Nate Silver: democrats are hemorrhaging support with voters of color

[ProgressiveModerate]

One thing to remember is at least with the black vote, even if Trump got only say 20%, that's still a massive improvement over what Republicans normally get.

Blacks in the U.S. are split into 2 groups: Southern blacks that live everywhere in their state (both in cities and in rural areas) and blacks everywhere else in the country (where blacks live only in city metros in large enough numbers). As a percentage of state population and therefore general election electorate, blacks are most important in Southern states. Any broad improvement of say at least 5 points in general black voting numbers for Trump I would think make states like Georgia and North Carolina unwinnable for Biden when you consider how many raw votes swing that would represent and the current voting math for Democrats in these states requires them to currently get 95% of the black vote to barely win the state. Their impact elsewhere would be much smaller.

Hispanics should be likewise split up into their own "Southern blacks" and "blacks everywhere else" groups, although how they should be split up there's not an uncontroversial way to do it. SoCal Latinos are not Texas Latinos who are not Florida Latinos who are not Upper Midwest Latinos. Mexicans and Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Central Americans are not the same people by a longshot. But they are a large voting group that needs to be considered in a number of states.

Asians I think are too small, widely dispersed, and not consolidated (a Vietnamese descendant and a Chinese descendant have completely different points of view politically) to matter taking the demographic to the national presidential election. Removing Hawaii which is a demographic outlier, I think Asians/Pacific Islanders as a group only rise to being important demographically in California, where there's no question what the outcome will be.

This post def makes some good points. One thing I would add that is a bit counterintuitive is that precinct results seem to indicate that rural and small town southern blacks were actually some of Biden's best blacks, with Biden getting 96-99% of the vote in many precincts. Trump suddenly getting 20% in these types of communities would be a massive development, especially because he'd be increasingly his vote totals by a factor of 10 - that's very impressive even if he's starting from a low baseline.

I think a big question that's harder to analyze is how blacks who live in heavily non-black communities vote. Increasingly, this group is more likely to be socially integrated into their surrounding community and hence might pick up their voting patterns, but by definition, this group is hard to analyze because they're a small minority in any given precinct. If black voters swing notably right in 2024, I think this group may go a long way in powering that swing.

I do think Dems can offset moderate rightwards shift amongst black communities by gaining with other groups. Good example of this might be Texas 2020; in 2020 Hispanics across Texas swung hard right, but the state still swung left because Democrats continued to make gains in suburban and college educated parts of the state. In GA, even if black voters swung 10% right, another 2020 style suburban swing would offset that.

[OSR stands with Israel]

This is the classic example of something that has been constantly popping up in polling that hasn’t been seen in special elections or primaries. Also turnout has been too high in the primaries and specials to just write them off

We have seen it in elections though. Literally look at my above post for evidence of that .

[Pres Mike]

I don't see blacks in Georgia flipping in any number. In the last 3 years, the Abrams/Warnock machine elected two senators and decided the 2020 presidential race. Why give that up?

[coloradocowboi]

First of all, this data can be explained by dramatic shifts to the right among young men of color. To predict that it will continue ignore that young women of color are, if anything, even further to the left than their parents and a sizable remainder of young men of color are leftists who probably will not vote but would never voter Republican if they did.

There has been a realignment, the GOP isn’t going to win any more than 30% of voters of color this year and probably wouldn’t ever win majority support in any election in the near future.

As far as black voters go, they can definitely still make inroads with men, especially working class men. But I think black women is a really tough nut to crack. There are too many broad policy disagreements. I don’t think any republican candidate anywhere could get more than 10% of black womens votes.

Latinas are also a problem for them. And they’ve already picked off the lowest hanging fruit - norteños and Californians who were anglicized decades ago, Cubans, evangelicals, Venezuelans. The average Latino is Mexican American, center left on almost all the issues, more pro lgbt than the average white, Roman Catholic… not necessarily unwinnable by the gop but very issue-unaligned with them.

Asian Americans are a wild card but don’t even remotely vote as a monolith anyway. And, yes, are assimilating quickly in some parts of the country.

Native Americans in some parts of the country are actually becoming *more* competitive for democrats though. Bidens gaza moves could conceivably win back a ton of SWANA Americans, who would never go for trump.

It’s a complicated and fluid situation. I actually think it would be an encouraging sign we live in a post racial America. But I live in the real America and am sure that we don’t lol. I’m still predicting a 70-30 spread in bidens favor. Tho tbh RFK could be competitive with the same kind of POC voters trump is trying to pick off. I don’t know how seriously to take him yet

[Duke of York]

Yet election results aren't showing this at all.

[RI]

Yet election results aren't showing this at all.

Disagree. Look at partisan PPE ballot choice in open primary states. Gen X/Millennial Hispanics and Asians, especially men, are clearly moving right. Similar black voters may be moving as well, but I'd guess to a lesser extent.

[Duke of York]

so why didn't we see this in special elections or in the general election in 22 and 23?

[jojoju1998]

so why didn't we see this in special elections or in the general election in 22 and 23?

People of color, especially the first generation immigrants, are less likely to vote in off years.

Anecedote, my Vietnamese parents didn't vote at all in the 2022 midterms.



The relatively higher turnout in 2022 was attributed to white college educated voters.

[jojoju1998]

https://www.ppic.org/blog/who-voted-in-the-2022-election-and-what-does-it-mean-for-2024/

" The composition of voters also shifted. Turnout fell across the board, but it fell far more among voters of color. For Latinos, the decline was especially sharp, with turnout falling 38 percentage points compared to 34 points for Asian Americans and 29 points for African Americans. Turnout among white voters declined 21 points. Larger turnout gaps for Asian Americans and Latinos have been a feature of past midterms, but the persistence of the pattern here is important"

[oldtimer]

https://www.ppic.org/blog/who-voted-in-the-2022-election-and-what-does-it-mean-for-2024/

" The composition of voters also shifted. Turnout fell across the board, but it fell far more among voters of color. For Latinos, the decline was especially sharp, with turnout falling 38 percentage points compared to 34 points for Asian Americans and 29 points for African Americans. Turnout among white voters declined 21 points. Larger turnout gaps for Asian Americans and Latinos have been a feature of past midterms, but the persistence of the pattern here is important"

Doesn't look much different to any other Midterm.
Midterms should be compared to previous Midterms.

So far the primary results in Texas, California, and Washington look consistent with what the polls suggest.

[ProgressiveModerate]

so why didn't we see this in special elections or in the general election in 22 and 23?

People of color, especially the first generation immigrants, are less likely to vote in off years.

Anecedote, my Vietnamese parents didn't vote at all in the 2022 midterms.



The relatively higher turnout in 2022 was attributed to white college educated voters.

Vietnamese voters (and Asian ethnic minorities generally) always have really bad turnout, regardless of it's a Pres cycle or a off year. This means even a small increase in turnout can have a disproportionate impact on the margin in these types of places.

[Bojack Horseman]

This doesn’t make any sense to be happening at the same time the Republican Party is openly embracing white supremacy. It’s like expecting rural whites to flip back to the Democrats by nominating Al Sharpton.

[Open Source Intelligence]

This doesn’t make any sense to be happening at the same time the Republican Party is openly embracing white supremacy. It’s like expecting rural whites to flip back to the Democrats by nominating Al Sharpton.

Black voters from my time growing up in North Carolina and Fort Wayne politics are parochial as hell. They're Democrats because they have to belong to a party but being black is more important than being a Democrat. Now announcing yourself publicly as Republican would've been about as well received as going to the front of your mother's church and announcing to the congregation that you're gay, but there are more black Republicans now than there have been since 1932. J.C. Watts when he was in Congress was just about it. There's now quite a good number across the country, and again, accounting for parochialness, that does matter. Blacks see politics as the more of them there are, the greater the power the whole community has. I see it in Fort Wayne. They've completely dominated the nominations for the winnable races in the metro area inside the local Democratic Party. All the other races, they don't care about nor lift a finger to help the white Democrats win. Leave Fort Wayne, Andre Carson doesn't do sh*t to help out any Democrats in Indiana outside of Indianapolis (read: white Democrats).

As far as what Progressive Moderate said regarding blacks in not black Dominated areas, I don't think they'll matter much in the long run. One, the demographics surrounding them will overwhelm them on a national presidential level (similar to what I say for Asian Americans). Two, as far as influence, "coconuts" as I've heard them referred to wre not going to drive the black community as a whole.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

He needs to just stop

[Mehmentum]

Look, we've obviously seen a gradual racial depolarization since 2012. So far, this trend doesn't seem to be hurting Democrats as they've slightly gained with white voters and the share of non-white voters in the electorate is increasing (compare 2012 to 2020, or 2014 to 2022).


(taken from exit polls)

So I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the trend continuing.  I highly doubt we'll see a massive sea change over the course of one election cycle without a similarly massive precipitating event.  You can't compare polling done 8 months out from an election (especially polling crosstabs!) to exit polls.

So imo, the basic argument that racial depolarization is happening- accurate.  The specific claims being made, likely highly exaggerated.