‘Absurd’: Experts debunk notion Black voters are gravitating toward Trump
Election experts called the notion that Black voters are poised to put former President Donald Trump back in the White House simply “absurd,” according to a new report released Saturday.
That’s the message Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz received from multiple political scientists when he asked about recent polls — from Quinnipiac, Economist-YouGov, New York Times/Siena and Marquette University Law School — that suggest Trump’s outreach to Black voters may be paying off.
“I don’t see it happening,” Cristopher Towler of the Black Voter Project, told the Post, casting doubt on any “magical shift” in Trump’s direction.
Why? According to Towler, the sample sizes are simply too small.
"He said the biggest concern about the recent polls is that the sample sizes for Black voters are often tiny, often no more than 100 or so, and thus with a big margin of error," writes Balz. "Political scientists and political strategists alike agree that samples of that size are less likely to be fully representative of the Black community and say that large-scale surveys of Black Americans, of which there are few, are more reliable."
Cornell Belcher, a onetime pollster for former President Barack Obama, agreed Trump isn’t likely to make Republican history with Black voters.
“I've been doing large sample size polls of Black voters … for four years and never in those four years has Donald Trump ever moved above 10 percent,” Belcher reportedly said.
Writes Balz, “[he] said the likelihood of Trump receiving a significantly higher percentage of the Black vote than any Republican since 1960 is ‘absurd.’”
For Belcher, it’s a question of Trump rhetoric he characterized as blatantly racist and policy he argues doesn’t support Black Americans.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Belcher said, “that someone who … is on the wrong side of every issue that is a top issue of concern for African Americans is going to also garner more support from African Americans than, say, George [W.] Bush.”
Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist with Emory University, also reportedly cast doubt on the Trump polls, according to the Post. Abramowitz reportedly said, “I don’t think it’s real.”