Transcript of Barack Obama urges black men to mobilise behind Kamala Harris | BBC News

President Obama addressing some voters overnight, really.

We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running. I've got a problem with that because part of it makes me think, and I'm speaking to men directly, part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.

President Obama there. Obviously, he has still remained hugely popular, and we share he's being used now by the Democrats. What did you make of his address yesterday?

As somebody who used to work for President Obama and was on both campaigns, I thought that he was speaking to a demographic that is largely only visible online when it comes to the attacks that we've seen largely logged by the right against Black male voters. What we know and what the numbers bear out is that Black women vote in lockstep for the Democratic Party at your 98 percentile, black men at 95 percentile. The real issue here is the white vote. White misogyny, we know leads that leads for Republicans, and they found a misogyne as in chief in Donald J. Trump. We know that white women have consistently broke for the Republicans. They did it in 2016. They've done it in midterms. They've done it in several elections since that. I think that the real question here and the real pushback should be, why are white voters, particularly white Christian voters, deciding that it is okay to continue to support, continue to vote for someone who is twice impeached, someone who has been found liable for rape, someone who has over 25 credible allegations of sexual assault, someone who instigated the January sixth insurrection. Why is that okay for them?

In America, the shift that we've seen largely in demographic shifts towards the Republicans has actually come from Latinos, not Black men.

But nevertheless, it was interesting that President Obama did address the men in the way that he did. It has caused a bit of a debate, hasn't it, about raising the question of potential misogyny. Do you think he was politically wise to do that?

I think they're talking about misogyny in an election where a woman is running, in particular a woman of color, where we've seen misogynistic comments used against Kamala Harris, be it about her dating history, be it about questions about people who she has engaged with early on in her career, be it about a tax on her being a woman. We've seen those things happen, largely, again, driven by the right. Do I think that it's an important conversation to have? Absolutely. Much of this is the same conversation we were having with the last woman who was a Democratic nominee in Hillary Clinton. Here we are again, how many years later, having the same conversation? Misogyny is not only something that is affecting the United States, it's affecting women leaders across the globe. But I do think that the iron needs to be placed where it belongs on the singular voting block that consistently votes alongside misogyny that upholds white supremacy. That is Conservatives, that is white men and the white women who actually help that vote to sell because they continue to break for the MAGA Party and for Donald Trump.

Sophie Starr, if I could just bring you in. Of course, another issue that obviously has affected some of the vote here in the UK, and we've seen, of course, campus protests in the US as well, is the issue of what's going on in the Middle East. To what degree do you think those global political events are here to stay as a political influence in how people vote?

We certainly see them being important to voters across the board, but I think specifically in this case, we know that the issue of Labour's response to the conflict in Gaza was particularly important to British Muslim voters. I think what's interesting is that when we look at that demographic of British Muslims, they tend to quite economically left wing, even if they are quite socially conservative in other ways in our survey. We might expect that if that issue isn't as important at the next election, they may be more likely to move back towards the Labor Party, or if it is still important, we may still see a shift towards other independent candidates, or maybe the Greens. I think what we find in our survey, which is quite interesting, is that amongst the white population in the UK, we tend to see that these social issues, as we will call them, so things that aren't on those lines of tax and welfare and those are kinds of economic questions, they tend to be very important to the way white voters vote. But we see that non-white voters are much more motivated by their economic preferences. And so I think it really depends on ultimately if an issue like Garza and how important that's been in this election, set the tone for future elections, and we see that tilt towards social issues being more important.

Okay, Sophie Starr, Amisha Cross, thank you both very much for being with us tonight. Sorry, out of time. It's such an interesting topic. We'll come back to it, I'm sure. Thank you both. Thank you. This is BBC News around the world and across the UK.