A conservative African-American civil rights leader thinks Trump could make huge inroads in the black vote in 2020.
Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), cited the fact that black unemployment has fallen to his lowest on record—and inroads Trump has begun making in black communities.
While Trump’s popularity has waned somewhat among most demographic groups, his popularity among African-American voters has skyrocketed since November 2016. According to a recent poll, 17 percent of black voters approve of Trump, included 23 percent of black men.
Those numbers still mean a large majority of African-Americans don’t support Trump—but, considering Trump won just 8 percent of the black vote in 2016, a 17 percent approval rating means more than double the number of African-Americans view him favorably than they did in 2016. That’s a gigantic increase—and one that could dramatically cut into Democratic vote share.
“[Democrats] are terrified that this president gets somewhere north of 10 to 15 percent of the black vote,” said Innis. “And they’re terrified because, if that happens, then it is first of all, mathematically, electorally impossible for a Democrat to win.”
“But more than that, it is because they are so invested in having a monopoly of the black vote, and that monopoly is based on blacks as forever seeing themselves as victims, forever seeing themselves as victims of racism, of economic depravity of the white man,” Innis added.
As Democrats continue to push the narrative that Trump is a bona fide racist, it’s clear that minority communities have a very different view of the President—and could help him secure victory in 2020.