Democratic South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he doesn’t believe polling that shows President Joe Biden doing poorly among black voters.
A New York Times/Siena College poll found Trump leading Biden in five out of six crucial swing states, up by at least three points in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan and by double digits in Nevada.
The poll also found that 22 percent of black voters favor Trump, a massive increase from the less than 10 percent he received in the 2020 election. If the polling proves accurate, it would be the highest share of the black vote for a GOP presidential candidate since then-Vice President Richard Nixon won 32 percent in 1960.
Scarborough said that he found the results laughable and dismissed the idea that Trump could win over that many black voters.
“I see those polls that suggest Donald Trump is going to get 22 percent, 23 percent of the black vote and I just — I laugh. I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s going on right now, and why right now that’s showing up in the polls, but you look at unemployment for black Americans, it’s lower than it’s been in quite some time. There’s a good record for Joe Biden to run on, but right now he doesn’t seem to be connecting as well with people of color. We’re — we’re a year away, but that 22 percent, I mean, do you believe that Joe Biden’s doing that poorly among black voters?” (RELATED: ‘I Mean, Wow’: CNN’s Poppy Harlow Stunned To See Trump’s Gains Among Black Voters In New Poll)
“Absolutely not. Let me tell you what you are seeing there,” Clyburn responded. “People are focusing on some of the unfinished business. Sure, I’m disappointed, as any other black person, that we have not been able to renew the Voting Rights Act, but we are going to show why. Why haven’t we done it? Because this conservative, MAGA-leaning Supreme Court has desecrated the Voting Rights Act and we have not been able to get the Republicans in the Congress to renew it. And so a lot of black people are disappointed that that has not gotten done.”
“A lot of black people are disappointed that we were not able to renew that part of the Rescue Plan and the child tax credit,” he continued. “That is very important in the African American community. So when you ask the polling information, that’s what they give you. ‘No. I’m dissatisfied that we have not done these things.’ But when it comes to the general election and when we lay out what we’ve done and what we propose to do, and compare that to what the Republicans have done and what they are proposing to do, you’ll see Joe Biden get in 92 — at least 92 percent — of the African American vote in the general election. That I am confident of.”
Biden’s lead among black voters have declined since his 2020 win, with an October Fox News poll shows Biden leading Trump 74-26 in that demographic, down from his 92 percent share of the black vote in 2020. In May, an Associated Press poll found that just 55 percent of black voters say they are likely to support Biden in 2024, compared to 81 percent of Democrats.