Originally published on TheRoot.com
Alarm bells went off in November when a New York Times/Sienna College poll found that 22 percent of Black voters in six battleground states said they would support Trump. That represents a huge swing for the MAGA nation’s leader, who received just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020 and 6 percent in 2016.
A Wall Street Journal poll released in April reinforced those findings. It found that 30 percent of Black men in seven swing states said they either definitely or probably will vote for Trump in November.
However, a shift toward Trump isn’t the only concern. A May Washington Post/Ipsos Survey of Black Americans found that only 62 percent plan to vote in November, compared to 74 percent in June 2020.
But polls can be wrong. Are concerns about Black voters not turning out for Biden exaggerated?
“The concern is not overblown. Biden will not get the same turnout that we saw in 2020,” Morehouse College political science professor Dr. Matthew Platt told TheRoot.
“People underestimate the impact of things that were going on in 2020. George Floyd will not be murdered this year; the country is not in a state of pandemic lockdown; and the laws governing the ease of voting have changed,” Platt continued. “It is not just that voting laws, like in Georgia, have a direct effect on voter mobilization efforts; it is that some organizations have shut down their operations entirely out of concern for the greater liabilities the new laws impose.”
Read the full article here.