Black voters appear to be closing their 2020 enthusiasm gap
So far, Democrats appear to be determined to avoid taking any constituency for granted this time, particularly the 6 million who voted for Trump in 2016 after voting for Obama four years earlier, or the 4.4 million Obama voters who didn't vote in 2016.
At present, Trump has good reason to make the economy a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, but the Third Way/Joint Center study sees storm clouds on the horizon: Only 22% of black Americans told researchers that their finances have improved, while 50% said they've stayed the same and 27% said they're worse.
Sixty-two percent of black voters said Democrats understand their lives, while only 13% said the same of Trump and the Republicans. Eighty-six percent of black Americans said the cost of living is going up faster than their wages are.
And a majority of black voters said racial relations have gotten worse under Trump, 55% said they face more racism in their daily lives than they used to, and 80% said Trump's election has made people who hold racist views more likely to express them in public.
Also, among those who are employed, 1 in 5 black Americans surveyed said they are working more than one job to make ends meet.
It is on bread-and-butter issues like housing and health care, a strong issue for Dems in the midterms, that black voters expressed the most dissatisfaction. So far, the president has done more to try to end Obamacare, formally the Affordable Care Act, than offer ideas for how to replace it.
That's another reason why I don't expect him to get anywhere near that 95% of black support that he promised, although I'd like to see him try.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
