Robert Jones, founder and C.E.O. of the Public Religion Research Institute, wrote in an email that

just ahead of the 2016 election, only 5 percent of African Americans said they thought Trump “understands the problems of people like them,” and 75 percent of African- Americans said they did not know a single person among their friends and family who was supporting Trump; moreover, Trump’s favorability in PRRI polling in 2016 was 7 percent among African Americans.

PRRI’s most recent series of weekly surveys, conducted from late March through December 2019 with a total of 40,000 interviews, show that Trump’s positive numbers among African- Americans, although still low, have more than doubled. Jones pointed out by email that Trump’s favorability rating among black voters overall increased from 7 percent in 2016 to 18 percent in 2019, with a large gender gap; Trump’s favorability rating among black men in 2019 was 23 percent and 14 percent among black women.

Despite this shift, Jones argues that he sees little evidence “that the Trump campaign should expect significant defections among African-American voters in 2020.” {snip}

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Looking back to 2016, there is data that suggests — although it certainly does not prove — that Trump’s efforts to demonize Hillary Clinton among African-American voters helped to suppress black turnout.

That year, Trump ran ads in battleground states and on Facebook quoting Clinton’s 1996 reference to minorities in organized gangs as “superpredators”:

They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators — no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel.

Trump’s superpredator ads were designed as much to suppress black turnout as they were to actually persuade African-American voters to cast ballots for Trump. {snip}

At a postelection Pennsylvania rally in December 2016, Trump acknowledged the crucial role turnout suppression played in his victory:

We did great with the African-American community. I talk about crime, I talk about lack of education, I talk about no jobs. And I’d say, what the hell do you have to lose? Right? It’s true. And they’re smart and they picked up on it like you wouldn’t believe. And you know what else? They didn’t come out to vote for Hillary. They didn’t come out. And that was a big — so thank you to the African-American community.

There is no question that black turnout suffered in 2016. Take a look at voting in Detroit, a city that is 78.6 percent black.

In 2012, Barack Obama won the city with 281,743 votes to Mitt Romney’s 6,019. Four years later, Hillary Clinton won Detroit, 234,871 to Trump’s 7,682. Trump modestly improved on Romney by 1,663 voters, but Clinton saw a 46,872-vote drop from 2012.

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