President Trump has made his outreach to black voters a core campaign feature this year, competing directly with Democratic nominee Joe Biden for a share of the electorate that could prove decisive in must-win battleground states.
The urgency with which the Trump campaign views the matter was evident during Thursday night’s presidential debate, when the president repeatedly outlined steps he had taken toward prison reform. He even launched his brief final statement with an appeal to black voters.
“Before the plague came in, just before, I was getting calls from people that were not normally people that would call me. They wanted to get together,” he said. “We had the best black unemployment numbers in the history of our country.”
The effort could pay strong dividends in states such as Georgia, where nearly a third of voters are black, North Carolina, where just over a fifth are black, as well as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida, where 10-15% of the voting population is black.
Calling the Trump campaign’s outreach “far more successful than anyone would have imagined,” Khari Enaharo of Ohio, a radio and television host, said this was unusual for Republican candidates.
“It’s led a lot of people to be more favorably disposed to Trump than ever before, particularly young black males, who have really given the president a second, a third, and a fourth look,” Enaharo said.
Trump’s proposal to inject $500 billion into black communities and businesses through his “Platinum Plan” was resonating, he added.
“It details actual numbers,” Enaharo said. “Normally, what you get from political candidates is, ‘We’ll fight for this, we will fight for that,’ nothing specific that would address a major economic condition of a people, particularly black people.”
Co-host of The Breakfast Club Charlamagne tha God said in an interview with CNN this week that he could understand why black voters might vote for Trump, crediting Trump with “actually talking to young, black male voters.”
Still, he told the Washington Examiner on Friday that he didn’t personally know anyone who would.
It was on Charlamagne’s show earlier in May that Biden drew controversy while attempting to defend his record with black people, telling listeners, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
Rev. John Coats II, a Columbus, Ohio, pastor and Trump supporter, told the Washington Examiner that “when Vice President Biden made the statement, in dialect, that if you vote for Trump, ‘you ain’t black,’ it really disturbed a lot of ears, and many were offended.”
Coats said that the moment prompted some black voters to rethink their vote.
“A mature voter listens to policy, policy, policy, policy, and then says, ‘OK, this is what’s in the best interest of my family. This is what’s in the best interest of my community,'” he said. “Or, as Christians, we look and say, ‘OK, this is what best matches my faith.'”
He added: “A mature voter doesn’t necessarily get caught up in personality, even though some of us do like the president’s personality.”
Though polls show Trump is performing slightly better with black and Hispanic voters this year, analysts say that longstanding voting patterns that lead black voters to favor Democrats typically are likely to remain.
Former Ohio Secretary of State and Treasurer J. Kenneth Blackwell, a black Republican and Trump ally, said he believes that Trump could earn between 12-15% of the vote from black people, surpassing the 8% that exit polls said he got in 2016.
Sam Fulwood, a fellow in the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, which has studied black swing voters, said he thinks few black voters will shift to Trump.
“I think 8% [of the black vote] is really reaching for Trump at this point,” Fulwood said, adding that he believes the Trump campaign’s effort to court black voters aims to dissuade them from voting, particularly young black men.
Pollster Terrance Woodbury, whose firm HIT Strategies surveys black voters monthly with the BlackTrack poll, said he has reason to believe the firm’s final snapshot of this election will show black men’s support for Trump “beginning to settle into normal partisan patterns.”
In Wisconsin, another swing state won by Trump last time around, Dakota Hall, director of Leaders Igniting Transformation, told the Star Tribune in August that Democrats needed to boost their efforts with young black men and men of color if they hoped to win in Milwaukee.
Hall said that he drives by the Trump campaign’s local office on his way to work and was taken aback at how busy it was before the coronavirus.
“They are in the heart of the African American community here,” he said. “They know what they’re doing over there in the Trump campaign.”
In radio advertisements airing in urban networks, former NFL star Herschel Walker attests to his long friendship with Trump.
“I’ve known Donald Trump for 37 years,” Walker said. “He keeps right on fighting to improve the lives of black Americans. He works night and day. He never stops. He leaves nothing on the field.”
