A new Knight Foundation-College Pulse survey out this month shows one in five black male college students said if the election were held today, they would be casting their vote for President Donald Trump.
The poll, conducted Aug. 9-12 and interviewed 4,000 undergraduates in full-time four-year programs at American universities, revealed Trump’s support among black male students is virtually the same among white female college students where 20 percent reported being in favor of Trump with a +/-2 percent margin of error.
Trump’s support among female black students however, is practically absent at 2 percent, within the margin of error for zero and is unlikely to bounce following former Vice President Joe Biden’s pick of a black woman, California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. On the other hand, Trump’s relatively high support among black male college students likely comes in part from the Republican administration’s restoration of funding for Historically Black Colleges.
While the Knight Foundation survey is narrowed in scope to current college students enrolled in four-year programs, the results provide a glimpse into Trump’s support among the next generation of voters that possesses implications for November and future elections.
While Democrats embrace the latest signature call from the contemporary civil rights movement of Black Lives Matter to defund the police, a Gallup poll conducted in late July shows 81 percent of black Americans actually want the same amount or more law enforcement protection in their communities, not less. Democrats in Minneapolis however, voted unanimously to disband the city’s police department in June. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed the department’s budget by $1 billion even as crime skyrockets in the city. On the West Coast, Seattle’s first black female police chief resigned when the city voted to cut department funding and dock her pay 40 percent.
“This was a difficult decision for me, but when it’s time, it’s time,” said Chief Carmen Best.
Trump however, remains deeply underwater with black voters overall, which have historically been a key voting bloc for the Democratic Party for the last five decades. A Washington Post-Ispos poll showed 92 percent of black Americans reported their support for Biden over Trump in a June survey. In 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the black vote with 88 percent to Trump’s 8.
