OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A recent poll that revealed former President Donald Trump’s popularity was increasing among black voters appeared to have shocked a CNN panel under the direction of morning show co-host Poppy Harlow.
The survey last week by The New York Times and Siena College found that 22 percent of black respondents support Trump, the highest percentage of black support for a GOP presidential candidate in the modern era.
“Trump leads Biden by a whopping 10 points in Nevada, six points in Georgia, five points in both Arizona and Michigan, and four points in Pennsylvania. Biden’s sole lead is in Wisconsin, where he beats Trump by two points,” Fox News reported, citing the poll, which was released on Sunday.
Biden beat Trump in each of those states in 2020. But now, combined, Trump leads Biden 48–44 percent in those states.
Fox News added: “The polling attributes Biden’s poor showing to a devastating lack of confidence due to his age. Voters said they trusted Trump to better handle the economy, foreign policy, and immigration. Trump’s performance also came thanks to unprecedented levels of support from black voters, with a record 22% of the demographic siding with him over Biden across the six states, according to the NYT.”
“Twenty-two percent of black voters behind Trump. That is not seen in the modern era for a Republican frontrunner, right?” CNN’s Harlow said in response to the survey.
“It’s startling,” CNN analyst Natasha Alford responded. “I looked at the Democratic response, Kevin Munoz, the spokesman for Biden, and this idea that you know, we have a year. We can turn things around.”
“I think you have to look at this being a challenge from the very beginning, right?” she continued. “Black voters from the very beginning were saying that, ‘We will help you get Joe Biden into office, but, you know, this is not necessarily our preference.’ This was about democracy and saving democracy, and so here we are a year later. He has not been able to change their impression.”
She added that several factors, including rising cost of living, exploding home prices, and lack of real wage growth, were all working against Biden, especially among black voters.
“So ‘Bidenomics,’ all of the things that Biden has done to try to connect, it’s not connecting with this group,” Alford said.
WATCH:
“The Outlaws” podcast co-host Darvio Morrow took to the X platform to note that, according to the polling data, Trump got 22 percent of the black vote in the poll.
“Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times,” he quoted the Times as saying.
“In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six,” the Times added.
“A BRUTAL poll for Biden,” Morrow wrote in the post. “You’d have to go back to Richard Nixon in 1960 to see the last time a National Republican got anywhere close to those numbers with Black voters. Brutal, brutal poll. And if Team Trump are serious about locking these numbers in and making them stick, put policy on the table for Black voters and make sure you go out and campaign for every single Black vote.”
“The world is falling apart under Biden,” Spencer Weiss, a 53-year-old electrical substation specialist in Pennsylvania, told The NY Times. He then added that he was flipping his 2020 vote away from Biden.
“I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him,” Weiss added.
The poll found that 71 percent of respondents believe Biden, currently 80 and soon to be 81, is too old to be effective.
