Washington

Black Voters Extremely Skeptical of Trump’s Voter Fraud Claims

Giuliani has private sector cybersecurity experience. (Rob Kunzig/Morning Consult)

While about four in 10 American voters said they agreed with Donald Trump that the election could be stolen from him due to voter fraud, black voters – more than most other demographic groups – strongly disagree.

A POLITICO/Morning Consult survey found 72 percent of African Americans disagreed with the Republican nominee’s recently ramped-up claims of a “rigged” election, which have come as his poll numbers continue to decline amid the fallout from a leaked 2005 tape capturing him bragging about committing sexual assault.

“Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day,” Trump wrote Monday morning on Twitter. “Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!”

Only 15 percent of black voters said they agreed with Trump, compared with 46 percent of white voters. On the other hand, 44 percent of white voters disagreed with Trump, compared with almost half (49 percent) of the general electorate.

While there has been scant evidence of fraud in modern U.S. elections, Republicans have over the past few years pushed state laws enforcing more stringent voter identification requirements. A court recently found one such law, in North Carolina, included provisions to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

Over the weekend, former New York Major Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s top campaign surrogates, delivered racially veiled criticisms of the integrity of the voting process during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Still, nearly six in 10 voters (58 percent) think raising questions about the democratic process and the accuracy of the 2016 presidential election results is necessary because of their belief that it could be compromised by voter fraud or a foreign government. The number is nearly the same among white voters (59 percent), but dropped to 52 percent with black voters.

Only about a quarter of both the black and white populations (24 percent) said raising those questions could be dangerous to the democratic process because it could spread distrust, a claim raised in a joint statement Monday by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“This issue is bigger than any of us and bigger than this election.  This is about each of us doing our part to ensure the continued functioning of our democracy,” the two leaders wrote.
On Saturday, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) affirmed his own confidence in election results. AshLee Strong said, “the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”
Morning Consult