The 2020 election demolished the premise that demographic shifts could create a Democratic majority if we just redoubled efforts to rally “the base.” Statistically, America may indeed become a majority-minority nation by 2050, but this election demonstrated that ethnic groups do not vote as blocs. ...Kuttner looks at some of the issues affecting the three voting groups mentioned there.
Exit polls showed about a six-point swing to Trump among Blacks, five points among Hispanics, and seven points among Asian Americans.
He emphasizes again at the end the need for Democrats remember that "demography is not destiny" for the future performance of the Democratic Party. But he does mention a critical point that seems not to have come across as clearly as I might have expected after November:
It’s still the case that people of color voted overwhelmingly Democratic. Biden won 87 percent of the Black vote and 66 percent of the Latino vote. And it’s still the case that we need heroic efforts to register African Americans, Latinos, and other groups subjected to voter suppression.I'm going to repeat in the next few paragraphs something I discussed in Just what does the actual vote total for Trump last week mean? 1/09/2020. Here it's important to keep some basic mathematics in mind. A comparison of the effect of the lower number of voters among a particular demographic subgroup with the higher one comparing two different percentages between 2016 and 2020.
100 people (2016 percentages) 6% = 6 people for Trump, 94 people for Clinton and other)So the percentage change is something to analyze and to be concerned about. But gaining more votes is more important than the percentage in terms of winning elections. So the non-Trump side in this scenario benefits from the higher turnout despite the lower percentage. A significant change in the turnout can muddy the picture in looking at changes in voting behavior among particular demographic segments of the electorate.
100 people (2020 percentages) 8% = 8 people for Trump, 92 people for Biden and other)
1000 people (2016 percentages) 6% = 60 people for Trump, 940 people for Clinton and other)
1000 people (2020 percentages) 8% = 80 people for Trump, 920 people for Biden and other)
If the turnout in 2016 is 100, Trump gets 6 votes (6%). If turnout is 1000 in 2020, Trump gets 72 more votes (8%) than in 2016.
If the turnout in 2016 is 100, non-Trump gets 94 votes (94%). If turnout is 1000 in 2020, non-Trump gets 826 more votes (92%). In other words, non-Trump gains 754 more votes than Trump gains. In other words, the lower percentage in that voter demographic in 2020 gives more of an advantage in actual numbers of votes to the non-Trump side.
In other words, we shouldn't lose sight of the proverbial forest for the trees.
Laura Santhanam's story 3 voter trends that helped Biden (PBS Newshour 11/09/2020) includes this graphic illustration of the "forest," showing minority vote percentages for Biden in 2020:
The biggest lesson Democrats need to remember from figures like this is that Democrats need to deliver for these majorities among groups including African-Americans and Latinos. This is pretty basic politics. But the Democrats have to deliver on more than "woke" symbolism or superficial identity politics.
This brings us to the angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin argument about whether class, race and/or gender is more politically important for why non-wealthy white people vote Republican. A friend of mine recently posted this on Facebook:
For the race and class aspect of this perennial argument, that image reminds us that this was a very conscious strategy by wealthy planters from way back, like in the "slave patrols" that long predated the Civil War, in which non-slaveowning white men were required to patrol for slaves off the plantation without their owners' permission. It created a definite practical and psychological bond between the wealthy slaveowning planters who were screwing over the ordinary white people and limiting their chances in life and generally screwing up the country with their slave system.
This is an old game, in which of course white racism plays a distinct role and of course class and income and opportunity play a role. The practice of companies in the South using African-American workers as strikebreakers when their regular all-white workforce went on trike was a continuation of the same game. As Donald Trump has reminded us every day for the last four years, plutocrats can be clueless about a lot of things But when it comes to keeping their "inferiors" down, they can usually manage to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Weiyi Cai and Ford Fessenden reported at length on Latino and Asian-American voting in the Presidential election in Immigrant Neighborhoods Shifted Red as the Country Chose Blue New York Times 12/20/2020.
We can always use particular local development to obscure larger trends and vice versa. But some issues do blend the two. For instance, it's the case nationwide that the Republicans' get-out-the-vote operations are more consistent across the country than the Democrats'. This is largely a self-inflicted wound on the Democrats' part, because they have been reluctant for most of the last 30 years to invest adequately in building local party organizations. During Howard Dean's chairmanship of the party 2005-2009, he tried to reverse that trend but Barack Obama didn't embrace the importance of that approach when he became President and head of the Democratic Party.
And in 2020, Democrats tended to do less of the traditional in-person campaigning than the Republicans did. So it still seems to me very likely that some significant part of the shift in minority voters toward Trump is a function of better turnout among people who were leaning Republican. And the very fact that Trump was such a central and sensational issue in the election tended to boost Republican turnout more generally.
Issues like the weakness of the Democrats' ground-game, especially get-out-the-vote, and complications related to the pandemic may have been particularly important for Latino voting in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where the Democrats were expecting a significantly better performance. (Musa al-Gharbi, White men swung to Biden. Trump made gains with black and Latino voters. Why? Guardian 11/14/2020; Alexandra Villarreal, Why Democrats lost Latino voters along Texas border: 'They relied on loyalty' Guardian 11/07/2020)
Here are some additional reports on the subject.
Ashitha Nagesh, US election 2020: Why Trump gained support among minorities BBC News 11/22/2020. Heavy on anecdotal interviews.
Sean Collins, Trump made gains with Black voters in some states. Here’s why. Vox 11/04/2020 Discusses the role of wealthy minority pro-Trump celebrities.
Avik Roy, No, Trump Didn’t Win ‘The Largest Share Of Non-White Voters Of Any Republican In 60 Years’ Forbes 11/09/2020 Debunks a favorite Republican talking point from their "Demucrat plantation" narrative.
William Frey, Exit polls show both familiar and new voting blocs sealed Biden’s win Brookings Institute 11/12/2020 Focuses mainly on the shifts from 2016 to 2020 among white voters in Biden's direction.
Peter White, Minority Voters Took Trump Down Tennessee Tribune 11/12/2020 Stresses the importance of minority voters in Biden's win.
Oh, and Republicans still don't think black voters as a group are anything close to their friends. (Aaron Orrion et al, Trump election challenges sound alarm among voters of color AP News 11/22/2020)
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