Young Black Voters 3 Times More Likely to Trust GOP Than Older Black Voters, Partially Thanks to Trump: FiveThirtyEight Study

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Younger Black voters are more skeptical of Democrats than older generations, partially thanks to President Donald Trump, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis published Wednesday.

Terrance Woodbury of the research firm HIT said younger voters had been influenced by “systemic cynicism” of political institutions, according to FiveThirtyEight, in addition to policy measures enacted by Trump. “In focus groups, according to Woodbury, younger Black voters often mention the criminal justice reform bill that the president signed into law, his support for increased funding for historically Black colleges and the low Black unemployment rate before the coronavirus outbreak.”

Citing a survey conducted over the summer  by American University’s Black Swing Voter Project, the analysis noted that 73 percent of Black voters aged 60+ “strongly” trusted congressional Democrats to “do what is best” for Black people, compared to just 43 percent of those aged 18-29. On the question of whether they trusted congressional Democrats to “do what is best” for Black people, the same survey found 73 percent of the older age group said they “strongly” believed so, compared to 43 percent of those aged 18-29.

Events over the summer did little to influence voters in the presidential race between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. “Neither the protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May nor the selection of Kamala Harris, the first Black and Asian American vice-presidential nominee, resulted in big and durable boosts in Biden’s Black support,” authors wrote.

They added that Trump may do better than he did in 2016, or his predecessors did in 2012 or 2012 — potentially putting him in a position to perform better among Black voters than any Republican nominee before him:

It’s interesting that Trump appears to be turning some white people against him in part because of his controversial racial comments but he hasn’t really lost any Black support (and he might even do a bit better this year than he did in 2016 with Black voters). Of course, that’s largely because he had so little Black support to begin with — there isn’t much room to do worse. But there is a core bloc of about 10 percent of Black Americans who are Republican-leaning and they appear to be sticking with Trump. Indeed, the 2020 numbers suggest that it might be hard for Democrats to replicate the 90-point margin among Black voters they had in 2008 and 2012 with Barack Obama running as the first-ever Black major party presidential nominee.

Researchers did find some good news for Biden in the fact that his voters are more likely to turn up at the polls this year. Just 29 percent of those aged 18-29 said they were “definitely” motivated to vote, according to the American University survey, compared to 78 percent of those aged 60+.