Will Black Voters Actually Vote Republican?

At this point, there’s not much dispute that polling shows a substantial swing vis-à-vis 2020, which is particularly strong among minority voters. Horse-race polls in the 2024 rematch typically show Donald Trump attracting in the neighborhood of 20% of the black vote, which would be a historically strong showing.

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Some want to dismiss these findings. I’m certainly surprised by and even a bit skeptical about them.  After all, neither Ronald Reagan nor Richard Nixon had won anything approaching 20% of the black vote during their landslide reelection victories. To see Trump winning the largest share of the black vote since Richard Nixon in 1960 is jarring, to say the least. 

At the same time, whenever you find yourself questioning a poll result – much less repeated poll results – you should ask yourself, “Why do we read polls in the first place?”  If we’re going to be dismissive of findings that contradict even strongly held prior assumptions, there really isn’t much use for this kind of social science. That doesn’t mean you abandon prior views instantly in the face of contrary evidence, but rather that an effort should be made to incorporate the data into those views. And as the data mounts, those views should gradually shift.

(via Instapundit)

Ed Morrissey

True enough, and perhaps this is measuring a real trend. But it's also still a bit early for this to be entirely predictive, too. Trende has some good insight, so read this as a companion piece to my analysis of the WSJ poll earlier this morning. 

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