Trump’s polling numbers have been slightly increasing over the past three election cycles he has been involved in, but he has never eclipsed 15% of Black support.
According to David Paleologos, Suffolk University’s Political Research Center director, the shift in Black voter percentage for Biden does not mean those voters are choosing Biden. Instead, he told USA Today, these voters tend to select third-party candidates, like Princeton professor Cornel West.
“Any kind of numbers that Donald Trump has picked up amongst Black voters is not because of anything that Donald Trump has done,” Rigueur said. “It’s because of things that the Democratic Party has done. That’s why Black voters are leaving, they’re saying you know what? I have a better shot voting for a third party candidate, or maybe even Donald Trump, because I’m so upset at the Democratic Party.”
Also, a recent New York Times/Siena survey revealed that voters, including Black voters, believed that the economic policies of Trump assisted them more than Biden’s policies have. Forty percent of the voters who responded to the poll said that Trump’s policies helped them as compared to 43% of voters saying that Biden’s policies hurt them.
Despite these feelings, economist Nouriel Roubini warned Business Insider that a Trump re-election could send the economy into a tailspin, increasing inflation even further from where it is now. Roubini indicated that Trump could replace the current Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, with someone who would be more amenable to Trump’s agenda and could cut rates too soon and make inflation worse than it already is.
He also told the outlet, “A trade war would reduce growth and increase inflation, making it the largest geopolitical risk that markets should consider in the months ahead.”
Similarly, other economists are wary of Trump’s economic policies. Henry Tricks, an analyst for The Economist, told Vox that Trump’s plans to increase tariffs do not instill business leaders with confidence.
“The danger is that his approach to economic policy actually risks exacerbating the economic problems that Americans are suffering from today. And particularly, we’re talking about high inflation there.”
Tricks continued, “What Trump wants to do is effectively triple the average rate of tariffs. He also wants to retaliate against countries with particularly high tariffs on American products by raising the American tariffs to the same height. And this could have a pretty detrimental impact on trade. Trade wars aren’t for the economy. They lower economic growth and tend to hit those on the lowest income hardest because tariffs raise the price of consumer goods, such as the sort of stuff you buy in the grocery store.”
Jeff Horwit, a Democratic pollster for Hart Research Associates, and Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster for Public Opinion Strategies, jointly conducted the NBC News poll. Horwit expressed concern to NBC News about the polls’ indications of the erosion of support for Biden.
Source: Black Enterprise
