Michael Bland has a message for political campaigns: Young Black men aren’t politically checked out. They’re just being ignored.

“Black men are not politically absent, they are politically misread,” said Bland, executive director of Black Men Vote, a nonpartisan organization focused on mobilizing Black male voters.

That assessment comes from new polling his organization commissioned, which is one of the largest dedicated surveys of Black men in recent years. The findings paint a portrait of an electorate that values voting and the political process but remains unconvinced that either major party is speaking to them.

The survey of over 1,600 registered Black men voters ages 18 to 45 across six battleground states found that while 92% say voting is important, a little more than 1 in 4 said they are uncertain or unlikely to vote in the 2026 midterms. That is a gap, Bland said, that could prove decisive in close races across Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina.

He noted that despite recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that threaten voting rights for Black Southerners and ongoing economic concerns due to inflation and the war in Iran, the data proves that “the message is not hitting home externally.”

The poll was conducted by HIT Strategies, a millennial and minority-owned public opinion research firm, between Feb. 17 and 24. The poll utilized text-to-web surveys and online panels. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.49 percentage points.

The results reveal an electorate that doesn’t fit neatly into the political boxes campaigns typically deploy. 

While a majority identified as Democrats, 1 in 5 identified as independents and another 1 in 5 as Republicans. Among those with conservative leanings, “family values conservative” was the most common identity.

Bland, who served as southern regional director on Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, said the research underscores a fundamental misunderstanding about how to reach Black men.  

“Late invitations are for fools,” he said, referencing the Harris campaign’s rollout of its “Platinum Plan” focused on Black men just weeks before the 2024 election. “Voting had already started and voter participation was already down. We could sniff out a fake or a phony in a minute.”

The survey identified six distinct voter segments amongst younger Black men.

• Roughly 1 in 3 respondents were “Base Dems” who closely follow news and plan to vote.
• “Trump Voters” made up about 20% of respondents.
• A little over 16% of respondents were “Young Supporters” who were young voters in the 2024 presidential election in favor of Harris.
• About 15% were “Disengaged and Demobilized” voters who represent what Bland called the “Team Couch coalition” — those who didn’t vote in 2024 and are unlikely to in 2026. 
• Nearly 10% were “Sympathetic but Uncertain” voters who backed Harris in 2024 but may sit out the midterms.
• “Distrustful Voters” who disliked both major candidates but still plan to participate came in at about 12%. 

Additionally the polling found major differences in ideologies of voters versus their party affiliation. 

What surprised Bland most was where young Black men get their political information. YouTube dominates, with 90% using the platform multiple times weekly and 57% identifying it as their go-to source for breaking political news. 

Half of young Black men actively seek out news about current events and politics, while 44% say they mostly come across news through their social media feeds. When scrolling, they’re most likely to stop and engage with music, humor, memes, and news content — meaning civic information competes directly with entertainment and culture.

The findings also revealed something else: Young Black men show up as “family guys,” Bland said. “They want to ensure that they can show up for their families, that they can show up for community.”

That reality clashes with how campaigns typically message to Black men, Bland said. “The problem that we’re seeing is nobody is speaking to the Black male,” he said. “They’re not getting the text message, they’re not getting the mail, they’re not getting the advertising on TV. It’s usually more catering to a suburban narrative.”

When campaigns do target Black men, Bland said, “often you hear about incarceration rates and recidivism.” But the issues Black men care about aren’t fundamentally different from other Americans, he argued — the economy, family stability, and the cost of higher education and daycare.

“Black men are worried about the economy, we’re worried about our family, worried about putting food on our table, can we pay for higher education, the extreme cost of daycare,” Bland said. “That day-to-day is not just a Black problem or caring problem, it’s an American problem.”

Austin Joiner, a 27-year-old insurance firm supervisor in Georgia echoed these sentiments. He lives in Macon and said the high cost of rent in Atlanta has kept him from moving into the city even though he wants to. 

“The price of rent has steeply increased,” he told Capital B Atlanta. “Finding something that is within my price range has slightly impacted me.”

Bland drew a parallel between the lack of investment in Black men voters and the Democratic Party’s long divestment from the South. “There was a time where Louisiana was blue. There was a time Tennessee was blue,” he said. “[Democrats] stopped investing in them. And we don’t want that same issue with Black men and them not coming back to voting.”

The poll identified Black men who supported Democrats in 2024 but aren’t certain to vote in 2026, alongside politically alienated voters who remain likely to participate but are skeptical of both major parties.

For Bland, the takeaway is clear: Black men require year-round engagement, not last-minute appeals. He said that would look like an approach that expands the concerns addressed for Black men before asking them to vote, maintaining constant and authentic communication through platforms like YouTube and social media, and “getting them in shape to go vote” by demonstrating how democracy works for them.

“We have to constantly communicate,” he said. “We can’t just treat it as a group that should come home or may come home to one base or the other.”

The survey was conducted before the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Voting Rights Act, which Bland said would be explored in a second phase of research.