President Trump’s Super Bowl Sunday criminal justice reform ad proves he is dead serious about the Black Vote in 2020. The ad capitalizes on his rising support among Black Americans, and speaks a hopeful message about criminal justice reform. It features Alice Marie Johnson thanking Trump for granting her clemency after 21 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. “I’m free to hug my family. I’m free to start over”, Johnson said. “I want to thank President Donald John Trump.”
The video quickly picked up traction on Twitter and YouTube. Super Bowl viewership varies each year, but the game usually draws between 95 and 114 million viewers. An estimated 12.5 million African American viewers tune in according to Nielsen, making prime time an ideal spot to reach a broad audience.
Since Trump announced his Blacks for Trump effort to reach out to African American voters last November, he has faced a wave of fear and opposition from the hard left and the media elite. His efforts to reach out to Black Americans are described by commentators as either ‘devilishly brilliant’ or ‘tacky and ridiculous’, but he clearly has the mainstream media’s attention.
“Trump’s got nowhere to go but up. And the bulk of the evidence suggests that support among black voters has in fact gone up and may rise even further depending on how the rest of the 2020 cycle plays out,” Vox warned last November.
“If Trump can nudge his way into double digits among black voters and potentially into the low teens, it would eat away at Democratic margins in key swing states and possibly alter the outcome in a close election,” Politico echoed last month.
At the close of 2019, Emerson had President Trump’s approval rating at 34% with African American voters and Rasmussen had him at 34.5%. The Hill-HarrisX survey found 32% of Black men would back President Trump over any Democratic challenger, and those numbers climbed to 42% of black men between age 35 and 49. The same survey showed 25% of black voters with a Bachelor’s Degree or higher would support President Trump over any Democratic challenger. If Trump can even moderately improve his share of the Black vote in 2020, Democrats are in deep trouble especially in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Florida.
