{"id":14039,"date":"2023-11-28T18:19:48","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T18:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14039"},"modified":"2023-11-28T18:20:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T18:20:17","slug":"this-may-be-bidens-best-hope-of-reversing-his-slide-with-black-and-latino-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14039","title":{"rendered":"This may be Biden\u2019s best hope of reversing his slide with Black and Latino voters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Ronald Brownstein<\/strong>, CNN<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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President Joe Biden\u2019s<\/a> weakness in polls<\/a> among non-White voters is boosting Republican hopes that the GOP is poised to extend its most important political breakthrough of modern times \u2013 and potentially to reshape the competition between the two parties along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most consequential political gain for Republicans in recent decades has been their increasing strength among working-class White voters \u2013 a process that began under Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and 1980s but peaked in recent years under Donald Trump. Once the brawny backbone of the Democrats\u2019 \u201cNew Deal\u201d coalition that dominated American politics from the 1930s until the 1960s, White voters without a college degree have become the foundation of the modern GOP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now some political observers believe working-class minority voters are moving along the same track \u2013 and largely for the same reasons. Just as millions of working-class White voters recoiled from Democratic cultural liberalism during the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, they argue, working-class Latino and even Black voters are shifting toward the GOP now in rejection of \u201cwoke\u201d ideology on issues such as crime, immigration and LGBTQ rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such arguments are fueling the increasingly common assertions that Republicans are building a \u201cmultiracial populist coalition,\u201d as GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini argues in his copiously researched recent book, \u201cParty of the People.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While \u201cthe rightward shift\u201d of White- and non-White voters without a college degree toward the GOP in the Trump years \u201cmight seem like two discrete, unrelated events \u2026the two groups share a common working-class DNA and their political shifts stem from the same root,\u201d Ruffini writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wide array of recent polls shows Biden with an unusually small lead for a Democrat among both Black and Latino voters in a potential 2024 rematch with Trump. But many analysts say it\u2019s less clear that Democrats are facing a lasting structural realignment among those voters \u2013 much less a change rooted in a long-term cultural alienation from the party \u2013 rather than immediate dissatisfaction with the economy under Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI keep looking for it as well, but you are not seeing as much evidence for a culture war driving any kind of change at this moment,\u201d said Carlos Odio, senior vice president for research at Equis Research, a Democratic polling firm that specializes in Latino voters. \u201cWhat\u2019s driving Trump and the Republicans is the economy. At the end of the day, \u2018It\u2019s the economy, stupid\u2019 over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything, rather than cultural alienation driving working-class non-White voters toward the GOP, continuing resistance in those communities to Republican priorities on many culturally and racially tinged issues may be Democrats\u2019 best hope in 2024 of recapturing non-White voters disenchanted with Biden\u2019s performance and the economy. Despite all the discontent over Biden, almost three-fifths of non-White voters without a college degree agreed that the \u201cRepublican Party has been taken over by racists,\u201d in a recent national survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, according to previously unpublished results provided to CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stakes in this struggle are enormous. White voters without a college degree, now the electorate\u2019s most Republican-leaning group, have been steadily shrinking as a share of the total vote<\/a> at a rate of about 2 to 3 percentage points in each presidential election for decades. To offset that decline, Republicans need to find votes elsewhere. The party is facing resistance among college-educated White voters, many of whom have recoiled from the hard-edged cultural and racial views the party has embraced under Trump. To strategists like Ruffini, the most plausible path for the GOP to remain competitive over time is to grow its vote among non-White voters, especially those without college degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith the Republicans\u2019 strongest group\u201d of White voters without a college degree \u201cshrinking and their weakest set of groups growing, Republicans will need to increase their support levels across all parts of the multiracial populist coalition just to keep pace with where they are today,\u201d Ruffini writes in his engaging new book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All data sources about voting behavior agree that the GOP has improved its performance among minority voters without a college degree over the past decade. For many observers perhaps the most surprising result in the 2020 election was Trump\u2019s improvement among those voters after four years in which he frequently appealed to White racial resentments and pursued militant immigration policies, such as separating children from their parents at the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exit polls<\/a> conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN found that Trump\u2019s vote among non-White voters without a college degree increased from just 20% in 2016 to 26% in 2020. Research by Catalist<\/a>, a Democratic voter targeting firm whose analyses are respected in both parties, found that Trump\u2019s vote among Latino voters without a college degree spiked from 61% in 2016 to 72% in 2020; Trump also enjoyed a modest 3 percentage point gain among Black voters without a college degree over that period, Catalist found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly why Trump made those gains, though, remains a matter of dispute \u2013 with important implications for 2024 and beyond. Advocates of the realignment theory argue that Trump\u2019s gains represented an ideological rejection of Democrats among centrist and right-leaning minority voters, prompted partly by their opposition to the calls to \u201cdefund the police\u201d in the racial justice protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. They pointed to evidence in exit polls<\/a> that a much higher percentage of minority voters who identified as conservative voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But many others, such as Odio, believe Trump\u2019s 2020 non-White improvement was grounded in the belief that he was more qualified to run the economy. Those in this camp believe the key factor for many working-class minority voters was Trump\u2019s determination to quickly reopen the economy after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhat to the surprise of both parties, the movement of non-college-educated minority voters toward the GOP stalled in the 2022 midterm election, even though those voters expressed widespread disenchantment with the economy and Biden\u2019s performance. In Catalist\u2019s analysis<\/a>, Democrats won a slightly higher percentage of Latinos without a college degree in the 2022 House races than they did in the 2020 presidential contest. Most important for Democrats, Senate incumbents Mark Kelly in Arizona and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada \u2013 probably the two states where Latino voters are most important for the party \u2013 also ran slightly better among non-college-educated Latinos than Biden did in their states, according to previously unpublished Catalist results provided to CNN. (The exit polls<\/a>, differing slightly, showed a small further national gain in 2022 for the GOP among non-White voters without a college degree.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odio, though, warns that Democrats can only take so much comfort from their 2022 success among minority voters, particularly those without college degrees. The reason, he says, is that the openness toward Trump and the GOP has been most pronounced among economically marginal Latino voters who are largely disconnected from the political system and much less likely to turn out in a midterm than presidential year election. \u201cSo much of the dynamism and volatility in the Latino vote is among less frequent voters,\u201d Odio said. \u201cSo in important ways, you almost have to clear 2022 out of your mind.\u201d Some Democratic strategists who focus on Black voters believe the same is true in that community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The swarm of recent polls showing Biden leading Trump only narrowly with Latino and Black voters has prompted a new wave of concern about the party\u2019s position in minority communities. Especially ominous for Democrats is the large share of both Latino and Black voters in multiple polls who say Biden\u2019s economic policies have not helped them and\/or say they trust Trump more than Biden to manage the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daron Shaw, a Republican pollster and University of Texas political scientist who co-conducted a recent large national survey of Latino voters for Univision<\/a>, says that those attitudes mean \u201cthere is absolutely an opening\u201d for Trump or another GOP nominee to advance further with non-White voters in 2024. Just as many White working-class voters \u201cfelt like the financial crisis of \u201908-\u201809 left them rudderless [and] eroded their position in American society \u2026 both on economic grounds and on cultural grounds, there are voters within the Latino community as well, who feel no one is representing them,\u201d Shaw said during a press call about the Univision poll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The risk to Democrats, Shaw argued, is that some of those working-class Latino voters believe the party is distracted by what he sees as cultural causes, such as LGBTQ rights, and \u201cis not as interested\u201d in their bread-and-butter economic concerns \u201cas they have been\u201d previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sergio Garcia-Rios, a University of Texas political scientist who partnered with Shaw on the Univision poll, said the Latinos supporting Trump are drawn to him mostly on economic grounds. \u201cTo those who are voting for Trump, they remember that in 2016-\u201917-\u201818 the economy worked better,\u201d he said. \u201cYou and I can disagree with them on whether or not that is true. But that\u2019s what they remember.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several grassroots organizers who work in minority communities told me that their experience in 2022 demonstrated that Democrats can win an economic argument even among minority voters who feel squeezed by the cost of living under Biden. Melissa Morales, founder and president of Somos Votantes, a group that mobilizes Latino voters, said Cortez Masto\u2019s victory last year showed that Democrats can survive discontent about the economy if they convince voters they are pursuing policies to help them make ends meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key for Biden, she said, is to show Latinos,\u201c\u2018Here\u2019s what I am doing to try to make this better. We are creating better jobs, I am working actively to lower prices.\u2019 If Biden can present that to voters, there is still an opening here. The fact that costs are high isn\u2019t the end game \u2013 it\u2019s what are you going to do about that that voters are looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, Matt Morrison \u2013 executive director of Working America, a group that politically organizes working-class voters who are not in unions \u2013 said the organization\u2019s experience in 2022 showed that there remains \u201ca critical difference\u201d between White and non-White voters without a college degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the group\u2019s door-to-door or phone canvassing efforts, he said, they\u2019ve typically had far more success moving working-class Black and Latino voters to support Democratic candidates around an economic message than they have at persuading White voters at similar education and income levels. Even when organizers can win an economic argument with working-class White voters, he said, those voters often still remain dubious of Democrats because they believe the party favors minorities. That second barrier doesn\u2019t exist with voters of color, Morrison said. \u201cWhen you communicate to Black and brown voters, they are far more likely to come back to Democrats,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cThey lack that social glue that makes them say, \u2018I am of a different tribe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, the depth of discontent about the economy among minority voters is likely to remain a crucial hurdle for Biden. Democrats are accustomed to winning at least 7 in 10 minority voters in presidential elections; even if inflation continues to subside, it seems highly unlikely by Election Day that 7 in 10 minority voters will put more faith in Biden than a Republican to manage the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means if Biden is to match, or even approach, Democrats\u2019 historic performance among minority voters, he\u2019ll need other issues to convert some who are dubious about his economic record. And resistance to the GOP\u2019s priorities on cultural and racially tinged issues probably offers him the best opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who assert that minorities are abandoning the Democratic Party on cultural grounds often point to the large share of non-White voters who express broad views about US society more often associated with Republicans. Ruy Teixeira, a longtime Democratic electoral analyst who has become an unflinching critic of the party\u2019s policies on social issues, has noted<\/a>, for instance, that most Latinos agree with statements asserting the US is the greatest country in the world and reject the idea that racism is embedded in American institutions. \u201cIt is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Democrats\u2019 emphasis on social and democracy issues, while catnip to some socially liberal, educated voters, leaves many working-class and Hispanic voters cold,\u201d writes Teixeira, co-author of the recent book, \u201cWhere Have All The Democrats Gone?,\u201d which makes similar arguments as Ruffini.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet as polling by the Public Religion Research Institute, Univision and other groups show, on many of the actual cultural policies dominating political debate, most minority voters \u2013 including most of those without a college degree \u2013 align with Democrats, not Republicans. Among non-White voters without a college degree, 57% support legal abortion, 55% back same sex-marriage, and 64% oppose placing barriers at the US border to deter migrants, according to unpublished results from the PRRI\u2019s latest national American Values Survey<\/a> provided to CNN. (Support for Democratic positions is even greater among non-White voters with a college degree, PRRI found.) Other surveys have found preponderant support among minorities for banning assault weapons and lopsided opposition to ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, as Trump and other GOP candidates have proposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe most significantly, in PRRI polling, about three-fifths of non-White voters without a college degree agree the GOP has been \u201ctaken over by racists,\u201d as do nearly two-thirds of non-White voters with a degree. By contrast, three-fifths of White voters without a college degree reject that idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysts like Odio believe one reason Trump improved among Latinos in 2020 was that he downplayed the harsh language about immigration he used in 2016 and instead emphasized his economic agenda. But Trump has again moved sharply to the right on immigration, pledging mass deportations, internment camps for migrants<\/a>, the end of birthright citizenship, and military action against Mexico to fight drug cartels. He\u2019s also refused to rule<\/a> out reinstating his policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latinos in the key states may not yet be aware of Trump\u2019s immigration plans. But Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, said the group\u2019s polling convinces him that Trump\u2019s agenda on immigration and other cultural issues will ultimately repel some Latino voters otherwise disenchanted with Biden on the economy. \u201cI think we will not know the truth about how much they [Republicans] are overplaying their hand until next summer\u201d if Trump becomes the GOP nominee, Jones said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some expressions of cultural liberalism \u2013 such as the fleeting calls in 2020 to \u201cdefund the police\u201d \u2013 have clearly rankled working-class minority voters. But Biden never endorsed that idea. And his clearest path to recovering with those voters may be to convince them that the Republican <\/em>agenda on immigration and other cultural issues threatens their interests and values. Rather than driving further movement toward the GOP among minority voters, in other words, issues such as abortion or immigration may be Biden\u2019s best hope of preventing slippage with those voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odio says that in Equis\u2019 polling, the parties are in mirror-image positions with the Latino community. \u201cAmong Latinos, Democrats are seen as caring, but there are doubts about their ability to deliver,\u201d he said. \u201cThe thought is Republicans might be better at delivering, but there\u2019s an underlying fear they don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which side of that equation proves more compelling not only to Latino, but also to Black and other minority working-class voters, will go a long way toward determining whether Biden can win a second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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