Urban Black and Hispanic turnout in key states?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Basically in key states like MI, WI, and PA, urban Black and Hispanic turnout in major cities was went down from 2016-->2020 despite the huge investment in those states and the huge turnout bumps statewide including in whiter parts of these same cities. In some areas, turnout was down as much as 20-30% which is significant. Literally the only other areas that saw notable turnout declines in these states were college campuses for obvious reasons.

First off, why did this decline happen? And secondly, will it revert in 2024?

My initial guess would be the lack of ground campaigning which is disproportionately effective in heavily urban non-white areas. Maybe around the margins population decline, but that doesn't explain all of it - these communities didn't lose 25% of their population in 4 years. I imagine Obama could also be a factor - post Obama perhaps a lot of black folks have tapped out of politics.

Below are some maps showing the change in turnout from 2016-->2020 in key cities. Green means turnout increase, red means turnout decrease. As you can see red corresponds strongly with where non-white voters live.

[ottermax]

I believe in 2022 it got even worse... so warning signs for Democrats especially as Trump will energize his supporters to turnout.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I believe in 2022 it got even worse... so warning signs for Democrats especially as Trump will energize his supporters to turnout.

To be fair, black turnout is always terrible in midterms; it was definitely worse than 2018 across the board though. It was more comparable or worse than 2010 and 2014 in many cases.

Sadly a lot of key states like PA, MI, and NV don't have 2022 data in redistricter yet so it's a bit hard to analyze just how bad things were. With WI though, the change in turnout from 2018 to 2022 clearly favored Republicans:



2014-2022 turnout change is also a brutal story

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[ottermax]

The other possibility besides turnout is that people have moved out of these neighborhoods and this simply reflects population decline in high poverty black neighborhoods (especially these declines from 2014 to 2022).

However it's still quite concerning to see such declines - the 2014 turnout issues were a bit of a foreshadowing to 2016.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The other possibility besides turnout is that people have moved out of these neighborhoods and this simply reflects population decline in high poverty black neighborhoods (especially these declines from 2014 to 2022).

However it's still quite concerning to see such declines - the 2014 turnout issues were a bit of a foreshadowing to 2016.

According to the census most of these areas have been relatively stagnant or only mild 10% decreases. Of course, the 2020 census didn't fully capture people moving because of the pandemic, but these urban non-white communities tend to be poorer and the people within them generally have low ability to move.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

I don't even buy that non-white low propensity voters are still as Democratic as they were before 2020

[ottermax]

I don't even buy that non-white low propensity voters are still as Democratic as they were before 2020

There's pretty strong evidence for the gains Republicans have made with this group in terms of persuasion. Plus it is fairly easy to go up from percentages as low as 5-8%.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

I don't even buy that non-white low propensity voters are still as Democratic as they were before 2020

There's pretty strong evidence for the gains Republicans have made with this group in terms of persuasion. Plus it is fairly easy to go up from percentages as low as 5-8%.

Also, the polls in 2022 greatly overestimated Rs with minorities, and it's possible it's because they answered the polls saying they would vote R but did not actually vote

[mileslunn]

It might go up as I believe those areas had some of the worst levels of covid and Democrats tended to take covid more seriously than Republicans thus probably less door to door campaigning and also people in those communities with inability to take time off if sick and high cost of health care may have stayed home as being extra cautious about covid risk.