Trump Expected To Pull More Black Votes Than Any Other Republican Candidate In U.S. History

Do we really want a repeat of 2016?

After four years of Donald Trump in the Oval Office, he is pressing his way back to Washington, D.C. – with the help of Black voters.

Poll results from both national and swing states find the former president is holding anywhere between 14 and 30% of the Black vote – the most Black support received by any Republican candidate in history, according to Newsweek. That’s a huge jump from the 8% received during the 2020 election.

Looking back on past Republican candidates, in 1960, an estimated five million Black people voted when Richard Nixon was on the ballot, winning 32% of the Black vote. Since then, the Black population has grown tremendously. Census data shows Black people now represent 46,936,733 people, or 13.6% of the population.

So what has changed? The Black voting turnout has jumped in presidential elections from 58.5% of the eligible voting population in 1964 to 58.7% in 2020. If Trump secures just 13% more, he will hold the title of the highest proportion of the Black vote since Nixon in 1960.

As Black voters are more prone to vote blue, President Biden seems to be losing grip on the minority voter. One in five Black voters are willing to support a third-party candidate in November 2024, according to USA Today. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll shows Biden’s failure to work on key issues that got him elected in 2020 isn’t helping his support, leaving him trailing behind Trump, 39%-37%.

Some voters still support Biden but feel he needs to step it up in his “hopeful” next term. “I think he’s done a reasonably sound job, but it’s not been a ‘wow’ administration,” Democrat Michelle Derr said. “For me, it’s disappointing that we have two old white guys in this race again. I want to look forward to the future.”

Biden’s advisors know how the leader is underperforming in the demographic but have a strategy to turn things around in early February 2024. Biden’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks says the campaign isn’t “parachuting into Black communities a few weeks before the election” but “is investing earlier and more aggressively than ever before.”