On Sundays, this church is a black church. This Saturday, it is not.
But the style of Donald Trump and his supporters has always been to present their support for him as extraordinary and exceptional, and this was certainly the case.
“The presumptive Republican presidential nominee spoke at a policy and awareness roundtable at 180 Church, where he addressed the immigration crisis and appealed to a mostly black audience,” the New York Post’s print version read. The online version of the story was updated to say, “The presumptive Republican presidential nominee focused on black voters.”
The idea that Trump was speaking to black communities in black spaces was common among his supporters. Predictably, the overall goal of the effort was to suggest that Trump was moving into traditionally Democratic political territory. This was the same strategy his campaign deployed when he held a rally in the Bronx: draw a modest crowd and then over-hype the scale and importance of what was happening.
It’s true that current polls show Trump doing better among black voters than he did in 2020, and the gap between Trump’s approval rating and President Biden’s is much narrower than it was four years ago. But like other clear changes since 2020, that’s more down to apathy toward Biden than enthusiasm for Trump.
There are recent polls that demonstrate this point: YouGov recently completed a national poll for The Economist to gauge support among black voters, and over the weekend, USA Today published a poll conducted by Suffolk University that looked exclusively at black voters in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
According to 2020 exit polls (admittedly an imperfect measure), Biden won black voters nationally by 75 points and in battleground states by 85 points. Biden currently leads by 49 points nationally, 39 points in Michigan, and 45 points in Pennsylvania.
Polls show Trump’s approval rating has only increased by single digits: by 8 points in Michigan (the poll has a margin of error of 4.4 points) and by 4 points in Pennsylvania. Nationally, YouGov puts Trump’s approval rating at the same level as exit polls in 2020. The gap is with Biden, who is down 26 points nationally and just under 40 points in battleground states.
In Michigan, only about half of black Biden supporters said they were very motivated to vote; in Pennsylvania, about 60 percent. In both states, only about two-thirds of those who said they voted for Biden in 2020 said they planned to vote again this year. When asked why their support had dropped, the most common response was that Biden was simply not doing a good job as president. (In both states, “not doing a good job” was twice as likely to be the case as to say Biden is too old or that respondents dislike his foreign policy.)
The slight increase in support for Trump among black voters is partly due to age and gender disparities: Young black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania were less likely to support Biden and slightly more likely to support Trump, with broadly similar patterns seen among men.
This is consistent with how favorably voters view the candidates: Younger black male voters were more likely to say they viewed Trump favorably than older black female voters, while favorability ratings for Biden were roughly the same across genders.
But Biden also has strong support among young black voters and black men, though not as broadly as his campaign would have liked, posing a concern for the incumbent president in some of the closest states in the 2020 election.
It’s also not clear whether Trump’s efforts to appeal to black voters are particularly successful. (As we noted last week, Trump’s pitches to constituent groups often follow rather than encourage change in his supporters.) Suffolk University asked black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania whether they thought Trump’s indictment made him more attractive to black people. The share who said yes was consistent with Trump’s overall approval rating. Most respondents said the implication was offensive. This trend held true for black men and young black respondents too.
The question that emerges from this poll is one that is often asked in the broader discussion of the 2024 election: Will black voters ultimately rally to Biden, widening the approval gap between the incumbent president and Trump? Or will many black voters become so disillusioned with a Biden presidency that they stay home from voting? It’s important to note these favorability numbers: Trump is generally viewed negatively, even among black voter groups where he has high approval ratings. It’s not so much that black voters are clamoring for a Trump presidency, but rather that they’re unhappy with Biden’s presidency.
It is important for Trump to present his campaign as the target of passionate black support for several reasons. First, it counters the idea that his candidacy and rhetoric are not popular with non-white voters, making room for more black and Hispanic voters to express their support. Second, it counters the idea that Trump himself espouses racist ideas; with so many black supporters, how can that not be true? friend Are you a supporter?
By the way, a Suffolk poll of black Michigan voters found that regular churchgoers favored Biden by a larger margin than those who never attend services. But it’s fair to say Trump got more support than expected among those who attended a Trump event at a black church on Saturday.
