Former US president Donald Trump’s lead in next year’s election polls has him eyeing a long-shot gambit: attracting a larger share of black voters than any other Republican presidential candidate in modern history.
Despite a long history of racially divisive comments and repeated contacts with white nationalists, Trump now enjoys some of the highest ratings among black voters of any candidate from his party, some national and swing state polls showed. That is because discontent with US President Joe Biden — especially on economic issues — has eroded the president’s support in a group that is likely to be key to his bid to winning re-election in November.
The Trump campaign’s push, starting once he gets through the primaries and including television ads and outreach by prominent black supporters aimed at portraying the billionaire as sympathetic to the working class, is ambitious. Allies are aiming for Trump to collect as much as a quarter of the black vote — well above the 5 percent to 12 percent that surveys showed he won in 2020.
Illustration: Yusha
In a race that is virtually certain to be close, the focus highlights how Trump aims to target some key traditionally Democratic Party-voting constituencies to sap support for Biden in swing states such as Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan that would be critical to victory.
“Regardless of how you think of Donald Trump or his campaign, he is doing the politically smart thing,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Trump critic. “He is seizing on a weakness of the Democratic nominee and the Democratic Party.”
His campaign has no illusions that he could win a majority of the black vote next year. Yet if he could shave even a few points off Biden’s support, that could be decisive in some swing states. Earning more support from black voters could also help Trump make up for his mercurial relationship with suburban women, turned off by Republicans’ efforts nationwide to restrict abortion access.
Biden’s favorability among black voters in seven swing states has slipped 7 percentage points since October, to 61 percent this month, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll showed. Trump has held steady at about 25 percent.
National surveys showed a more mixed picture, with the share of black voters saying they would back the former president ranging from 14 percent to more than 30 percent.
Biden’s campaign has repeatedly argued that the polls now are not an accurate predictor of voter sentiment on Election Day. Sam Fulwood III, who has surveyed black public opinion for the African American Research Collaborative, urged skepticism of national polls with small samples of black voters, who he calls “the real swing voters.”
“They swing not between Democrats and Republicans, but between showing up and not showing up. Overwhelmingly black voters who do show up, show up for Democrats,” he said.
Biden enjoyed strong turnout among black voters in the 2020 election, winning about 90 percent of their votes. That race took place amid a global racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, a black man who died at the hands of white police officers. Trump took a combative approach to the protests and unrest that followed, in line with the racially charged rhetoric that was a hallmark of his 2016 campaign.
He repeatedly insisted that former US president Barack Obama — the first black US president — was not born in the US, despite evidence to the contrary. In 2017, he said there were some “very fine people” at a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Just after announcing his campaign last year, Trump dined with white supremacist leader and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
At least in polling, however, voters are signaling that their belief that Trump could better solve economic problems such as inflation outweighs distaste with his past comments. It is part of a larger challenge that has bedeviled Biden’s re-election efforts: how to rekindle the anxiety about Trump that drove voters in 2020.
In addition to pastors, celebrities and former top administration officials, the Trump campaign might lean heavily on a handful of young black congressional representatives and state politicians to help make their case.
The former president’s potential list of running mates also includes a handful of prominent black politicians, including Republican US House representatives Byron Donalds and Wesley Hunt, as well as Ben Carson, Trump’s former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a source briefed on the internal discussions said.
“I’m not trying to tell black people to vote Republican. I am telling them to vote for Trump,” said Darrell Scott, an informal adviser to the campaign who was one of the first black pastors to support Trump. “The party still has not shaken that anti-black reputation, but they do not see that in Trump.”
The campaign also intends to hit Biden for spending on overseas conflicts such as Ukraine and Gaza at the expense of domestic pocketbook issues that matter to voters.
“This will be our strongest effort yet with the African American community,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, who said much of Trump’s message would be tied to the state of the economy.
Biden campaign officials argue that once the race picks up and voters realize that the only real choice is between Trump and Biden, traditional Democratic constituencies such as black voters, young people and women would be turned off by Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and support Biden once more.
By more than a 6:1 ratio, black voters in swing states say the economy is better off under Biden than it was under Trump, the Bloomberg poll showed.
Still, the Democratic Party is already trying to reverse the slide with the constituency. The Democratic National Committee unveiled a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign featuring black voters and highlighting Biden’s efforts to reduce healthcare costs and support small businesses. It has been an uphill fight so far.
“Black Americans do not feel that they are reaping the reward from being so loyal to the Democratic Party,” said Ronnie Oliva, a political strategist who has advised Democratic Party stars such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “There’s a desperation there just to find someone, anyone. They’re thinking that at least Trump says it how he means it, so maybe if we can get our agenda in front of him, he’ll get it done.”
With assistance from Stephanie Lai
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