KKK Grand Wizard Outperforms Pete Buttigieg Among Black Voters

“He doesn’t move us. You can speculate as to why that is. I’m not going there,” TV personality Stephen A. Smith said on Real Time with Bill Maher.

Pete Buttigieg hasn’t announced a run for President in 2028, but few names surface more reliably in early Democratic speculation. A former Transportation Secretary, a past presidential contender, and a favorite of party donors and left-leaning media outlets, Buttigieg is widely viewed as someone who would be taken seriously the moment he entered the race.

If he does, however, Buttigieg will need to find a way to win over black voters—a task that will not be easy for any challenger after Republicans made historic gains with what has long been one of the Democrats’ most reliable constituencies in the 2024 election.

That’s going to be particularly difficult for Buttigieg to do given that he’s currently polling worse with voters than former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) Grand Wizard David Duke.

According to a recent Democratic Presidential primary poll conducted by Yale, Buttigieg is polling at just 4% among black voters. For context, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard—David Duke—polled at 14% among black voters during his failed 2016 U.S. Senate run in Louisiana. That’s three times higher than Buttigieg. 

“This is embarrassing,” wrote Johnathan Jones for the Western Journal. 

The Independent took it a step further by highlighting that only one Democrat, former Vice President Kamala Harris, scored meaningfully with black voters—47%—while others trailed the former KKK leader. California Governor Gavin Newsom polled at 12%, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 9%, Buttigieg at 4%, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz at 1%.

It’s fair to say that nearly all Democrat candidates are struggling in this regard, but it continues to be particularly difficult for Buttigieg. In June, Emerson College conducted its own 2028 primary poll in which Buttigieg was supported by 0% of respondents.

This isn’t even a new development for Buttigieg. During his failed 2020 run, similar polls showed him at similarly abysmal numbers among Black voters in early primary states like South Carolina. At the time, Buttigieg said attributed it to the notion that “people are just getting to know me,” and that “trust, in part, is a function of quantity time and we are racing against time.”

Well, now Buttigieg will have had plenty of time—more than eight years by the time the next general election comes around—to court black voters. And, evidently, they’re still not moved.

“He’s got one big, glaring soft spot … which is his relationship with the black community,” a veteran Democratic strategist told The Hill. “He didn’t have a lot of African American fans from his time as mayor, he didn’t have a lot of black support when he ran for president, and I haven’t seen evidence that he’s done much to fix that over the last few years.”

“He doesn’t move us,” TV personality Stephen A. Smith said on Real Time with Bill Maher. “You can speculate as to why that is. I’m not going there.”

This can be interpreted as a reference to widespread homophobia that still exists within black communities today. While black Americans are about as likely as other ethnic groups to identify as gay or trans, black Americans in general tend to be less supportive of LGBTQ+ groups and individuals. Only 13% of non-Hispanic black adults say U.S. society is “extremely or very accepting” of transgender people—a much lower share than for other social issues. Similarly, in 2015—the same year the Supreme Court decided to uphold the constitutionality of same-sex marriages in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges—only 39% of black respondents claimed to support gay marriage. The national average was around 70%.

Similarly, hip hop, which Wikipedia calls a uniquely African-American subculture, is also described by the same source as “one of the least LGBTQ-friendly genres of music,” with a “significant body of the genre containing homophobic views and anti-gay lyrics.”

As uncomfortable as it is to admit it, as a gay man, this remains one of the biggest hurdles standing in Buttigieg’s way. He has long hoped to overcome that hurdle by appealing to black voters through actions like his Douglass Plan—named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass—a policy proposal aimed at addressing black community needs.

“I believe an agenda for black Americans needs to include five things that all of us care about: homeownership, entrepreneurship, education, health and justice," then-candidate Buttigieg said before the Al Sharpton-led National Action Network's conference.

Buttigieg has gone on numerous platforms with majority-black audiences such as Ebony magazine and radio show The Breakfast Club to convince black voters that he is the right candidate for the job.  

“I’m not sure a lot of Democrats think [Buttigieg] the person who can do that,” said Princeton University Julian Zelizer. “There’s a perception he kind of is more out of the Obama-era Democrat, highly educated, kind of down to that world. That’s… baggage he’s going to have to deal with.”

That a figure with such controversial and overtly hateful views could eclipse a mainstream Democratic contender among black voters remains nothing short of shocking.

Despite these polling embarrassments, Buttigieg is “quietly making the rounds on an early 2028 tour after having announced he would sit out races for governor and senator in 2026,” according to The Hill. Whether he can overcome the challenge that his polling numbers reveal remains an open question.