A panicked campaign data analyst called his boss two days before Donald Trump addressed the National Association of Black Journalists to report a serious problem with a scheduled focus group with Black MAGA voters: they kept dropping out.
TargetSmart pollster Ben Lazarus took to X Thursday to share this anecdote as Trump faced mounting criticism over his race-based attack of Vice President Kamala Harris at the event.
"We all know better than to generalize qual findings," Lazarus wrote, "but this remarkable problem is not one I've ever encountered in 15+ years polling."
Lazarus explained the panicked recruiter called him after two weeks of organizing focus groups with Black voters in key swing states.
"Groups were originally organized as Biden voters, Trump voters, and undecideds/3rd party voters," Lazarus explained. "Groups usually take 2-3 weeks to recruit, and in the days leading up to the sessions, we do confirmation calls."
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The confirmation calls did not go according to plan, Lazarus writes.
"Two days before the Black Trump voter group, my recruiter reaches out to me in a mild panic...the group was falling apart," Lazarus wrote. "Of the 7 Black Trump voters (vs Biden) we originally recruited just 2 weeks earlier, 3 had to bail because they were now supporting Harris."
Recent polling has told a similar story.
While Trump made headway with Black voters as he campaigned against former President Joe Biden, that lead has been evaporating since Harris took Biden's place as the presumptive Democratic nominee.
This might explain why Trump chose to do a live interview with three journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago on Wednesday.
The impact of Trump's responses — among them that he was the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln and interviewer Rachel Scott was "horrible" and "nasty" — remains to be seen.
One Fox News pundit called Trump's performance an "absolute dumpster fire."
