Will Trump pull more Black voters than any Republican since 1960?

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Please don’t shoot the messenger, but recent polls from Bloomberg and Pew suggest that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is poised to pull anywhere from 14 to 30 percent of the Black vote in his race against incumbent President Joe Biden this Fall. 

If you’re wondering “how,” keep reading…

Donald Trump

I will state from the outset that I do not think that Mr. Trump will defeat Mr. Biden in November because his support seems largely limited to conservative MAGA Republicans; if you look carefully at the results of recent Republican primaries, the last challenger standing, Nikki Haley, is consistently dominating among Republican moderates, independents, and cross-over Democratic supporters in open primary states. And as shown in 2016 and 2020, Trump's candidacy will swim (2016) or sink (2020) based upon independent swing voters, many of whom have refused to support Republican candidates ever since Roe vs. Wade was overturned in 2022.

Now that I've laid out my long-term prediction, allow me to give a little perspective on polling predictions that Trump will garner more Black votes than any Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon won 32 percent of the Black vote in his loss to Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy in 1960.  

First, I think that it is important to note that Black Americans in the south are only 60 years into having mostly unfettered voting access per the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the elections that followed, most Black voters, including those in the south, aligned with the Democratic Party because it was a Democratic POTUS—Lyndon Baines Johnson—who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the VRA (1965), and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 into law.

As such, Black loyalty to the Democratic Party was due to an affinity for the Party that was at the vanguard of state and local efforts to empower Black businesses while providing access to integrated schools. Whether concrete or illusory, such perception has been reality for every single Democratic presidential nominee from Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, to Joe Biden in 2020, each of whom assumed that, warts and all, they could count on Black voters.

As time has passed, judging from the anecdotal evidence that social media platforms provide, it seems to me that growing numbers of Black voters are more than willing to place their individual concerns over the greater concerns of Blacks writ large, as our forebears did during and immediately following the Jim Crow era. 

In fact, the more I read, the more I see some Brothers (and even a few Sisters) declaring their beliefs that the Trump administration was good for their personal bottom lines regardless of his penchant for insulting Black people and nations.

Now, when I read deeper into these ones responses, more often than not, the main reason that I've seen stated for being a Black MAGA is the PPP loan program that the Trump administration supported to stimulate the economy during the early days of the worst pandemic and quarantine that the world had seen in over a century. 

A second reason that I've read is that quite a few Black MAGA's love Trump for releasing a number of Blacks from prison, a fact that fuels Trump’s own controversial comments at last week’s CPAC convention that “the Black people” feel an affinity towards him because he has been indicted four times in state and federal courts over this past year.

Now, rational people realize that there NEVER will be another PPP loan “free money” moment in most of our lifetimes, let alone in a second Trump term! Rational people also know that Trump didn’t “free the Brothers” through pardon or clemency at any astronomically higher rate than his predecessors in office!

But if the perception among some potential Black voters is that Trump was better for their financial (or freedom) bottom lines, there is nothing that I or anyone else will be able to write or say to counter their perspective.

Such is why when Trump (or his on-air surrogates) suggest that “the Blacks” will support him simply because of the new Trump tennis shoes, free money, or freedom from prison, I can't help but to wonder when, not if, they will promise  “a (fried) chicken and some oxtails in every pot!"

My sarcasm in the last paragraph aside, the heart of today’s blog is to actually state that instead of bashing Trump for his growing Black support, Democrats should be doing everything possible to connect with Black voters who are so skeptical of a second Biden term that they are willing to vote for the man who was quoted while in office talking about "Black SOB's," “good people in the KKK,” "shit hole countries in Africa,” and saying that the only immigrants that he supports are from Scandinavian/European nations. 

Ergo, real Democratic engagement MUST include a serious focus on Black media, particularly digital media, to better herald how the Biden administration has directly impacted Blacks, both individually and collectively! I strongly believe that the days of Democrats spending multiple millions on direct mail-outs and mainstream media ads will do precious little to get the word out to those younger Black voters who simply are not feeling the Biden administration, despite its success in a number of areas.

To conclude, I suspect that a great deal of the disconnect stems from Democratic assumptions that Black voters will never jump ship. But if the projections that Trump will pull 14 to 30 percent prove true, even if Biden wins again as I predict, such will signal the critical need to improve upon what should have been happening all along—which is Black voters being consistently courted by Democrats according to what is important to them individually (and in small segments), not just an assumption that all Blacks will always vote as a monolithic bloc.