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A woman attends a campaign rally by former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at Crotona Park in the Bronx borough of New York City, on May 23, 2024.
Trump gambles to woo Black voters
This GZERO 2024 election series looks at America’s changing voting patterns, bloc by bloc.
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Donald Trump was trapped in New York City until the jury reached a verdict in his hush money trial last week, but he made the most of his time in his hometown – visiting a bodega in Harlem, dropping by a construction site, hosting a photo op at a local firehouse, and becoming the first Republican candidate to host a campaign rally in New York City since Ronald Reagan.
His choice of rally location – a deep-blue district in the Bronx where 95% of the population is Black or Hispanic and 35% live below the poverty line – was no accident. While Black voters remain the most loyal bloc of the Democratic coalition that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stitched together four years ago, that support appears to be waning.
Six months before the election, Trump has picked up as much as 18% of the Black vote — up from 8% in 2020 and 6% in 2016. Polls can only tell us so much this far out from the election, but a recent poll conducted by the University of Chicago found that just 33% of young Black people would vote for Biden if the election were held today. While the poll showed significant undecided and third-party sentiment – only 23% said they would support Trump – it's undeniably a plummet from the 80% of young Black voters supporting Biden in 2020.
Trump’s message to Black voters is that Democrats have long taken their vote for granted and that they were better off – in particular from an economic standpoint – under his administration than under Biden’s. With November’s election predicted to be decided by a few thousand votes in a couple of key states, it matters that Trump is trying, and succeeding, to make inroads with voters of color.
At his rally in the Bronx on May 23, Trump cast himself as a better president for Black and Hispanic voters, attacking Biden on the economy and immigration. He insisted “the biggest negative impact” of the flood of migrants to New York is “against our Black population and our Hispanic population who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose.” Many in the crowd responded by chanting, “Build the wall,” a reference to Trump’s push as president to build a US-Mexico border barrier.
“I’ve voted for Democrats in the Bronx up and down the ticket for my whole life,” rally attendee Daniella Martinez said. She still identifies as a Democrat but decided to hop on the Trump train because she worried the influx of migrants to the city was straining her daughter’s public school and making their neighborhood less safe. “But look where Democrats have got New York. I’m here because I am ready for a change.”
When pressed about whether Trump could be considered a change, given that he occupied the Oval Office just four years ago, Martinez said: “I didn’t have to work a second job four years ago. Any change from Biden’s economy is a change I am going to vote for.”
Since Trump’s guilty verdict last Thursday, he has compared his legal troubles to the unfairness that Black communities disproportionately face in the justice system. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, amplified this on CNN on Friday. “The reason we’re seeing so many African Americans come into the Trump campaign — two big things: jobs and justice,” he said. “As an African American born and raised in the Deep South who had concerns about our justice system as it relates to race, I’m now seeing it play out from a partisan perspective.”
Scott, who wants to be Trump’s vice president, has pledged $15 million of PAC money to Black voter outreach, arguing that Black men, in particular, could be key in securing Trump’s win. On Tuesday, Reps. Byron Donalds, of Florida, who is also rumored to be on Trump’s VP short list, and Wesley Hunt, of Texas, ventured into Philadelphia to make their pitch for Trump at an event billed as “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars.”
“We were better off under Republicans than we were Democrats,” Hunt said. “The reason why the Democrats have a hold on the Black community is because our parents’ parents’ parents keep telling us, ‘You got to vote Democrat. It’s up to us in this generation to say, ‘well, why?’”
But according to Eurasia Group’s US analyst Noah Daponte-Smith, what may matter more than Trump’s marginal gains with Black voters is that Biden is hemorrhaging their support.
“Biden is currently running 22 points behind his 2020 performance among Black voters, says Deponte-Smith. “There does seem to be a consensus among analysts and political scientists that the Black vote has steadily moved away from Democrats as we have exited the Obama era.”
But Biden is fighting back. The president has ridiculed Trump’s strategy, saying last week that Trump is “pandering and peddling lies and stereotypes for your vote, so he can win for himself, not for you.”
He and Vice President Kamala Harris also traveled to Philadelphia last Wednesday to launch “Black Voters for Biden-Harris” to bolster outreach efforts and engage Black voters. The campaign is an acknowledgment that Biden knows he needs to fight if he wants to keep the 92% majority of Black voters that were integral to his win in 2020.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) talks to reporters after surviving a vote to remove him from the Speaker’s position, Washington, DC, May 8, 2024. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a motion to vacate the Speaker’s office, which was defeated by a motion to table the issue immediately afterward.
Vibes-based lawmaking isn’t helping us!
With so many problems in the world right now, it seems odd to spend time trying to solve ones that don’t exist.
But that’s exactly what happened this week when House Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a new law to crack down on non-citizens voting in US federal elections.
The legislation, known as the SAVE Act, would outlaw non-citizen voting – which is already illegal – and require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Now, some people, mostly Republicans, say it’s not unreasonable to expect adults to produce ID before making a decision about who should lead the “free world.” Others, mostly Democrats, point to evidence that voter ID requirements – particularly for passports or birth certificates – tend to suppress eligible voter turnout, particularly for minority voters. There are fair arguments on both sides.
The Supreme Court, for its part, has struck down a state-led requirement for citizenship documents, and a North Carolina court is weighing the issue of voter ID more broadly as we speak.
But leave all that aside for a moment. There’s a more fundamental problem with Johnson’s bill. It’s aimed at ghosts.
Asked about the scale of the problem of non-citizen voting, Johnson said:
“The answer is that it’s unanswerable.”
“We all know intuitively,” he explained, “that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”
This vibes-based intuition parrots a longstanding talking point of GOP boss Donald Trump, who has complained – falsely – that voter fraud cost him the popular vote in 2016 and the election itself in 2020. With just six months until his rematch with Joe Biden, Trump and his allies are keen to seed the idea that voter fraud – particularly among the rapidly rising undocumented migrant population – will decide the outcome. With 60% of Republicans worried about the credibility of the electoral system, Trump knows his audience.
But the question for Johnson is not unanswerable. The answer is that there is, in fact, no evidence for these claims.
In 2017, for example, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU looked closely at the 2016 election, a contest in which Donald Trump claimed he had lost the popular vote because 3-5 million illegal immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton.
After reviewing 23 million voter names, in 42 precincts, in 12 states, how many instances of non-citizen voting did the Brennan study find?
Thirty. That’s 0.0001% of the votes.
It turns out non-citizens, in perpetual danger of deportation, aren’t eager to write their names down on a voting register, leaving indelible evidence of a federal crime.
This tracks with other studies of voter fraud, nearly all of which show that it’s exceedingly rare. The state of Georgia, for example, conducted a review of its voter rolls in 2022 and found that of the four million votes cast by Georgians in the midterms of that year, there were 17 instances of voter fraud.
That’s not to say there aren’t real concerns about the election. How might AI distort voter perceptions of the candidates? Will foreign powers try to sway voters’ choices? Will election workers be safe? Nearly 40% of them say they have experienced threats, violence, or harassment, in part by people riled up with false narratives about fraud.
But instead of addressing those serious worries, the Speaker of the House is proposing to Make Illegal Things Illegal Again™, based on information he does not have, about a phenomenon that doesn’t exist.
This kind of vibes-based lawmaking isn’t going to SAVE us from anything.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks during a news conference at the US Capitol on May 7, 2024, in Washington, DC.
Hard Numbers: GOP makes illegal thing illegal, Immigration inquiries overload Ottawa, Westjet makes its flight, US gas demand sputters
0.0001: Republican lawmakers in the US have proposed a new bill that would make it illegal for non-citizens to vote in US elections. As it happens, this is already illegal. House Speaker Mike Johnson explained the measure by arguing that “we all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting” but acknowledged that this is “not easily provable.” A 2016 NYU study of more than 20 million votes in 42 jurisdictions found that 0.0001% were cast by non-citizens.
184,600: Canada’s immigration bureaucracies have been overwhelmed by requests for information about stuck or pending cases, with more than 180,000 inquiries over each of the past two years. That’s more than triple the volume from 2018. Three years ago, the government pledged to address the backlogs, but watchdogs say it hasn’t done enough.
9: It’s flight time after all. After nine months of tough negotiations, Westjet reached a tentative agreement with the union representing its maintenance workers, narrowly avoiding a work stoppage this week that would have crippled Canada’s second-largest airline. The company last year agreed to give its pilots a 24% pay raise.
8.63 million: Is America’s economy hitting the brakes? The four-week average demand for gasoline fell to 8.63 million barrels per day, reaching the lowest early May level since the pandemic crushed demand for transportation. Demand for diesel and heating oil was also at post-pandemic lows. Analysts were split about whether the weak demand reflects a slowing economy or the rising use of renewables.A sign at the flagship event of a nationwide march for voting rights on the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington in August, 2021.
15th Amendment as relevant as ever on 154th birthday
Saturday marks 154 years since the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution – Feb. 3, 1870 – which guaranteed Black men the right to vote. Given it’s Black History Month and an election year, this makes it the perfect time to revisit this vital moment in US history.
Though the amendment was part of an effort to set the US on a more equitable path in the post-Civil War era, it didn’t take long after ratification for local governments to institute racist policies – Jim Crow laws – aimed at disenfranchising Black people.
Nearly 100 years after it was ratified, the federal government finally moved to protect the rights enshrined in the 15th Amendment with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which barred racial discrimination in voting and helped dismantle Jim Crow laws.
But legal experts and rights groups in recent years have raised alarm bells about ongoing threats to the Voting Rights Act and court decisions that have weakened it. And despite a June 2023 Supreme Court decision that upheld a key provision of the law, many contend that more must be done to protect voting rights and prevent discriminatory practices.
People of color made up 30% of eligible voters in the US in 2020 but represented just over 22% of all votes cast, according to a new study from the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. “There’s outright voter-suppression efforts still happening in the US,” says Mindy Romero, the lead author of the report and director of the center.
Research shows people of color continue to face an array of disparities and challenges when it comes to voting, ranging from longer wait times on Election Day than white voters and mass voter roll purges to being disproportionately impacted by strict voter ID laws.
Indeed, more than a century and a half after the 15th Amendment came to be, it seems the US still has a long way to go in the fight to eliminate racial barriers at the ballot box.
FILE PHOTO: Voting booths are set up at the Shawnee County Elections Office
Hard Numbers: The world gets set to vote, Myanmar rebels make gains, Uganda nabs terror boss, Israel’s Cabinet tangles over West Bank taxes, Jury convicts SBF
40: If you love to “get out the vote,” then next year is your time to shine. No fewer than 40 different countries, representing more than 40% of the world’s population and 40% of global GDP, will go to the polls in 2024. Some of the standout elections include those in Taiwan, India, Mexico, Indonesia, Russia, possibly Ukraine, the European Parliament, and the United States.
4: Myanmar’s military junta has lost control of four towns along the Chinese border, including a key trade hub, as ethnic militias in the area ramp up their insurgency against the government. Beijing on Thursday called for a cease-fire in the conflict, which the UN fears has displaced thousands of people.
6: Ugandan forces say they’ve captured the leader of an Islamic State-linked insurgent militia in a raid earlier this week that killed six of his henchmen. The commander is accused of murdering two foreign tourists and their guide in a national park several weeks ago.
30: After a heated Israeli cabinet debate about whether to release tax revenue that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the government agreed late Thursday to transfer the funds -- but there's a catch. At least 30% of the money, a portion destined for bureaucrats in the Gaza Strip who are still on the PA payroll, will be withheld. The decision was a compromise between hardliners who wanted to withhold the funds entirely because the PA hasn't explicitly condemned Hamas and pragmatists who thought it unwise to further weaken the PA at a time of rising West Bank unrest.
7: On Thursday, a New York federal jury found crypto exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of stealing billions of dollars from customers, convicting him of all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. He now awaits sentencing -- set for March 28, 2024 -- and faces up to 115 years in prison.
Heat map of Canada and US voter registration levels
The Graphic Truth: Canada tops US in voter registration
The United States and Canada are two of the world’s biggest advanced democracies. But when it comes to elections, the Great White North is far better at registering its voters.
Canada makes it easy and even encourages voters to register as late as Election Day. It can do this because it has a centralized voter database shared among the provinces, enabling them to keep up-to-date information about where voters should be voting, which eliminates fears of voter fraud.
In the US – where fears of voter fraud run rampant – the main obstacle appears to be a lack of both cooperation and willpower. There’s no push to proactively register voters, and because there’s no centralized voter registration database, there’s limited communication between states.
The US is trying to roll out a centralized system, called Electronic Registration Information Center or ERIC, to inform states if a voter moves or dies, so that the names can be removed from the voter rolls. But to gain access, states must pledge to proactively register new voters who move to their state.
At its peak, ERIC had 33 states enrolled, but since the 2020 election, it has become the target of misinformation campaigns. Seven GOP-led states have pulled out of the interstate database over concerns about voter privacy and to protest the proactive registration requirement.
Ohio vote reflects abortion’s mobilizing power
Voters in the Buckeye State on Tuesday, with 57% of the vote, struck down Issue 1, a Republican-backed proposal aimed at making it harder to change the state’s constitution. If it had passed, a constitutional amendment on abortion rights planned for this November would’ve required a 60% supermajority to pass.
Proponents advertised it as a safeguard against mob rule and wealthy out-of-state interests, but opponents saw it as a thinly veiled attack on abortion rights. Blatant admissions from Republicans and a flood of money from pro-life groups backing Issue 1 reinforced those concerns.
The result reflects how powerful abortion is as a mobilizing force for Democrats. Ohio’s voter turnout more than doubled from recent state elections, driven largely by Democratic and Independent voters who wouldn’t have normally tuned into a summer election but got involved because abortion rights were on the line.
The big turnout echoed the 2022 Midterms, where abortion-protecting initiatives won in every state where they were on the ballot. The issue boosted Democratic turnout overall, enabling them to maintain control of the Senate and gain governorships in a year when election trends predicted GOP gains.
It also showed that Republicans pushing for abortion restrictions are out of step with the wider electorate. According to a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, a majority of voters across every region of the country believe that abortion should be all or mostly legal. Most 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls have sidestepped the issue – even Donald Trump, who appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, has avoided endorsing any kind of restrictions.
Protecting abortion has become a priority for a large portion of voters, especially in swing states like Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Arizona, where Republican legislatures quickly moved to restrict abortion access after the Dobbs decision. Ahead of the 2024 election, where polling shows lukewarm Democratic support for Biden, abortion could become an invaluable tactic to boost turnout in key battleground states.
Hard Numbers: Court denies Bolsonaro, Pelosi plans Taiwan trip, Morocco jails migrants, Ukrainian first lady visits US
20: Brazil’s top electoral court issued 20 rebuttals to President Jair Bolsonaro’s recent claim that the electronic voting system used since 1996 is vulnerable. Bolsonaro often implies he’ll dispute the result if he loses the October presidential election to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who's leading the polls by a wide margin.
25: Nancy Pelosi will reportedly visit Taiwan next month, the first US speaker of the House to do so since Newt Gingrich traveled to the self-governing island 25 years ago. Pelosi’s planned visit is the latest sign of US officials and lawmakers strengthening ties with Taiwan amid the broader US-China rivalry.
33: Morocco has sentenced 33 African migrants to jail terms for trying to scale the border wall with the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. The episode in late June — the first such attempt since Morocco and Spain mended long-fraught ties over Western Sahara — claimed the lives of 25 other migrants.
1: Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska will address the US Congress on Wednesday, months after her husband did so virtually. This is Zelenska’s first visit to America, where she is trying to drum up support for Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion by meeting with lawmakers, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and her counterpart, Jill Biden.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media, a subsidiary of Eurasia Group that offers balanced, nonpartisan reporting, and analysis of foreign affairs. Subscribe to Signal today.