A ‘Normal’ Election?
Whatever that means anymore.
NYT chief political analyst Nate Cohn asks, “As Groups Have Shifted, Has It Become a ‘Normal’ Election?” The idea that any election could be “normal” when a convicted felon under multiple other criminal indictments is one of the candidates is odd, but he’s framing the question narrowly: “The candidates fought over the issues and their agendas. There were no questions about whether a candidate was going to drop out.”
More importantly, though, the polling seems to show some anomalies have been reversed.
The return of the generational divide
The Democratic lead among young voters is back. In high-quality polls over the last month, Vice President Harris leads Mr. Trump by an average of 20 points among the youngest reported demographic cohort (whether that be 18 to 29 or 18 to 34 in a given poll). The same polls showed Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump tied among young voters in July. Older voters, meanwhile, have barely edged at all toward Ms. Harris. Put it together, and the usual generational divide in American politics has returned.
That said, the polling isn’t entirely typical. Ms. Harris still leads among seniors, a group that post-election studies found had tilted slightly toward Mr. Trump in 2020. The gap between the current polling of seniors and the estimated result among them in the last election isn’t especially large. But it’s an eye-popping difference nonetheless.
It’s hard to be sure whether Ms. Harris’s strength among seniors is because the aging of the boomers is helping Democrats, or because the polls are just wrong and struggling to reach Mr. Trump’s supporters, or because Democrats and Mr. Biden had actually been faring better among seniors than previously estimated all along. Whatever the explanation, it’s not a statistical fluke due to small sample sizes: Polls have shown Democrats faring surprisingly well among seniors for a while now, including ahead of the 2020 election.
One additional data point for the thought-provoking possibility that Democrats have simply been stronger among seniors all along: the authoritative Pew NPORS study. It found Democrats either tied or ahead of Republicans among seniors in leaned party identification in each of its annual surveys over five years, which together have more than 7,000 total respondents over 65. Similarly, more seniors said they backed Mr. Biden than Mr. Trump in 2020 in each survey.
A rebound among Black and Hispanic voters
Mr. Trump’s strength among Black and Hispanic voters was one of the most surprising trends of the cycle. With Ms. Harris as the Democratic nominee, it’s no surprise that Mr. Trump has come back to earth.
n the past month of high-quality polls, Ms. Harris has a 78-14 lead among Black voters and a 52-41 lead among Hispanic voters. Our New York Times/Siena College battleground state surveys showed similar results, with Ms. Harris ahead 80-15 among Black voters and 52-42 among Hispanic ones. In each case, Ms. Harris is about halfway between Mr. Biden’s weakened standing before he dropped out of the race and his stronger estimated finish in the 2020 election.
While this is certainly closer to typical, “normal” is not quite the right term for the current numbers. Mr. Trump’s tallies today — 14 percent support among Black voters and 41 percent among Hispanic voters — would still represent the highest level of backing a Republican presidential candidate has received in pre-election polls since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Ms. Harris may still make additional gains among these groups over the last two months. It’s also possible that the polls are overestimating Mr. Trump’s strength or that many of Mr. Trump’s Black and Hispanic supporters simply won’t turn out to vote.
But it’s also starting to become conceivable that Mr. Trump will post some of the best results on record for a Republican among voters of color — and that he will do so against a Black Democratic candidate who also has South Asian heritage. It would not amount to a “racial realignment,” but it would be a development with important consequences for the future of American politics.
As we’ve noted many times since the switch atop the Democratic ticket, Harris is a relatively fresh face who seems, for whatever reason, to be getting little of the blame for unpopular occurrences over the last four years that Biden was shouldering. It’s hardly surprising that she has recaptured traditional Democratic voters.
I haven’t seen enough robust polling to explain the modest shift Trumpward of Black and Hispanic voters. My strong suspicion is that it’s primarily men drawn to “traditional” messaging at a time when male power is on the wane. And, certainly, a woman as the nominee is further fuel on that fire.
The engagement gap is fading
One of the most unusual features of the polling over the last year was Mr. Biden’s pronounced weakness among less engaged voters, even as he held his own among the kinds of voters who propelled Democratic success in midterm and special elections.
This pattern has faded a bit since Ms. Harris’s entry into the race, though it’s not gone altogether. In the last Times/Siena battleground state polls, Ms. Harris trailed by six points among voters who didn’t vote in the 2022 midterms, compared with Mr. Biden’s 15-point deficit in May. The latest Cook Political Report surveys show a similar pattern, using slightly different definitions of political engagement.
Less engaged voters, of course, are probably those who are least tuned in to all the drama of the last two months. We’ll see how they shift over the final stretch.
Again, this is hardly surprising. A re-run of 2020 with the two candidates four years older and demonstrating signs of cognitive decline was unlikely to engage low-engagement voters. There’s at least a new plot twist to the story now.
Here is an analysis that says working class latinos in TX vote a lot like working class whites.
“Link“
I don’t know about anyone else, but I think “We’re not going back” is one of the best slogans Dems have come up with in a long time.
Dems usually come up with crap slogans. “Yes we can” was fine but vague, and while “It’s the economy, stupid” was somewhat more specific, it could be applied to a lot of elections. And those are among the better examples. Dem slogans are often weak, unmemorable, or just plain bad (Hillary’s “Together, we can do better”). Biden’s “Let’s finish the job” was…okay, sort of.
What’s brilliant about “We’re not going back” is that it captures the unique and terrifying moment we’re in, but at the same time it’s an exhilarating line. (“Let’s not go back” wouldn’t have worked as well.) It isn’t a statement of complacency, but it is a statement of resolve and determination. It’s also forward-looking, and puts into focus the fact that Trump’s entire message is backward-looking, even more than it was in 2016–he’s got nothing new to offer, just an insistence on basking in his supposed greatness when he was president.
The slogan mixes a sense of urgency with a sense of positive motivation and purpose. That I believe is the right balance with which we need to approach this election.
@Kylopod: Full agreement. Very solid slogan.
One quibble: I didn’t think, “It’s the economy, stupid” was ever a public-facing slogan so much as the internal team motivator/reminder.
@Kylopod: A direct contrast to “Make America Great Again”.
Ugh.
Any situation that favors horse race press coverage over the stakes of the outcome coverage is a bad development.
MAGA or Democracy still needs to be the focus of the press.
@Kylopod:
Right time, right now.
It has the right balance of being literally good, and having the code for ‘You all see the damage they’ve done so far?”
Harris is selling it really well.
@charontwo: I worked with multiple generations of latinos in minimum wage style jobs in a city in Texas. One of my managers was essentially an anchor baby as his dad came here illegally. He’s pro Trump because demonrats gonna ban all da gunz and flood us with illegalz!! Yes he was seriously upset that illegals existed despite his family moving here illegally. There were other second and third generation latinos who echoed the sentiment about how illegal Mexicans are destroying this country. I walked into the back house a few times in the middle of various workers going on rants about illegals (2020 election cycle). I was pretty much the only anti-trump person in the building. I ended up being called woke and I fully embraced it as I ranted about how yeah I’m awake to the realities of the system that pits us against each other so that the rich stay in power etc etc. I had never even heard of the term woke until then and none of them said it again. The kid that said it was an effeminate little asshole of a kid (he never tipped always demanded rides home etc) that would cry if you raised your voice at him after he fcked something up. What I found hilarious is when he wasn’t crying he acted like he thought he was andrew tate or some shit. One of the pro Trump supporters was far too smart and canny to be a Trump supporter and I never did figure out why (he was Hispanic too). Best I could figure out was he voted based on gun ‘rights”. Old white dude kept telling me how Biden was going to confiscate all our guns once elected “You’ll see!!!”. I would ask him once a month if his guns were confiscated yet and he always had some BS. Last I knew he still believed that Biden was going to take all the guns any day now. Several of these people were Alex Jones fans including the old white dude.
So what I’m saying is that despite skin color and location people are going to be people. If the GOP ever drops the racist elements or at least hides them better then the democratic party is going to be in trouble. Unless the Democratic party does something like give us universal healthcare or actually tax the rich effectively. Breaking up the near monopoly of media ownership would help too. It’s amazing how effective they have been at convincing people to vote against their own self interests.
@al Ameda: @Kylopod:
You can see on video the exact moment that phrase goes from just part of her speech to the slogan. It’s interesting to watch: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1erieys/the_exact_moment_kamala_harris_realized_she_had/
@Matt: I’m not sure you could give a better example of politics being a social identity thing than you did.
They are saying those things because they need to say them in order to feel part of their group, and like they belong in Texas. There’s definitely some drawbridge stuff going on there.
It would be very unusual to fracture that group and convert it wholesale. We need to erode support, not destroy it.
Also, it isn’t a coincidence that it’s the little effeminate guy being the most vocal. His membership and standing in the group depends on it.
What is needed is not a knock-down argument but slow and patient missionary work.
Donnie thinks forcing a government shutdown a few weeks before the election is a good strategy:
Trump calls for government shutdown over unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud
@Matt:
This behavior seems to be a TX thing that does not happen to such an extent in AZ or CA.
@Jay L Gischer: The little guy tended to be the target for the main group so he was kind of desperate to be accepted.
@charontwo: I really hope so.
@charontwo: Not just a Texas thing. We don’t have much diversity here in my little hell hole in Wyoming, but all the Mexicans who ADMIT they came here illegally, some of whom are STILL illegal, are Trump fans. It’s like they think he’s gonna save them, or the white people around here are gonna save them when the deportation police come. “It will never happen to ME, only those other illegals!”
And they’re great people, don’t get me wrong. Most have been here for years, have kids in the school system, own businesses with their US born spouses. But that’s not going to save them. I find myself consistently surprised by their collective spouses supporting Trump, and against their own best interests.
@Jax: Wasn’t there a case of someone exactly like this who got deported under Trump? He left his MAGA wife stunned that the face-eating leopards she voted for ate her face.
Personally, I wonder how much of the senior support Harris is seeing is because of Covid, both in terms of those who died because they followed stupid GOP advice to not mask or vaccinate and therefore can’t vote anymore — and those who had to watch that happen.
@Kylopod:
Obama won Indiana and Iowa in 2008 en route to a near-landslide, so vague and pithy clearly works. Vague or not, I’d say the best slogans are those that permeate the culture beyond the world of politics junkies, to become ubiquitous and unavoidable in the zeitgeist.
“We’re not going back” may do that, but it’s not there yet. It’s good for call and response during Harris’s speeches, but I’m not hearing it yet in casual conversation among the normies, nor seeing in hashtags, merch, and social media bios like “Black Lives Matter,” “I’m With Her,” “Vote Blue,” “But Her Emails,” and “Yes We Can.” The latter three would get my vote as the best recent Democratic slogans, in terms of effectiveness + reach.
(The least effective of the era was “Defund the Police,” though that was less a Democrat creation, more a left-wing activist idea that became an anvil for some Democrats.)
No matter how much the media and the pollsters wish it to be, there is nothing normal about an election in which one of the candidates is a convicted felon facing 3 other felony indictments, and who has been adjudicated a sexual abuser who runs a business that a jury determined defrauded banks and the government for years. That same candidate is running BECAUSE of his legal situation, not despite it, so rhapsodizing about pithy slogans and generation gaps seems to fall short of the true import of the question before the voters: Should a deeply flawed and unfit (and probably mentally ill) person be entrusted with the highest office in the land?