During the first presidential debate of the 2020 campaign, moderator Chris Wallace pushed Donald Trump to condemn white supremacists; instead of doing so, the incumbent seemed to give a nod to the far-Right Proud Boys group. In the final debate, moderator Kristen Welker grilled Trump on several apparently racists incidents, including one in which the President shared a video of a supporter screaming “white power!” When Trump compared his record with black Americans to that of President Abraham Lincoln, who proclaimed an end to slavery during the Civil War, Biden mocked him: “Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history.”
The Democrats expected non-white voters to be outraged by Trump’s often-racist rhetoric — and worked hard to mobilise them, in the hopes of a landslide victory for Biden. The data so far suggests they succeeded in boosting black turnout; and yet the Democrat party failed to increase its margins with black voters. The election was won on a knife-edge, and Trump performed far better than expected with black Americans (and even more so with Latino voters).
Some pundits believe that Trump’s stronger than expected showing is a repudiation by white voters (who still make up the majority of the electorate) against this summer’s BLM movement. Though research has shown that the vast majority of Black Lives Matter protestors were peaceful — and that much of the worst violence during this year’s racial unrest was committed by white actors — white Americans are less likely to recognise the difference between the protests and the riots. Trump has regularly conflated them in his rhetoric.
Meanwhile, Trump has played up his pre-Covid economic performance while downplaying the need to address racial issues, and a plurality of voters seem to have ranked the economy as their number one issue according to exit polls. These polls show that 80% of those for whom the economy was the most pressing issue went for Donald Trump, while 90% who viewed racial injustice as the most important issue went for Joe Biden.
Nevertheless, Biden’s advantage on race did not lead to higher margins of support from black voters compared to four years ago. Black women voted almost uniformly for Democrats, as they have done for some time; the major surprise in this election concerns black men, especially younger black men who were targeted by both campaigns. Washington Post exit polls indicate that Trump won 18% of black men. Although possibly within the margin of error, this is an apparent increase from the 14% of the black male vote that he won in 2016 according to the Pew Research Center.
Even if the increase in black male supporters is a polling error, just the fact that Trump appears to have at least held steady among this demographic represents a victory for the Republicans. The President’s appeals to white nationalists such as the far-Right Proud Boys group, and his use of racially-coded language that plays upon suburban white fears, could have easily alienated black men.
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