POLITICS
Polls show the Republican front-runner is poised to secure more votes from African Americans than any Republican in history—which could tip the presidential election in his favor
DONALD TRUMP MAY WIN MORE BLACK VOTES than any other Republican presidential candidate in history in the upcoming presidential election.
According to national and swing state polls reviewed by Bloomberg, the former president and GOP front-runner has between 14 percent and 30 percent of the Black vote share. This is far beyond the 8 percent of the Black vote the Pew Research Center said the Republican won in the 2020 presidential election and more than any Republican candidate before him.
The NAACP estimated that 5 million African Americans voted in the 1960 presidential election when Richard Nixon won 32 percent of the Black vote. Since then, the Black population has increased from around 10.83 percent or 19,418,190 people, according to an analysis of census data, to 13.6 percent of the overall population or 46,936,733 people.
The Black voting turnout has slightly increased in presidential elections from 58.5 percent of the eligible voting population in 1964, the earliest election for which such figures are available, to 58.7 percent in 2020, according to Statista.
This means if Trump wins more than 13 percent of the vote share, he will gain the highest proportion of the Black vote since Nixon in 1960 and more individual Black votes.
Democratic President Joe Biden, on the other hand, attracted 92 percent of the Black vote in 2020, compared with just 8 percent for Trump, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. The Black vote helped him win in swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Biden secured 88 percent of the Black vote in Georgia in 2020, for instance, winning the state by just 11,779 votes, or 0.24 per cent.
Polls conducted in 2023 suggest the incumbent president is losing support among Black voters.
Indeed, his favorability among Black voters in seven swing states slipped 7 percentage points from October to December 2023, to 61 percent, according to a Bloomberg News/ Morning Consult poll. Trump’s favorability in the same period has remained steady at around 25 percent. If Trump comes up tops with Black voters in swing states, it could help him win the election. Newsweek contacted representatives for Trump and Biden to comment on this story.
Speaking to Newsweek, Mary Frances Berry, historian at the University of Pennsylvania, cited economic reasons for Trump gaining more of the vote share.
“Black males especially cite prices of basic needs, food for example, despite the declin
