(breitbart) – Support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is tanking in battleground Minnesota, a new polling memorandum obtained exclusively by Breitbart News demonstrates.
The top-line presidential campaign numbers from this survey, which show a statistical tie between incumbent GOP President Donald Trump 46.5 percent and Democrat nominee Joe Biden at 46.9 percent, have already been released.
However, the deeper stats demonstrate the public’s hard turn against BLM as a movement in recent weeks through other questions in the poll and are reported by Breitbart News exclusively.
The survey, conducted by the Trafalgar Group for Conservative Clergy of Color in mid-August, shows that the approval rating for BLM has dropped to just 53 percent in Minnesota with 36.2 percent disapproving of the movement and 10.8 percent who are unsure. While that is still a positive majority who say they approve of BLM, the deeper questions about the movement show troubling signs for the leftists and Democrats who rushed earlier this year to embrace it in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
Conservative Clergy of Color is a group of black conservative faith leaders who were concerned about the rise of BLM as a movement and came together to, as the group’s website states, “set the record straight” when it comes to these issues.
When survey respondents in the poll were asked if BLM “has made race relations better, worse or about the same,” a strong plurality of 45 percent of Minnesota likely voters surveyed said they believed BLM made race relations worse. Only 34 percent believe that BLM made race relations better, and 20 percent believe about the same.
A majority, 52.2 percent, said they disagreed when asked if the leaders of BLM “care about people like me” while only 47.8 percent said BLM’s leaders did care about them.
Asked if BLM is a “violent organization,” 36.4 percent said yes while 54.6 percent said no and 9 percent were unsure. Only 53.3 percent said they welcome BLM in their neighborhood, while 46.7 percent said BLM was not welcome in their neighborhood. While both of those questions represent majority positives for BLM, they are slim majorities with very high levels of minority opposition to the movement.
When asked if black Americans should be paid reparations “to make up for slavery and discrimination,” an overwhelming majority of 72.8 percent disagreed and only 27.2 percent agreed.
After explaining all of this, a memo accompanying the polling data from the Trafalgar Group’s Robert Cahaly to Bishop Aubrey Shines, the chairman of Conservative Clergy of Color, concludes that the brand of BLM is too damaged to be effective in Minnesota politics — and may actually backfire on BLM supporters.
“In conclusion, the survey suggests the voter consensus that BLM needs to successfully advocate for the more popular changes they have built a movement around, no longer exist,” Trafalgar’s Cahaly wrote in the memo to Shines. “More importantly the reason for this loss of voter confidence is ongoing violence conducted in BLM’s name as well as the organization’s own actions and revelations of their full agenda. As it stands now the BLM brand is too damaged in Minnesota to be effective.”
The poll surveyed 1141 likely voters in Minnesota from Aug. 15 to Aug. 18 with a margin of error of 2.98 percent.
In other words, the significant drop-off in public support for BLM seems to indicate and explain why Trump is surging in battleground states like Minnesota — and why Biden is lagging. It’s also worth noting these questions were asked of polling respondents before Kenosha, Wisconsin, broke out into riots, spreading the left’s violence beyond big metropolitan cities into suburban neighborhoods across the country.
In the wake of the Republican National Convention (RNC) this past week, from which Trump seems to have gotten a bump nationally and in battleground states, Biden was forced to change his campaign strategy in both style and substance. Biden left his basement for in-person campaign events for the first time in months on Monday to give a speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in which he tried to blame Trump for the violence being caused by leftist rioters and looters across the country. Trump, meanwhile, is on Tuesday touring Kenosha, Wisconsin, the latest community ravaged by the leftist violence and riots.
A Republican has not won Minnesota in a presidential election since 1972, meaning that if Trump were able to pull it off in November against Biden it would be the first time in nearly half a century — 48 years to be exact — that a GOP presidential candidate won the Iron Range state’s electoral votes. Last week, several Iron Range Democrat mayors outside the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul shunned their party establishment to switch sides and endorse Trump’s re-election as Vice President Mike Pence campaigned in Duluth.
In 2016, Trump came within 45,000 votes of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in Minnesota. The fourth-place finisher, Never Trumper Evan McMullin, actually got more votes than the difference between finishing with 53,000 plus votes. FiveThirtyEight this week ran a piece suggesting Minnesota is likely the next blue state to flip and become red in a presidential election.
“Most ominously for Democrats, there is evidence that Minnesota is becoming redder over time, with 2016 being a particular inflection point,” FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich wrote. “In 1984, the state was 18.2 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. But in 2016, for the first time since 1952, Minnesota voted more Republican than the rest of the U.S.”
MN %2720 Aug Full Report MP by Breitbart News on Scribd
CCCN Cover Memo v8 by Breitbart News on Scribd
breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/01/exclusive-minnesota-polling-blm-approval-tanks-key-battleground-state/
