Oh my, is black voter support for President Trump rising? It appears to be the case. Now, it’s not breaking 50 percent. It’ll never be a majority—and that goes for any GOP presidential candidate. But it has reached into the double-digits. And if it hovers around 15-20 percent, that could spell trouble for Democrats. Rasmussen released a survey showing black voter support hitting 36 percent. That’s insane. With black unemployment hitting historic lows under President Trump—it hit an 18-year low overall—I’m sure Democrats sat there, all smug—confident that the needle wouldn’t budge for the president.
Already, some on the political science department were throwing cold water on the 36 percent figure. Yet, while Rasmussen might be an outlier, if it’s not, then it’s still great news; the point is that black voter support has increased for Trump. Even the National Association for the Advancement Of Colored People noted this development earlier this month. Trump is clinching the highest levels of support among black voters for a Republican since Bob Dole (via USA Today) [emphasis mine]:
…[A]s cable news networks debate reports of the existence of a recording of President Donald Trump using a racial slur, a new poll from Rasmussen Reports says that the president's approval rating among African-Americans is at 36 percent, nearly double his support at this time last year.
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But other polls have also shown an increase in support for Trump among African-Americans – albeit a more modest increase than Rasmussen found.
An NAACP poll released on Aug. 7 found that Trump's approval rating was at 21 percent. And a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in June found Trump's approval rating among blacks at 14 percent.
Although a vast majority of African-Americans still disapprove of Trump's job as president, those numbers represent an improvement from his share of the vote in 2016. No Republican presidential candidate has done better than 12 percent among blacks since Bob Dole in 1996, according to Cornell University's Roper Center.
So, while it might not be 36 percent, 14-21 percent is a massive improvement from Trump’s meager eight percent draw in the 2016 election.
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