Former President Donald Trump is on track to win more black votes than any other Republican presidential candidate in history.
A review of polls conducted by Bloomberg found that Trump is poised to take 14 percent to 30 percent of the black vote.
Trump only won eight percent of the black vote in 2020, according to data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. This small number was still more 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 increased from around 10.83 percent or 19,418,190 people, according to an analysis of census data, to 13.6 percent of the overall population or 46,936,733 people.
The Black voting turnout has slightly increased in presidential elections from 58.5 percent of the eligible voting population in 1964, the earliest election for which such figures are available, to 58.7 percent in 2020, according to Statista. This means if Trump wins more than 13 percent of the vote share, he will gain the highest proportion of the Black vote since Nixon in 1960 and more individual Black votes.
In 2020, 92 percent of black voters went with Joe Biden.
“The Black vote helped him win in swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, with Biden securing 88 percent of the Black vote in Georgia in 2020, for instance, but overall only winning the state by 11,779 votes, or 0.24 percent,” Newsweek reports.
Supporting for Biden has been steadily dwindling for the Democrat incumbent.
The Newsweek report states, “Indeed, his favorability among Black voters in seven swing states slipped 7 percentage points from October to December 2023, to 61 percent, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll. Trump’s favorability in the same period has remained steady at around 25 percent.”
“Black males especially cite prices of basic needs, food for example despite the decline in inflation,” Mary Frances Berry, historian at The Pennsylvania State University, told the magazine. “Some who are small business owners say under Trump it was easier for them to get federal loans, for example. They also cite the backlash against police accountability measures as the George Floyd murder discussion has receded into the sunset.”
Berry predicted that many of the people who voted in 2020 will stay home.
“Middle age and older Black women seem to take a better than Trump lesser of two evils posture. But nobody I know is excited about reelecting Biden. They like Kamala Harris, but lots of folks will probably stay home unless some unexpected positive change in economic prospects or civil rights occurs.”
Trump’s campaign has noticed the trend and plans 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.