By Dave Andrusko
One thing I didn’t expect from Thomas B. Edsall was a story in today’s New York Times headlined “One Thing Keeping Democrats Up at Night.” And the “one thing” is what, exactly?
What we’ve been writing about for a couple of years. “Democrats Are Hemorrhaging Support With Voters of Color” as polling expert Nate Silver starkly described their predicament.
In other words, perhaps not a “racial realignment” yet, maybe not even a “slow-motion realignment” but surely enough to “keep Democrats up at night.”
What would keep Democrats up all night is Edsall’s matter-of-fact contention that “Many of America’s nonwhite voters have long held much more conservative views than their voting patterns would suggest.”
There is no doubt something’s afoot. The debate, Edsall writes, “is over whether the adverse trends for Democrats are long-lasting and structural or temporary vacillations unique to the current campaign.”
On the one hand,
This multiracial, multiethnic population [Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans] constitutes one third of the electorate, according to an article published by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia’s, “The Transformation of the American Electorate,” which was written by Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory.
“Eight months out from the election, polls are still suggesting 2024 will be the largest racial realignment since the Civil Rights Act was passed,” Adam Carlson, a data analyst with the Brunswick Group, a corporate consulting firm, recently posted on X (formerly Twitter).
Three days later, John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter for the Financial Times, contended that “American Politics Is Undergoing a Racial Realignment.”
On the other hand, Jacob Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington, rejoins
The overall takeaway is that we’ve seen some Latino movement toward Trump in some parts of the country, and potentially some Asian American movement as well. It’s an important shift, but it’s uncertain how durable it is, and it’s not unseen in earlier periods, such as George W. Bush in 2004.
One final thought.
The trends in these subgroups provide little comfort to the Biden campaign.
Among Black voters, Biden led Trump by 55 points (73-18), far less than his 83-point margin in 2020. Among Hispanics, Biden led by 6 points (48-42), compared with a 24-point advantage in 2020. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, Biden led by 8 points (50-42) compared with 24 points in 2020.
Despite the erosion of Black, Hispanic and youth support since 2020, Biden remained competitive in Carlson’s data compilation — just two points behind Trump (47-45) among all respondents. This was possible because Biden made modest gains among very large subgroups: 1.3 points among 2,014 white college graduates, 0.6 points among 2,103 non-college whites, 4 points among 923 voters 50 to 64, 1.8 points among the 2,208 65 and over.
Let Emily West, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, have the last word for now. She argues that
“Nonwhite Americans who previously may have voted Democrat for identity-based reasons are increasingly likely to vote more sincerely according to their conservative ideology or policy preference, and thus vote Republican.”
A fascinating read. Do take time to check it out.