How many black voters will Donald Trump win?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2024

A peculiar report in the Times: How many black votes could Donald Trump win in November? 

It's a scary topic! This morning, a report on that question appears above the fold on the front page of the New York Times. In print editions, the dual headlines say this:

Trump Wooing A Voting Group He Stereotypes
Modest Gains Among African Americans

The headline speaks about modest gains—but paragraph 4 says this:

HABERMAN ET AL. (3/13/24): Mr. Trump currently receives nearly four times the support from Black voters in polling than the 6 percent who actually voted for him in 2016, according to Pew Research Center data. He is vying for wins in states with major cities that have large Black populations, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The margins of victory are expected to be small in those four states, where Mr. Trump hopes to offset his potential weaknesses with independent voters and suburban women.

Say what? Trump got six percent in 2016—but he's polling at four times that amount now? 

Presumably, any such outcome would mean that Trump would win November's election. That said, here's why we thought this Times report was peculiar.

It's true! Trump did get six percent of the black vote in 2016—"according to Pew Research Center data." That said, note the source of the data the Times reports shortly thereafter, in paragraph 9:

HABERMAN ET AL.: Even as Mr. Trump lost Black voters overwhelmingly in 2020, he gained ground relative to 2016, according to exit polls. He performed stronger among Black men, winning 19 percent; it was double his share among Black women.

Now the data are sourced to "exit polls." Here why we found that peculiar:

It's true! According to the one standard set of exit polls, a strikingly large 19 percent of black men voted for Trump in 2020. According to those same exit polls, he won just nine percent of black women in 2020, and 12 percent of black voters overall.

That was the way the black vote went in 2020 according to exit polls. But after each of our recent national elections, Pew has conducted a detailed study of what it calls "validated voters."

Pew's numbers have tended to differ from those in the standard exit polls. For example:

In the case of the 2020 election, Pew found that black voters favored Biden over Trump, 92 percent to 8. Rightly or wrongly, Pew found that eight percent of blacks voted for Trump in 2020—not the 12 percent which had emerged in the exit polls.

(For Pew data from 2016 and 2020, you can just click here.)

Which numbers are more reliable—those which emerge from the exit polls, or those which result from the later, detailed studies by Pew? We can't tell you that!

We can say this—we don't know why the Times would report exit poll figures in paragraph 4, then switch over to Pew figures just a few paragraphs later.

In the case of black voters, the numbers have been substantially different:

According to the exit polls, eight percent of black voters voted for Trump in 2016. According to Pew's later study, the number was six percent.

Also this:

According to the exit polls, twelve percent of black voters voted for Trump in 2020. According to Pew's later study, the actual number was eight percent.

The only numbers which matter today will be those from November's election. Presumably, if Trump gets something like 24 percent of the black vote, he'll be on his way back to the White House.

We have no idea how black voters are going to vote. We also have no idea why the Times structured its front-page report the way it did—jumping from Pew figures in 2016 to exit poll figures in 2020, just a few paragraphs later.

Why the heck would a paper do that? We have no idea!

Also this:

How many black voters did support Donald J. Trump in 2020? We think again of the old joke known as Goldberg's Law:

The man with one watch always knows the time. The man with two watches is never quite sure.

As with watches, so too here. Hat tip to Paul Reiser!