Counterpoint: this forum is missing a big-time swing toward Trump among minorities

[S019ian Liberal]

Let's face it, Atlas: we're an overwhelmingly white club. And among those of us who are people of color, we tend to be disproportionately upscale, (sub)urban, and most importantly of all, young. (not meaning to engage in erasure of anybody here who doesn't fit the above description, of course)

That's a problem because I've said for a long time we are underestimating the broad shift of swaths of white Americans away from Trump, but also the pull by various other demographic groups toward him.

Especially considering the double whammy of difficulty faced by pollsters (an overwhelmingly white industry) in reaching voters of color and breaking through key racial, cultural, as well as language barriers, might we be failing to capture (in our attentiveness toward suburban swings, etc) a landscape of minority voters breaking decisively for the GOP which might doom Democrats in key battleground states this year?

[DaleCooper]

I guess we'll see who's right on election day, but I'd like to add that it's equally (if not more) off-putting when overwhelmingly white communities decide without concrete evidence that minorities are suddenly more supportive of and accepting of Trump's white supremacist platform.

[Pericles]

The reality is that there are a lot more white Americans than non-white Americans, especially in the swing states (and whites are overrepresented among those who actually turn out to vote). So two opposite big swings wouldn't "doom Democrats in key battleground states". Furthermore, it appears most likely that the swing towards Democrats among white Americans will be bigger than any swing against them with non-white Americans (if it even happens).

[S019ian Liberal]

I guess we'll see who's right on election day, but I'd like to add that it's equally (if not more) off-putting when overwhelmingly white communities decide without concrete evidence that minorities are suddenly more supportive of and accepting of Trump's white supremacist platform.

Lol if you read my text block you would see I was arguing the exact opposite, I did not declare definitively this was the case but rather warned that it was simply a possibility worth entertaining, and it would be foolish to assume (as some grossly have) that everyone will swings the exact same way as UMC suburban white voters do.

[S019ian Liberal]

two opposite big swings wouldn't "doom Democrats in key battleground states".

Maybe not, but it sure could make for a far tighter race than necessary -- and tip the margin in case of a closer-than-expected scenario among white voters overall.

Also of note: some of the Midwestern as well as Southern states in the Sun Belt do boast very substantial numbers of minority sub-groups in their electorate.

[Beet]

Can confirm that most of my parents' Chinese American friends are turning towards Trump (A lot of them voted Democrat in the past). Most white people probably will not believe this, due to Trump's comments about the Chinese Virus and so on being portrayed as racist, but they are heavily pro law & order and pro police. It's mostly minority businesses being burned down.

[Pulaski]

Can confirm that most of my parents' Chinese American friends are turning towards Trump (A lot of them voted Democrat in the past). Most white people probably will not believe this, due to Trump's comments about the Chinese Virus and so on being portrayed as racist, but they are heavily pro law & order and pro police. It's mostly minority businesses being burned down.

Anecdotally, I’ve met several Chinese-Australians here who are the most anti-CCP people I’ve ever met. Perhaps it’s a similar phenomenon to Cuban Americans; by definition, the people who’ve emigrated away from a regime might be among their most critical.

(apologies if this post is incomprehensible; I’m inebriated)

[ill ind]

  Meh
  I am married into an AA family and work in an urban AA majority location.
  This is the same crap conservative pundits were peddling back in 2012 how AA voters had no reason to vote for Obama - and look what happened.
  I saw on FB people posting a link to a Rassmussen poll showing Trump getting 50% of the AA vote and just thinking that these guys are definitely smoking something.
  One poll had Trump getting 11% of AA males and 6% of AA females.  That's probably pretty close to what will happen.

[Gone to Carolina]

Non-Whites swinging towards Trump to some degree or another is something that could potentially be happening, I guess we'll see. However, I'm skeptical how much it matters when whites are swinging the opposite way by similar margins and whites outnumber non-whites more than 2 to 1 in a national electorate (and more than that in the crucial Rust Belt states).

[tagimaucia]

Well, asians swung further away from Republicans from 2016 to 2018 than whites, hispanics, or blacks.  I guess its possible that there's some large group of asians that now like Trump but dislike other Republicans, but I don't think that's what's going on. Trump's approval in exit polls very closely matched the vote share in the house Republicans got nationally and in most states in 2018.

Hispanics and blacks both pretty much always vote for Democrats by much larger margins than the polls end up showing, not the other way around. Its usually only the boutique specialty polls like Latino Decisions that get it right with Hispanics. Polls pretty much always show hispanic Dem support in the 50s and 60s, and it usually ends up in the 70s (based on voter file analysis, not exit polls).  And based on similar analysis, 95-96% of black voters have voted for the Democratic candidate in each of the last three presidential elections. Polls often show something like 85-5 and the results are usually closer to 96-3 or 96-4.  There have definitely been some small shifts towards Republicans among blacks and hispanics from 2016-2018 that polling and actual elections have picked up, and this could continue.  These shifts are a lot smaller than the shifts in the opposite direction among whites, but they could definitely matter on the margins in some places.

[Brittain33]

Can confirm that most of my parents' Chinese American friends are turning towards Trump (A lot of them voted Democrat in the past). Most white people probably will not believe this, due to Trump's comments about the Chinese Virus and so on being portrayed as racist, but they are heavily pro law & order and pro police. It's mostly minority businesses being burned down.

Weren’t you predicting Trump’s approval rating soaring upward every week for the past two months?

[Horus]

There will be a swing towards Trump among black and hispanic voters but I'm less sure by the day that it'll be substantial. Still, it's so important that our country continues to racially depolarize and every day it does the alt right/white nationalists become a little less relevant. If the Republicans diversify a little more, these scumbags will have no home and the party can save itself from irrelevancy. Much as I hate Trump, it brought me tons of joy to see the most bigoted parts of the alt-right abandon him because he wasn't racist enough for their liking. As another poster (I think Anarcho-Statism?) put it, every day the alt right is pushed further from power is a good day. Regardless of how this election turns out, these scumbags will be further from their goal than they were four years ago.

An article on this was also just posted in the poll hype thread.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/upshot/election-polling-racial-gap.html

Honestly after Trump is gone I expect the GOP to zoom even more left on racial justice stuff, though more of the "support black businesses" kind of racial justice (possibly with an anti immigrant tilt) and less of the BLM angle.

[Tintrlvr]

This is a “story” literally every election cycle since 2004, and yet it never materializes in the actual vote, and the overall non-white vote gets more and more Democratic relative to the country each election. Therefore, it’s hard to take this any more seriously than the “young voters are swinging conservative” meme, another persistent but always incorrect narrative.

I will grant that non-white voters may trend Republican this year as swings are concentrated in the white suburban voters and some snapback of senior voters/non-college whites. But that’s more of a story of white voters than non-white voters.

[tjstarling]

This is a “story” literally every election cycle since 2004, and yet it never materializes in the actual vote, and the overall non-white vote gets more and more Democratic relative to the country each election. Therefore, it’s hard to take this any more seriously than the “young voters are swinging conservative” meme, another persistent but always incorrect narrative.

I will grant that non-white voters may trend Republican this year as swings are concentrated in the white suburban voters and some snapback of senior voters/non-college whites. But that’s more of a story of white voters than non-white voters.

Yeah, it always seems that Democrats underpoll with minorities (I can’t recall with certainty if Republicans underpoll with whites but I think that they do slightly). However, at least since 1996 if not earlier, it seems like Hispanic voters have an interesting tendency to swing a decent amount towards the incumbent.

[tagimaucia]

Another thing about these minor shifts towards Republicans is that... Republican support among blacks and hispanics is still so, so much worse than it was in 2004 and earlier.  The minor recovery that Republicans have possibly started to make is really a drop in the bucket compared to how far they fell in the prior 12 years.

[roxas11]

All the gains Trump is making among some minorities are being canceled out by the huge gains Biden is making among white voters and seniors


maybe if Trump was facing Cory Booker or running against Hillary again this would be a bigger problem but as it stands Trump is losing far more of his 2016 base compared to Biden doing only slightly worse than Hillary among some minorities

[pbrower2a]

High-ihcome blacks have typically been government employees or contractors; if they own businesses or private practices and rely heavily upon minority clienteles, they get much of their income through government programs for their clients (Medicare, Medicaid, TANF/SNAP, public payment of legal fees for indigent defendants). High incomes usually make people seek big tax cuts, but African-Americans with high incomes often know the source of their income and vote accordingly.

Because of the tendency for African-Americans (like anyone else not born into the Master Class, and white people can as much be the victims) to be victimized by low and rigid glass ceilings in private industry, rather few African-Americans fully trust the monopolistic, vertically-integrated organizations with bloated bureaucracies paid exceedingly well to treat subordinates badly. Aside from tokens, few blacks are successes in such companies, and most African-Americans do not trust Corporate America... yet.

African-Americans are much more likely to be renters than home-owners, and landlords are not the sorts of capitalists who inspire sympathy for pro-plutocracy pols whose economic ethos seems to be nothing higher than to stick it to those who have no easy alternatives but to overpay. 

Blacks still seem under-represented in the skilled trades, although that may be lessening.

Middle-class African-Americans (the old Talented Tenth, if somewhat expanded)    are as culturally conservative as any people. But successful people of any kind are less likely to believe that politics made them better off than did their efforts unless the political system became a gravy train or at least the difference between starving and thriving.

[DINGO Joe]

Counterpoint to Counterpoint--Crosstabs are a crappy way of trying to discern this.

[afleitch]

It's probable the latino vote shifts to 2008 levels. But polling suggests 2000 if not close to 1996 levels for the Dems with white voters.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Let's face it, Atlas: we're an overwhelmingly white club. And among those of us who are people of color, we tend to be disproportionately upscale, (sub)urban, and most importantly of all, young. (not meaning to engage in erasure of anybody here who doesn't fit the above description, of course)

That's a problem because I've said for a long time we are underestimating the broad shift of swaths of white Americans away from Trump, but also the pull by various other demographic groups toward him.

Especially considering the double whammy of difficulty faced by pollsters (an overwhelmingly white industry) in reaching voters of color and breaking through key racial, cultural, as well as language barriers, might we be failing to capture (in our attentiveness toward suburban swings, etc) a landscape of minority voters breaking decisively for the GOP which might doom Democrats in key battleground states this year?

Do you know the 1963 movement Gideon v Wainwright and Miranda Rights. The rights of a public defender wasn't even allowed and Miranda Rights were read to a defendant before they could arrest someone were all CR movement decisions.

As stated time and time again, Lee and Robert Oswald were cuz of General Robert E Lee a Russian Maxist whom killed Kennedy.  Both Reagan and Nixon were very pro Russian Prez along with Trump, Iran Contra sided with Russia during the Cold War. rebel Flag and Southern Strategy

Lastly Joseph Kennedy was advisor to FDR and Truman who dropped the atom bomb and killed Communism in Japan before Russia got there. The terrorist attacks on John and Bobby and King and Communize China and Vietnam was a direct result of Russia losing Japan.

Russia was an adversary before Boris Yeltsin

[2952-0-0]

Can confirm that most of my parents' Chinese American friends are turning towards Trump (A lot of them voted Democrat in the past). Most white people probably will not believe this, due to Trump's comments about the Chinese Virus and so on being portrayed as racist, but they are heavily pro law & order and pro police. It's mostly minority businesses being burned down.

My take:

You would be surprised by how many of them were captivated by his rhetoric. Many of them also think blacks and Hispanics are lazy/criminals/etc, and some are disturbed by the rhetoric coming from the "woke" left that seeks to introduce racial quotas for top universities. Still others think Trump is the first president in decades to actively confront Beijing. Pointing out that Trump lies about his supposed accomplishments, or that his racism is a threat to them, would elicit cries that you're part of whichever conspiracy is popular on the alt-right.

Unfortunately it's as if they never really escaped the rhetoric of the CCP, but merely replaced the man at the top.

I find that many of them are trapped in the non-CCP Chinese language media bubble, which is dominated by people connected to Epoch Times/Steve Bannon/etc. Unfortunately, the CCP has done such a good job influencing the "respectable" Chinese-language media outside China's borders, that the only alternatives are those nutcases. I first hear about the latest right-wing conspiracy theories there, and not through my own Twitter feed.

The second-generation Chinese-Americans are as lean D as their white, professional-educated compatriots. A minority of them are cringeworthily woke, but the majority of them would fit in with the average suburban professional demographic.

[Sir Mohamed]

Stop with this "personal experience" stuff that is NOT or hardly backed up by hard data. People have all too often invoked these talking points with no substantial basis. Just because you personally know AAs voting for Trump doesn't mean there is an overall shift among the community toward him. Even when you're part of this community. It's like me saying "all Arab Americans I know vote for Biden, therefore Trump is lucky to get 5% of them". I actually know a several Americans with Middle East roots and all of them are voting for Biden. Does that mean Trump has no support among this demographic? Of course not.

There is no data whatsoever suggesting a trend like this is going to happen. And the data means more than someone's personal experience or gut feeling. Trump won't do better among AAs than in 2016, and even if he were to get 1-2% more in vote share, these "gains" will be offset by increased turnout. Remember weak turnout among blacks was a key factor in HRC's loss. The only minority Trump has made some inroads, according to data, is Cuban Americans. But this is at best a wash for him in FL with Biden cutting into his support from older white voters. Biden generally is doing better than HRC among white voters, including WWC, which is why he is leading the Rust Belt and highly competitive or even ahead in FL.

[lfromnj]

It wasn't really weakturnout that killed Hillary in 2016, she got fairly normal turnout, trying to compare that to 2008 and 2012 turnout is crazy. AA's would just never turnout at that rate like they did for Obama. Remember in 2012 despite Roy Moore almost losing the state for state supreme court in Alabama, he got more votes than Romney did in 99% black precincts.

[Xing]

Big-time swing? No. If we're talking about personal experiences, my wife is Latina and has several connections to the community. While Latinos are not universally against Trump, I've seen no evidence of hoards of Clinton/Trump voters within the community, and the majority despise Trump and see him as a racist.

[Asta]

That's a trade I'm willing to take. I've long been a proponent of Democrats focusing more on gaining white voters. White voters consistently turn out even in midterms and are spread out more evenly across the map. If you don't do well with whites, you're bound to face disadvantage in senate races as well.