Black voters have long been aligned with the Democratic party. In the Barack Obama era, the alignment has been closer than ever, with 2012 black turnout higher and more Democratic than ever. If Hillary Clinton hopes to win the White House, she’ll need to get similar numbers to Obama among black voters.
But if Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, is the Republican nominee, Clinton looks like she may be particularly vulnerable on this front. In a new national poll from Quinnipiac, Carson leads Clinton in a hypothetical match-up by ten points. A significant reason is that Carson appears to be taking away a significant number of black voters from Clinton.
Clinton still overwhelmingly wins black voters, with 73 percent supporting the former secretary of state. But Carson gets 19 percent of black voters polled, more than any other Republican matched up with Clinton. The only comparable Republican is New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who gets 17 percent of black voters against Clinton. The remaining Republican candidates get just single digits.
Read the full poll results here.
