Former President Donald Trump is on track to win more Black votes than any other Republican presidential candidate in history.
A review of polls by Bloomberg found that Trump is poised to get between 14% and 30% of the black vote.
Trump won only eight percent of the black vote in 2020, according to data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. This small number was still larger than any other Republican candidate before him.
Newsweek reports:
The NAACP estimated that 5 million African Americans voted in the 1960 presidential election when Richard Nixon won 32 percent of the black vote, according to Politico. Since then, the black population has risen from about 10.83 percent, or 19,418,190 people, according to an analysis of census data, to 13.6 percent of the total population, or 46,936,733 people.
Black voter turnout in presidential elections rose slightly from 58.5% of the eligible population in 1964, the first election for which such numbers are available, to 58.7% in 2020, according to Statista. This means that if Trump wins more than 13% of the vote share, he will receive the highest percentage of the black vote since Nixon in 1960 and more individual black votes.
In 2020, 92% of black voters went for Joe Biden.
“The black vote helped him win swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Biden received 88% of the black vote in Georgia in 2020, for example, but overall he only won the state by 11,779 votes, or 0.24%. “Newsweek reports.
Support for Biden is steadily waning for the incumbent Democrat.
“In fact, his popularity among black voters in seven swing states fell by 7 percentage points from October to December 2023, to 61 percent, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll,” the Newsweek report said. Trump's popularity during the same period remained stable at about 25 percent.
“Black males in particular cite the prices of basic needs, such as food, despite low inflation,” Mary Frances Perry, a historian at Pennsylvania State University, told the magazine. “Some small business owners say that under Trump, it was easier for them to get federal loans, for example. They also cite the backlash against police accountability measures as discussion of the killing of George Floyd receded into the sunset.
Perry predicted that many people who voted in 2020 will stay home.
“Middle-aged and older black women seem to have a better stance than Trump's less evil stance. But no one I know is excited about Biden's re-election. They love Kamala Harris, but many people will likely stay home unless there is some unexpected positive change in economic prospects or civil rights.
The Trump campaign noticed this trend and planned to actively court black Americans.
“This will be our strongest effort yet with the African-American community,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told Bloomberg News.
