The presidential election is still 11 months off, but a quiet change in the polls ignored by most of the mainstream media shows how we might already know the winner — and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment efforts don’t even matter.
As former President Bill Clinton once said, “It’s the economy, stupid” — and if these shocking news numbers are any indication, the Democrats may as well just make the 2020 concession call right now.
President Donald Trump may have just sealed the deal.
The new numbers show mass defections in a core group of supposedly loyal Democratic voters. A growing number of African-American voters are taking another look at Trump.
And they like what they see. An Emerson poll finds support among black voters has surged to a 34.5 percent approval rating.
That’s practically uncharted territory for a Republican – and it could translate in a seismic shift in the voting booth come November.
“I have noticed [Trump’s] approval with minority voters slightly higher than his 2016 vote totals and think he might do better with this vote than he did in 2016,” Spencer Kimball, assistant professor at Emerson College who oversees the polling, told The Epoch Times.
Other polls also show Trump has made huge gains among black voters – often well above Trump’s 2016 vote total. In many polls, he’s reached between 15 and 20 percent, more than any Republican president in recent memory.
A little math shows how that could easily translate into millions of votes for Trump in November.
In 2016, 91 percent of African-Americans voted for Hillary Clinton as opposed to 8 percent for Trump. Given that 16.4 million African-Americans voted in 2016, that means Clinton won close to 15 million, compared to less than 1.4 million for Trump.
Any significant shift in those numbers could have major ramifications.
If the 2020 Democratic nominee falls to 80 percent of the black vote, for example, that would translate into 13 million votes for the candidate – assuming 2016 turnout levels – or 2 million less than what Clinton won.
And 2 million less for the Democratic candidate means 2 million potential new votes for Trump.
That’s more than enough to swing the entire election, as well as key battleground states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Florida… all of which Trump won in 2016 but will need to win again if he hopes to keep control over the Oval Office.
And if he truly has the support seen in the Emerson poll – if 33 percent of black voters approve of Trump and cast their ballots for him – it’s game over for any Pelosi-backed Democratic nominee.
Trump and his campaign operative sense that.
They’ve just spent $1 million on an initiative called “Black Voices” aimed at winning a bigger share of the black vote, according to Politico.
“It’s not about whether or not he can change enough minds to get him to 98 percent of the black vote,” GOP strategist Paris Dennard told the website. “You can move the needle ever so slightly in certain cities and certain counties.”
The initiative doesn’t just have money behind it, either.
It also has some facts – including some inconvenient truths for the left, because Trump has in many ways done more for African-Americans than any other president, including former President Barack Obama.
His administration has produced record low unemployment in the black community as well as historic efforts at criminal justice reform, an issue that has disproportionately and unfairly impacted black communities.
“At the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the African-American vote,” Trump said in 2016. “I promise you. Because I will produce.”
He won’t get 95 percent of the vote.
But he certainly could gain enough to put the election out of reach for any Democrat.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”