We’ve seen some polls showing Trump’s small but somewhat astonishing inroads among black men. I’m skeptical of these polls, however.
We’ve seen polls showing Donald Trump beating Joe Biden among young voters, or at least competitive with him among under-30s. And earlier this month, the New York Times ran through what is now becoming the conventional wisdom of the campaign, that the swing of Hispanic voters away from Biden and toward Trump could be hugely consequential:
President Biden continues to lose crucial support among Latino voters, with an increasing number of those voters saying they are more likely to vote for former President Donald J. Trump, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The poll shows Mr. Trump edging out Mr. Biden among Hispanic voters, with 46 percent supporting the former president and 40 percent favoring Mr. Biden, but because Latino voters make up just 15 percent of the electorate, the poll’s sample size of the group is not large enough to assess small differences reliably. For a subgroup that size, the margin of error is 10 percentage points.
But the poll, and others like it, make clear that Mr. Trump has continued to make remarkable inroads with Hispanic voters.
We’ve seen some polls showing Trump’s small but somewhat astonishing inroads among black men. From the Washington Post:
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in October and November found that 22 percent of Black voters in six battleground states planned to vote for Trump in 2024, a higher share than any Republican has received in national presidential exit polls dating to 1980. More recent polls in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan also showed Trump beating his 2020 exit polls with Black men.
I don’t know.
I absolutely believe that Biden has lower approval among these groups. I even believe that some black-male-voter sentiment can be getting slightly Trumpier. I have extended family who fit into the broader category of Hispanics for Trump.
But it’s harder to convince me that all of these expressed sentiments will translate into voting behavior in the fall. Outside of Florida, does the institutional GOP know how to find these voters, contact them, and get them to the polls? There’s some good reason to believe black men who support Trump are disconnected from the black church. That may be true, but if it’s part of a larger disaffection from institutions, they may also be the least reliable voters on voting day.