Tim Scott PAC To Spend $14.3M On Black Voter Outreach
Tim Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican and a key ally of Donald Trump, suggested to reporters on June 4 that he believes Trump can gain ground with Black male voters. Scott appears willing to lead an outreach campaign targeting Black voters in battleground states. On June 6, Scott-aligned Great Opportunity PAC announced it would spend $14.3 million to encourage voting for Trump and down-ballot GOP candidates.
As CBS News reports, Scott, who is rumored to be a candidate for the vice presidential nomination from Trump, told reporters “There’s no doubt that African-American men are wide open for a political shift of partisan shift. If Black voters do two things: some stay home and some come to the Right, there is no way [Democrats can] fill the hole.”
Although a March poll from CBS News showed that Trump’s support from Black voters had increased to 23%, a poll from Pew Research released in May indicated that this figure is likely too high, even though Trump’s support among certain segments of Black voters has increased over the last four years. Even among Black men, their polling indicated that 20% of Black registered voters would vote for Trump if the election was held immediately. Despite this, 72% of Black voters said that Trump was a terrible president and 65% of Black voters believe he broke the law in an attempt to change the results of the 2020 election.
According to Brookings, the polling indicating that Black voters are moving toward Trump is based on small sample sizes and are not as recent as the Pew Research poll. In addition, Howard University political science professor Marcus J. Board indicated to Brookings that in general, Black support of Republicans has historically ranged between 8-15%, much lower than the 23% figure floated by Scott. In addition, following Trump’s guilty verdict in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, a New York Times survey indicated that the Black people who indicated their support of Trump flipped to Biden, which casts doubt on the narrative that Black people are committing to Trump.
According to the Center for Politics, there is no historical basis for a surge in Black Republican voters based on exit polls. They cite data from the American National Election Studies to make their case. “There is no evidence in the ANES data of any surge in support for Republican presidential candidates among Black voters in recent elections. According to the data from the 2020 American National Election Study, Donald Trump received only 7% of the Black vote against Joe Biden, which was almost identical to the 6% that he received against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Nor is there any evidence in the ANES data of a surge in support for Trump among any major subgroup of Black voters.”
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