SEAN TRENDE: Will Black Voters Back Republicans? A Political Science Perspective.

At this point, there’s not much dispute that polling shows a substantial swing vis-à-vis 2020, which is particularly strong among minority voters. Horse-race polls in the 2024 rematch typically show Donald Trump attracting in the neighborhood of 20% of the black vote, which would be a historically strong showing.

Some want to dismiss these findings. I’m certainly surprised by and even a bit skeptical about them. After all, neither Ronald Reagan nor Richard Nixon had won anything approaching 20% of the black vote during their landslide reelection victories. To see Trump winning the largest share of the black vote since Richard Nixon in 1960 is jarring, to say the least.

At the same time, whenever you find yourself questioning a poll result – much less repeated poll results – you should ask yourself, “Why do we read polls in the first place?” If we’re going to be dismissive of findings that contradict even strongly held prior assumptions, there really isn’t much use for this kind of social science. That doesn’t mean you abandon prior views instantly in the face of contrary evidence, but rather that an effort should be made to incorporate the data into those views. And as the data mounts, those views should gradually shift.

Which brings us to White and Laird. The fundamental question that they ask themselves can be summarized as this: Why, when around one-third of black voters self-describe as “conservative,” do blacks still give upwards of 90% of their votes to the liberal party? As the authors demonstrate, this isn’t just a matter of black voters defining “conservative” in a different light than white voters. Across a variety of issues – including some racial issues – a large portion of the African American electorate is conventionally conservative.

White and Laird aren’t the first to consider this question. They look at previous theories – including that black voters share a sense of linked fate, or that they simply view themselves as a part of a “team” – and find them insufficient. Instead, they offer a theory they call “racialized social constraint.”

Read the whole thing.

I’d just add that I believe Republicans could earn more black votes, if more Republicans — aside from just Donald Trump, that is — would do the campaigning necessary to earn them.