Black Voters and the 2024 Presidential Election: A Breakthrough for Trump?

[brooklynite]

UVA Center for Politics (Larry Sabato)

Several recent national polls have shown Donald Trump running even or slightly ahead of Joe Biden in a one-on-one matchup. An average of most recent national polls as of Tuesday compiled by the website 270towin.com has Trump leading by a little under 1.5 points.

Several factors may explain why the former president, who is facing dozens of felony counts in various federal and state criminal trials, is running even or ahead of the current incumbent. A key reason, of course, is that despite the strong performance of the U.S. economy recently, voter perceptions of the economy have remained quite negative, and Joe Biden’s approval rating has been stuck for months in the upper-30s to low-40s.

Aside from negative perceptions of the economy, another major contributor to Biden’s deficit in the polls during 2024 has been his surprising weakness among Black voters—a group that has been a major source of support for him in the past including during his 2020 primary and general election campaigns. During the early stages of the 2020 Democratic primaries, Black voters in South Carolina provided Biden with a crucial boost after he had lost badly in Iowa and New Hampshire. Moreover, according to national and state exit polls, almost 90% of Black voters supported Biden over Trump in the general election. Yet several recent national and state polls have shown Trump making significant inroads among Black voters.



Table 1 displays the results of six recent national polls on the 2024 presidential race that provided breakdowns of candidate support by race. The overall results of these six polls were similar to those of other recent national polls with Trump leading in four of the six with an average margin of a little under 1.5 points. A good part of the reason for Joe Biden’s weakness in these polls is that his margin among Black voters was considerably smaller, on average, than his margin in 2020 and the margin that is typical for Democratic presidential candidates. Among Black voters who expressed a preference for either Biden or Trump in these recent polls, Trump’s share of the vote ranged from 9% in the Daily Kos/Civiqs poll to 23% in a couple of other polls, including the New York Times/Siena College poll—the one that probably attracted the most attention of any national poll in recent weeks.

On average, Donald Trump received 18% of the vote from Black voters who expressed a preference for either Trump or Biden in the six national polls. If that result were to hold up in November, it would represent by far the highest level of Black support for a Republican presidential candidate in the past 60 years. Figure 1 displays the level of Black support for Republican presidential candidates since 1948 according to data from the American National Election Studies. According to these data, no GOP candidate since Richard Nixon in 1960 has won more than 13% of the Black vote with only Nixon in 1972 and George W. Bush in 2004 topping 10%. The average level of Black support for Republican presidential candidates in the 10 elections between 1984 and 2020 was just under 6%.

[Lonestarblue]

1. I'm really curious what Black voters see in Trump to prefer him over Biden.

Perhaps it’s the cost of food and inflation right now, but Trump supports white supremacy and some in his MAGA cult have called for removing all Black people from the country, even citizens, because God intended the US as a country for white people. Trump did nothing for them as president and will do nothing for them if elected again.

[Think. Again.]

6. You're starting on a false premise...

...and by the way, "Black voters" are not a single unit.

[brooklynite]

9. The problem is that too many people assume that "white supremacy" is the prime issue for Black voters...it's not

Non-college educated Black voters (especially rural ones) care about the same things non-college educated White voters do.

[gab13by13]

2. I clicked on this just to give my opinion

LOL.

[brooklynite]

5. Which is.....?

[Think. Again.]

7. LOL!

[Think. Again.]

3. The certainty of a Hillary win by the polls in 2016...

...was the main reason so many felt comfortable staying home or making protest votes.

And the ability to manipulate public thinking using mis-information expressed through polls is much worse than through cute memes.

Polls pretend to be "scientifically" based, yet have nothing to do with any scientific process.

Polls are basically someone saying; "Look at these magic beans I found, wanna buy them?"

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Trump will have no choice but to go hard rudder counter trend in October

GWB did this against Al Gore. He clung close to Gore's positions to confuse and fool the public. Trump has such a malevolent track record that I don't think it could work for lack of credibility, but ... who knows? When it's the only game in town you go with it. Lies don't matter, votes do. Plus Trump will claim responsibility for all Biden's accomplishments.

Trump, the pro-women, pro-environment, tolerant, pro-labor, pro-health care, anti-racist bigot. (!)

[NanaCat]

8. I have a strong feeling that any supposed gains

Are from religious black men. A shocking percentage of hyper-religious men are raging misogynists. Sexism cuts across all racial and economic lines.

[thucythucy]

12. So they're voting for an adulterer

who never goes to church, a man who pays sex workers and then lies about it, against a man who attends Mass every Sunday and has been faithful to his marriage vows?

For me that kinda negates any "religious" reasons cited for the vote.

But, as you say: misogyny.

[All Mixed Up]

10. Once again, the media is falling victim to overanalyzing very limited demographic data from these polls.

We saw it last week with younger voters and now we're moving on to minority voters. It's stupid. Anyone who has ever seriously worked with a campaign and parsed polling data knows these numbers should always be taken with a grain of salt and not seriously. And certainly an article shouldn't be written and posted as substantive information.

Why? It's pretty simple.

When you're dealing with a subset of a larger poll, which is essentially crosstabs, you are dealing with data that is highly volatile and subject to large MOE because these numbers are also very small compared to the overall amount polled (depending on the sample size, it could even be less than 100). That means we're often dealing with a MOE of at least +/- 10 points.

Anyone worth their damned in campaign understanding would tell you never to trust a poll with that high of MOE and you certainly wouldn't with these crosstabs either.

So not only are you looking at an extremely high MOE, it also starts to impact the confidence rate of the numbers (most polls will have confidence rate of 95% or so, meaning that there is a 95% chance the results fall within the MOE). Crosstab data, with their very high MOE, also have lower confidence rates.

But even ignoring the confidence rate of these demographic numbers. On the likely MOE of +/- 10, you're looking at a dramatic shift.

You cannot gain much from these numbers and yet the media will always try to because it creates a bad narrative that they can then use for fodder like this.

Unless it's a demographic-specific poll, as in they poll specifically to get results of that demographic, these numbers are always irrelevant.

Case in point: 2022.

Take this WSJ poll from right before the 2022 midterms.

Again, this was a national poll of all voters. Not a demographic-specific poll.

So, this is what their poll found:

About 17% of Black voters said they would pick a Republican candidate for Congress over a Democrat in Journal polls both in late October and in August. That is a substantially larger share than the 8% of Black voters who voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 and the 8% who backed GOP candidates in 2018 House races, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large survey of voters who participated in those elections.

Want to know the percentage of Blacks voted Republican in the 2022 congressional races nationally?

Remember, the WSJ's national poll had Republicans winning 17% of Blacks - nine-points higher than in the 2018 midterms.

They actually won 13% according to exit polls.

Hm.

That's a pretty big difference.

But wait! That was an actual improvement over 2018's midterm so it predicted that Republicans are doing way better now!

Apples to oranges. You're comparing one midterm where Democrats were at a disadvantage to one where they were clearly well positioned (in 2018, they won the popular vote).

A better comparison would be to a midterm where Democrats were the party in power: 2014.

Republicans in that midterm, according to exit polls, won 10%. That's with a Black man at the top of the party as president.

In eight years, there was a three-point shift, which aligns with what we've seen at the presidential level. There's no doubt Blacks have, marginally moved away from the Democratic Party since the Obama presidency but the shift has not been anywhere near as these polls suggest.

Moreover, a lot of the shift is outside specific states.

Take Georgia in 2022. In the run-off between two Black men, 8% voted Republican.

It's entirely likely the shift we're seeing are coming from non-competitive states where Blacks live.

Remember, in 2022 the WSJ's poll had Republicans winning 17% of Blacks and in Georgia, they missed that mark by almost ten points and nationally missed it by four-points.

It doesn't sound like a lot but it kinda is when you're talking these margins.

And yet the media will continue to focus on these very dicey crosstab numbers.

[thucythucy]

11. Thank you for posting this analysis.

It is much appreciated.