I just want to see follow-through. I feel used when it comes to elections,” said Mr. McKinnis, who said he still planned to vote for Ms. Harris and has encouraged Mr. Clark to do the same. He felt obligated to cast a ballot, he said, and sees Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as the best option as he provides for his family and looks to expand his business.
But he later noted his disappointment in both parties, which he felt “make these promises and when it’s all said and done and they’re in the White House, nothing comes of it. Honestly, as I get older, I’m really getting sick of it.”
A September poll from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution further highlighted the scope of the work Ms. Harris has to do to make up lost ground with Black voters in Georgia. According to the survey, 77 percent of the state’s likely Black voters support her candidacy — roughly eight points short of Mr. Biden’s performance in 2020.
During a panel interview with the National Association of Black Journalists last month, Ms. Harris said she did not expect any built-in support from Black men when she became the Democratic presidential nominee.
“Black men are like any other voting group, you’ve got to earn their vote,” she said. “So I’m working to earn the vote — not assuming I’m going to have it because I am Black, but because the policies and the perspectives I have understands what we must do to recognize the needs of all communities.”
Quentin Fulks, Ms. Harris’s principal deputy campaign manager and a Black Georgia native, said in a statement that Ms. Harris was “putting in the work to earn each and every vote.” He criticized Mr. Trump for “running a divisive campaign” that promotes policies that would be detrimental to Black communities and “takes for granted the voters that will decide this election.”
Her campaign has begun a tour of historically Black colleges and universities, timed with their homecoming season. She has played up endorsements from several high-profile Black male athletes and recorded an interview with the “All the Smoke” podcast hosted by the former professional basketball players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
Democrats have also leaned on Black men within the party to speak directly to Black male voters on the fence about Ms. Harris’s candidacy.
Still, Republicans have sought to exacerbate the lingering gaps in support for Ms. Harris with messaging focusing on broadly popular issues like the economy and immigration. But even as the G.O.P. has hosted some programs aiming to target Black voters, they have occurred sporadically.
In a statement, Janiyah Thomas, the Black media director for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said it was engaging Black men directly through “listening sessions and grass-roots events” and has been making the case to these voters that the former president’s economic plan would help them build generational wealth.
“We’ve been working tirelessly to meet Black men where they are, to ensure they feel heard and valued,” she said and added, “We’re not just campaigning; we’re building a movement that puts their voices at the forefront.”
Some of the campaign’s most recent outreach to Black voters came last month, in the form of a roundtable discussion with Black faith leaders in Detroit and a debate between Representative Byron Donalds of Florida and the Louisiana activist Gary Chambers Jr. in Atlanta. The Black Conservative Federation sponsored a bus tour last month that stopped in Baltimore to speak to Black voters, though it was sparsely attended.
There are signs that Ms. Harris could get a boost. In late September, the Justice, Equality and Economics PAC, an organization that says it represents 50,000 Black men across Georgia, endorsed Ms. Harris’s candidacy after supporting Gov. Brian Kemp’s re-election for governor in 2022.
The leader of the organization, Omar Ali, said the group decided to endorse Ms. Harris after securing commitments from her campaign to support minority-owned businesses. Mr. Trump’s campaign, he said, offered a photo opportunity.
His group plans to hold town hall meetings with Democratic Party surrogates and outreach events with unions and faith leaders over the next month, Mr. Ali said, with the goal of helping Ms. Harris get to 95 percent support from Black men in November.
“We finally have a Democratic candidate that’s actually listening and actually asking us what we want and actually understands that we’re more than just criminal reform,” Mr. Ali said of Ms. Harris. “And so it’s a very simple message.”
Still, it’s one that organizers will have to spread quickly, as the election enters its final weeks.
“I’m not a supporter of Trump. But at the same time I don’t know for sure what either parties’ plans are directly affecting us and our culture,” said Mr. Clark, the cybersecurity manager. Politicians, he said, “work on our emotions but they don’t really empower us. They want our vote.”