The 2024 election may go down as the worst election in terms of media gaslighting—and that's saying a lot, considering how much we endured during the 2020 election with the pandemic going on.
A new report from The Hill is a classic example of the Orwellian gaslighting going on right now. According to the report, "A majority of Black voters are just as excited or more this year as in 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) became the first Black president, according to new polling."
The article cites a survey conducted by the NAACP done in collaboration with HIT Strategies and Hart Research which found that 78% of black voters feel as excited about this election as they did during Obama’s first campaign, with 56% expressing even greater enthusiasm now than in 2008.
“This election season, we’ve witnessed a surge of enthusiasm among Black voters that we haven’t seen in some time. But we cannot be distracted — there are still voters to be reached,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of NAACP, told The Hill.
“Make no mistake, our lives depend on our votes,” Johnson added. “This November, casting our ballots will be more than just us exercising our right to vote — it is the key to the future of our culture, and our community.”
To read this, one might think Kamala Harris is on the fast track to victory thanks to a historic flood of support from black voters like Barack Obama.
There's just one problem.
Most Black voters, 63%, plan to support Harris, compared with 13% for Trump, according to the new NAACP survey, which interviewed 1,000 registered Black voters across the U.S. from Aug. 6 to Aug. 12.
But 26% of Black men under 50 years old said they supported Trump, versus 49% who backed Harris. For Black men above 50, 77% said they supported Harris.
Sixty-seven percent of Black women said they supported Harris, while 8% said they supported Trump.
Just 13% of black voters plan to vote for Trump, while 63% plan to vote for Kamala. That's a huge gap, right? Let's put this into perspective: Barack Obama won 95% of the black vote in 2008.
For our VIPs: Is Barack Obama Receiving Better Secret Service Protection Than Donald Trump?
If black support for the Democratic candidate has dropped from 95% in 2008 to just 63% in 2024, it is a significant problem for Kamala Harris. Black voters have traditionally been a cornerstone of the Democratic Party's base, and such a dramatic shift likely spells disaster for her campaign.
Even Newsweek felt compelled to throw cold water on the idea that this poll was great for Kamala Harris, conceding that "Harris' support among Black voters, while strong, lags behind previous Democratic candidates."
A Suffolk University poll from earlier in September showed she held a 64-point lead over former President Donald Trump.
This figure is lower than Joe Biden's 2020 lead, which stood at 78 points, and significantly behind Hillary Clinton's 88-point lead in 2016.
With razor-thin margins expected in key swing states, even a small erosion in Black voter support could be critical.
But according to The Hill, the poll is a sign that Kamala Harris's support from black voters is comparable to what Barack Obama had. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member