March 3, 2024 - 7:53pm
Donald Trump’s support among black voters has grown by nearly 500% in the last four years, a new poll has found.
According to a New York Times/Siena poll released this weekend, the former president’s support among black voters is now 23%, marking a 19 percentage point increase since the same poll taken in October 2020.
The turnaround in opinion among one of the Democrats’ most reliable voting blocs is a worrying sign for Joe Biden’s re-election prospects. He secured 92% of the black vote in the 2020 election, the highest out of any minority group in the country. But growing disillusionment with the President’s first term and concerns about his age threaten to undermine the Democrat’s hitherto strong relationship with black voters.
Biden largely held onto the black vote in the 2022 midterm elections, but young black voters moved a notable 22 percentage points towards Republicans. Inflation — a top issue for black voters that year — has since fallen, but food, gas and rent prices remain stubbornly high, which may encourage some to stay at home in November.
Since the midterms, there has been little indication that those voters are coming back. In fact, more appear to be drifting in the opposite direction. In a separate poll last month, Gallup found that among black Americans expressing a party preference, the Democratic lead over Republicans has dropped by almost 20% in only three years.
This in spite of the efforts made by Biden to elevate black Americans to positions of power, including nominating Kentanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. He also pushed to hold the first Democratic primary in South Carolina, which has a large black population, where he comfortably won the party’s nomination this weekend. “In 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again,” said Biden in a statement. “I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the Presidency again — and making Donald Trump a loser — again.”
While the NYT poll in October 2020 found only 4% support for Trump, he went on to secure double that figure in the November election. Based on the most recent poll, it seems likely that he will build on those gains, with support growing among other minority groups too. Trump is also winning Latino voters outright over Biden by 46% to 40%, marking a 39 percentage point swing in the last four years (Biden won the Latino vote 65%-32% in 2020).
Though black Americans are by no means abandoning the current president, these polls are further confirmation that the voter bloc is not as reliable for the Democrats as it once was. Between the 2016 and 2020 elections, Donald Trump won a higher share of black and Latino voters compared to his predecessor by roughly three percentage points and two percentage points respective, helping him in battleground states such as Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.
The Republican is now leading in all seven swing states, and the election in November will be a test to see if he can hold onto these gains as the contest draws closer.
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SubscribeSince many American black people are working class the acceptance by urban Democratic elites of illegal Mexican immigration has driven down their wages. Trump is popular since he is defending both black and white working class people. The bourgeois Democrats have been undermining working class people for decades. They are also the ones undermining confidence in democracy by calling anyone who opposes their agenda “far right”.
That’s it exactly. I’m sure upper middle class black voters are still strongly Dem. It’s the working class of all creeds and colours shifting away from the Dems. Student loan debt forgiveness would piss off these voters as well.
Slight correction, Mexicans settled in a long time ago and few cross the border these days. What you have now is a flood of illegals coming in from all around the world. They are putting such a strain on things that Biden’s popularity among blacks and Hispanics is in real trouble. While there are a lot of Mexicans who have settled into the United States you have to remember this was at a steady rate over a long period of time. The sheer amount coming into the country right now is overwhelming the social services poorer minorities count on. Now they feel abandoned and are angry.
By ‘Mexican’ he likely meant through the border with Mexico.
One could write a book, maybe several books, about everything the bourgeois Democratic elites and the globalist establishment are doing wrong. I would write one myself if I thought that the successful selling and distribution of books had much at all to do with the quality of the writing or the underlying ideas. In fact these books will probably be written by some historian or political science professor a couple of decades from now after the fall of globalism is well and truly complete and we’ve all moved on to whatever comes after. The Democrats need to pick a lane. Either be the establishment party of big business, Wall Street, and globalism or be the party of the poor, the working class, and the oppressed, including minorities. The longer they try to sustain this impossible contradiction, trying to win elections by dominating the richest and poorest areas, the more they’ll succeed in pushing anyone dissatisfied and angry into the other camp. Actually, since they’re already barely getting by using an unsustainable long term strategy, maybe ‘pick a hill to die on’ makes more sense than ‘pick a lane’.
“I would write one myself if I thought that the successful selling and distribution of books had much at all to do with the quality of the writing or the underlying ideas.”
Maybe you could have added: “… and if I could find a none-Woke publisher courageous enough to publish heterodox ideas.”
I could add that and a whole lot more besides but I didn’t want to write a book on what’s wrong with publishing books.
100%. And more specifically, it is because woke is actually radical/ultra liberalism. Social liberalism for sure….but they share the same anthropological view of people as the Neo-cons…..Koch foundation embrace LQBTQ because they don’t care if the kids are transed as long as the borders open and wages come down. Progressive dems and Neo-libs are on the same side – always have been. And the old style social democrats (Bernie MK 1) have been totally side-lined. They swamped civic nationalism and class politics for woke cosmopolitan internationalism and identity politics. Bernie MK2 was only allowed once he had thrown the white working class to the wolves.
I used to live close to East St. Louis, Illinois. It was a dump in 1998 when I moved to the area and when I moved away in 2020 nothing had changed. All that Democrat support and their community gained nothing from it. It’s because they were taken for granted as voters. As long as Earned Income Tax Credits and SNAP benefits got paid, ESL residents didn’t care. Now they’ve seen themselves thrown over by the Biden Administration in favor of what they now call “newcomers” which translates to “new beholden voters.” Black communities got played.
Identity politics comprises the backbone of Democratic Party strategy. It is backfiring because it is fundamentally racist in its assumption that people of color all think the same way, the way that Democratic elites think. Democrats believe that African-Americans vote for Democrats because that is what African-Americans are born to do. It is suffrage-slavery where the masters arrogantly assume that they own the votes of people of certain races.
Democratic elites have never countenanced the notion that some black people might actually come to a political choice via thoughtful self-determination and that it is entirely natural and good that their conclusions should manifest in a spectrum from liberal to conservative. Democrats reserve special opprobrium for people of color (especially African-Americans) who dare to think for themselves. It is intellectually insulting and paternalistic: “You folks needn’t bother thinking for yourselves, we Democrats will do your thinking for you; it’s what we’ve come to expect. We know you won’t mind sharing your crime-ridden neighborhoods with massive numbers of immigrants who saturate the job market, consume tax resources, drive up the cost of affordable housing. We know you’ll be loyal voters despite the inflation we caused. We know you’ll be ecstatic about our defund-the-police virtue signaling. We know that you don’t really care if your children’s schools teach them DEI instead of reading and math.”
In the end, politics is always about class. Try as you might to divide and rule by making it about race or gender or religion, sooner or later it will always come back to class. Eventually black people in the inner cities realise that they have more in common with economically deprived whites and hispanics than they do with the wealthy blacks trying to keep them on the democratic plantation by whipping up racial division.
I’ll believe that when I see it. It’s more likely they continued to be brainwashed into thinking every white person is a secret KKK member and are therefore their enemy. The Dems have been at this for decades, just look at polls about what black people think about white people in this country. Scary times
Hugh’s point is that fewer and fewer blacks are believing the brainwashing as it has gotten more absurd by the day. Many identify with Trump since he is very clearly being treated unfairly by the judicial system in several states.
I agree with your last sentence. All of the “lawfare” and perceived persecution directed towards Trump by the Democrats has enhanced his “street cred” in the Black community, especially amongst young Black men. They identify with the perception that, like them, “The Man” is out to get Trump. Check out all the Black rappers who have endorsed him.
For years poll after poll has found Black Americans oppose both legal and illegal immigration. More than any other racial or ethnic group. Likely, that’s because they are economically vulnerable in the labor market when competing down market.
Also, Black Americans, especially younger age groups, support parental school choice more than almost any other group, something teachers’ unions vehemently oppose. The Democratic party has stood arm in arm with teachers’ unions. The cities with the largest charter schools are Detroit, Cleveland and D.C. Many, many public schools are poor; the worse are in Democrat controlled cities such as NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago. Failing public schools graduating students unable to read at the 8th grade level and compelling them to compete in the job market against illegals (many of whom work off the books) is cruel and insane.
So now playing the race card is gathering diminishing returns for Biden and the dems in general. Seems justly deserved. Former Senator Joseph Lieberman (Democratic vice president nominee in 2000) predicted that eventually the dems would pay a price for their cynical betrayal of Black Americans. Too bad it took a 1/4 of a century.
Absense wholesale cheating (again) the presidential election looks like an almost certainty for Donald Trump (if he can handle the lawfare being waged against him).
There will definitely be wholesale cheating. Merrick promised the DoJ would do everything in its power to facilitate cheating. The question is if the margin of victory in swing states is too large to plausibly overcome it by cheating. I also suspect the RNC will organize its own ballot harvesting operation complete with fake ballots in the name of sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
If you’re Black and you live in New York City and see the migration mess and the crime problems who are you going to vote for if you want change? The President, the NY Governor, the NY Legislature, the NYC Mayor, the NYC Council are all Democrat or Democrat controlled.
Who wants to bet against there being another convenient black swan event like the blm riots in 2020, to create ideological division in favor of the neocondems in the runup to the 2024 elections ? anyone ?
The main black swan was the virus, plus the masks, the distancing, and the consequent encouragement (insistence) on remote voting, remote both in place and time, therefore unlikely to be secret voting (one of the pillars of democracy).
It is my understanding that black swan events are unplanned and surprising. The BLM riots and Covid were all planned and paid for. Trump’s election was the black swan event.
The ‘black swan’ event in 2020 was (unfortunately) Trump’s own bungling. He waffled on COVID, failed to seize the narrative on BLM, and generally was too reactive and not proactive enough in setting the terms of national discourse. He had the bully pulpit and instead Tweeted it. If he had been kicked off Twitter a year earlier, he would’ve won the 2020 election.
“This in spite of the efforts made by Biden to elevate black Americans to positions of power, including nominating Kentanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.”
Thomas Sowell (as usual) has de-bunked the theory that political power produces economic benefit. “It will all be good once our people are in charge” is a fallacy. Some of the worst outcomes for Black Americans are found in states and cities that have Black governors, mayors, police chiefs etc. Sowell’s argument is that economic influence begets political advantage for the simple reasons that people with “skin in the game” are more likely to vote and politicians listen to money. Decades of liberal elite policies that promote economic dependency instead of advancement have not worked very well.
To add fuel to the fire, the failure to mitigate the migrant problem has hurt those on the lower rungs if the economic ladder most of all. Whether or not Trump has a viable solution doesn’t seem to matter. Just acknowledging the problem has been enough to boost support from the Black and Latino communities.
On a plane ride a few days ago, I sat next to a black guy and talked with him for most of the flight. He’s voted democrat his whole life and was actually flying somewhere to help in recalling a republican politician he didn’t like. However, he voted for Trump twice and will a 3rd time. He explained it’s because he’s worried about his kids with all the gender nonsense that the current president supports.
Glad to see there’s going to be electoral consequence for these idiots.
All politics is local. This guy apparently doesn’t understand this. He votes Dem for city and state legislatures, and doesn’t understand that most of the policy that affects his ‘kids’, arises from local law, not federal.
At one time, I realized that modern fascism and communism were completely identical totalitarian socialist movements.
Ideologically, their difference was nationalism for the Nazis, internationalism for the Communists.
But at the tactical level there was another significant difference. The communists considered it necessary to destroy the old elite, while the fascists, in general, merged with it.
Today the situation is no better. Communists merge with the elite to build a totalitarian society. I’m not sure that the healthy part of society will have the strength to resist them.
Ever since the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, freed the slaves (and God bless the Republicans for this good deed), the blacks he freed have never forgiven the Republican party for what they did. They are tied to their former Democrat master with bonds of iron. You can free the slave with a declaration, but how long does it take to free the slave in his own mind?
Using sham indictments to persecute an innocent citizen is not a foreign concept to America blacks. The DNC is showing their stripes which isn’t lost on black men who are following these ridiculous Trump cases.