Fears that Donald Trump may make huge gains with Black male voters are overblown according to election analysts who explained to an MSNBC analyst that polls published online can be deceiving.
According to MSNBC's Zeeshan Aleem, the online hand-wringers need to calm down as it appears Vice President Kamala Harris is enjoying the same level of support as other Democratic presidential candidates with the exception of Barack Obama who hit record highs with Black voters –– likely because he was the first Black major party candidate for president.
As Aleem explained, despite Trump claiming his support from Black men has "gone through the roof," the reality is "Democrats ought to tune out Trump’s taunting and not panic. The general outlook of the political scientists I spoke to is that there isn’t enough reliable data to suggest that Harris is facing an emergency situation with Black voters. In fact, they pointed out that there are indicators that Harris could be on track to match Biden’s performance in 2020."
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According to Chryl Laird, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, polling among Black male voters is pretty thin and not comprehensive enough to draw any conclusions.
"It tends to be the case in typical news media polls that Black men are under-sampled,” Laird explained.
"Polls are deeply flawed tools for predicting turnout," Aleem wrote before pointing out Christopher Towler, Sacramento State University who heads the Black Voter Project suggested that "Part of the reason is that polling captured sentiment from Black voters who were less supportive of Democrats but also less likely to vote," with Aleem adding, "That very well could be happening this time as well."
The MSNBC analyst suggested that Harris campaign should not grow complacent and warned that turning out the overall Black vote is key to beating Donald Trump.
"That means making sure to spend more resources on targeting Black voters with the right messaging and get-out-the-vote operations. Neither history nor the evidence, however, suggests Trump’s support from Black men is anywhere close to going through the roof," he wrote.
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