One of the most discussed storylines of the early 2024 campaign season is the historic shift of black voters toward former President Donald Trump.
The idea that Trump is picking up more support from the black community, and black men in particular, has been mentioned in multiple polls and in television programs ranging from Real Time with Bill Maher to Saturday Night Live to MSNBC’s Morning Joe. But it was Trump himself who may have gotten the ball rolling with his February appearance at the Black Conservative Federation.
“If you want strong borders, safe neighborhoods, rising wages, good jobs, great education, and the return of the American dream,” Trump told the crowd in Columbia, South Carolina, “then congratulations, you are a Republican.”
In attendance were leading black Republicans such as former Trump Cabinet member Ben Carson, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who has been floated as a vice presidential candidate.
A range of surveys this spring have fueled the narrative, with many finding that Trump’s support from black voters could be as much as double what it was in 2020.
Of course, even doubling support would still mean an overwhelming win for President Joe Biden within the voting bloc.
Black voters have supported Democrats at margins approaching or even exceeding 90% since the Civil Rights Movement. Trump won 6% of the black vote in 2016 and 8% in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center, with no Republican drawing above 12% in more than 50 years.
That’s why polls showing Trump getting black support in the teens or even low 20s are creating so much fanfare. What’s more, in closely contested states such as Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, picking up even a few percentage points of additional black backing could swing the entire election.
Many voices on the Left are taking notice and generally focusing not on Trump’s appeal but on Biden’s lack thereof.
On Saturday Night Live’s March 30 Weekend Update segment, host Michael Che quipped that Biden would visit the site of the Baltimore bridge collapse “because, like that bridge, Biden is no longer connecting with black communities.”
Bill Maher dedicated an entire segment of his HBO show to the idea that Democrats are too focused on identity politics and not enough on winning policies.
“The more you obsess over identity, the more you ignore the bread-and-butter issues that win and lose elections,” he said. “The real issue is class, not race, and the real gap is the diploma divide, and the real future of the party, and maybe democracy, depends on Democrats figuring that out.”
On MSNBC, the Rev. Al Sharpton blasted Biden for attending a high-dollar New York City fundraiser with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton while skipping the city’s working-class areas.
“If I was going to do anything in the city, a big beautiful ritzy night with the two ex-presidents, I would have had Biden that morning have breakfast in Harlem or Brooklyn,” he said on April 1. “Something to connect people because the average person in New York that’s dealing with being afraid of the subway or dealing with a policeman being killed didn’t relate to a ritzy thing. Balance it out.”
Trump attended the Long Island funeral of fallen New York City police officer Jonathan Diller the same day as Biden’s Manhattan fundraiser.
Trump’s message at the gathering of black Republicans was issue-focused — centering on reducing crime and strengthening the economy. Gina Barr, a political operative and former director of women and urban engagement for the Republican National Committee, told the Washington Examiner’s Mabinty Quarshie that inflation remains a big problem.
“What we’re seeing now is that people are realizing that their money doesn’t go as far as what it did,” Barr said. “And so when they’re seeing that, that now that their money isn’t as good as what it was, they think, ‘Oh, man, like yeah, I might not have liked Trump, but at least my money was good.'”
But Trump also stepped into controversy by saying he thought black voters could relate to him because they’ve both been discriminated against, noting that the black community “embraced” his Atlanta mug shot “more than anybody else.”
That drew a rebuke from Democratic National Committee press secretary Sarafina Chitika.
“This might come as news to Trump, but pushing tired tropes, wannabe Jordans, and mug shot T-shirts isn’t going to win over black voters,” she said, pointing to high black unemployment rates during the early days of the pandemic. “Trump is showing black voters exactly what he thinks of them — and his ideas to win them over are as corny and racist as he is.”
The Biden campaign employs a director of black media, Jasmine Harris, who released a similar statement.
“The audacity of Donald Trump to speak to a room full of black voters during Black History Month as if he isn’t the proud poster boy for modern racism,” Harris said. “This is the same man who falsely accused the Central Park Five, questioned George Floyd’s humanity, compared his own impeachment trial to being lynched, and ensured the unemployment gap for black workers spiked during his presidency.”
Wilfred Reilly, a political science professor at the historically black Kentucky State University, said “I’m very skeptical” of a quick uptick in black support for Trump and that statements such as those above are one of the reasons why.
“If there is a coordinated [effort for the GOP to gain black votes], there’s going to be plenty of ammunition that people in the mainstream of the Democratic Party can throw back at that,” he said. Reilly predicted minority support for Republicans will trend upward but over a period of decades rather than months.
Democratic strategist Brad Bannon acknowledged that Trump could wind up picking up a bit more support from the black community this cycle but pointed out that the election won’t happen in a vacuum.
“It’s sort of like whack-a-mole,” Bannon said. “He may do a little better among black voters than in 2020. But the question is, will he do as well with unmarried female voters as he did in 2020?”
Bannon pointed out that unmarried women voted for Trump at a rate of 36% in 2020 but only supported Republicans at a rate of 31% in 2022, following Jan. 6 and the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Such a slip among all unmarried female voters could likely offset any gains Trump makes with black voters, who collectively represent 14% of the electorate.
Some experts are skeptical that Trump will even need to make the trade-off.
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Emory University professor emeritus Alan Abramowitz, writing for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, noted that not only did Trump fail to pick up much black support in 2020, but results from the 2022 midterm elections and the makeup of the 2024 primary electorate show no indication of a historic shift in voting trends.
“The evidence … does provide grounds for skepticism about claims of a dramatic surge in black support for Donald Trump and the GOP in 2024,” he wrote. “Acceptance of such claims should at least await better evidence from well-designed surveys with large sub-samples of black voters or data from actual election results.”
