Biden’s apology for boarding schools may boost Native American vote for Arizona Democrats

On October 25, 2024, President Biden chose Arizona as the backdrop for his apology on behalf of the American government to Tribal communities for the forced participation of Native American children in boarding schools across the country. Among the key battleground states, Arizona has one of the largest populations of Native Americans. Biden won the state of Arizona by just under 10,500 votes in 2020—a fact that further underscores the decisive role Native Americans may play in the 2024 presidential election. 

We draw from the Pre-election Survey of Native American Likely Voters in Arizona, a statewide representative survey of 400 Native American likely voters in Arizona commissioned by Northern Arizona University’s Hispanic and Emerging Communities (HEC) Lab in partnership with Citizens for a New Arizona. The survey was fielded from October 19 to October 24, 2024, just before President Biden’s apology.

The survey projects Vice President Kamala Harris winning the Native American vote in Arizona by a 35% margin over former President Trump–64% to 29%. Harris slightly trails in Native American support for Democratic congressional candidates in Arizona, with 66% of respondents indicating that they have voted for or plan to vote for a Democratic candidate compared to 27% for a Republican candidate. 

This is a very promising number for Democrats in the Grand Canyon State. Fifty-six percent of Native Americans nationally supported Democrats in 2022, so the 64% figure is a strong baseline for Harris. Of course, this was before Biden’s apology speech, which we would anticipate having some impact on Native Americans’ views toward the Democratic Party and its candidates. In fact, the survey found that nine in 10 Native American likely voters in Arizona support “recognizing the terrible history of Indian Boarding Schools and issuing a public apology by the Federal Government to Native Americans.”  

The survey provides a direct measure of how the apology may influence voting behavior, with respondents asked if their behavior would be influenced “if the Biden-Harris administration traveled to Indian Country in Arizona to acknowledge the terrible history of Indian Boarding Schools, and to finally issue a public apology by the Federal Government to all American Indians for the boarding schools.” 

As reflected by the figure below, over a third (35%) of respondents said that if this were to happen, they would be much more favorable to the Biden-Harris administration, with 59% expressing greater favorability overall. It seems safe to assume that Harris would benefit from at least a modest bump in support from the president’s apology for the government’s 150-year Indian boarding school policy, with the potential for a boost in voter turnout as well.  

To be clear, Native American voters in Arizona are most concerned about economic issues, an issue that resonates with a large cross-section of voters, from Latino voters to youth voters. The top three priorities identified by respondents in the survey were cost of living/inflation (46%), jobs and the economy (34%), and housing costs and affordability (28%), outpacing other policy issues that Congress and the president should also address. However, although economic issues are the top overall priorities for Native American respondents in the survey, when asked about the most important Native American or Tribal issues, the preservation of culture and language was noted by 25% of respondents. Given that the forced participation in boarding schools was a direct attempt to strip Native American youth of their culture and language, presidential action on this issue would have a lasting impact with Native American voters.

While an apology from President Biden just two weeks before the presidential election can be viewed with appropriate skepticism from Native American voters, it is a step in the right direction not taken by any prior president, all of whom had equal opportunity to do so. While President Biden held his event on the high school campus of the Gila River Indian Community, Harris’ vice presidential pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was traveling to the capital of the Navajo Nation reservation, Window Rock, just two and half hours away, where the Diné people’s former president Jonathan Nez is challenging a Republican in a congressional district that was thought to be safe but has changed in its assessment recently.

If Nez is able to secure victory, or make it closer than his predecessor, it could help Democrats with Native American voters down the line, as 36% of respondents noted in the survey that having Jonathan Nez on the ballot has led to more favorable views toward the Democratic Party. If the Native American community unites to support Harris, and if Nez can demonstrate to D.C. that he is adept at organizing his community, we will have reached a new era in Arizona politics.