Pretty well known at this point that the increased Trump turnout for 2020 was at least partially attributable to increases among Black, Latino, LTBTQ constituencies. It's still a comparitively small group of people... but it's significant enough to take note.
Heard a lot of pundits with awful takes on this, but curious what some decent reads would be? What do you all think explains this shift (asides from the Democrats being awful)? What motivates these people?
Minorities aren't monolithic voting blocs, and while Trump ads were talking about the economy Biden ads were talking about Trump.
Biden would've won by 10 million if he had ran on a new new deal or something.
Copying something I said on an earlier post
People are saying it’s because these groups aren’t monolithic, but we’re talking about a change from 2016 here, it’s not as if they’ve become less monolithic over time. And besides, if it were confined to the more privileged subgroups, why wouldn’t we also see an upswing in cishet white male etc support for Trump? That went down.
There are two reasons for this, that I can see.
First, Joe Biden is offering only platitudes, and this is in a time where neither party gains any ground by openly declaring their opposition to minority rights, except for trans people in particular (who I would guess did not swing toward Trump). If real liberation isn’t on the table, and the rhetorical difference isn’t that vast, then there are much weaker forces binding disadvantaged groups to the Democratic party. As to why now is different from 2016 in this respect, I’d just say it’s sunk in more since we’ve been living under these circumstances for an extra 4 years.
Second, I think the right in America is staking out a position that’s still incredibly bigoted and exclusionary, but on less clear identity-based grounds. People are being offered a chance to assimilate into the top end of a hierarchy that’s based on “American-ness” rather than being quite as tied to intrinsic qualities. The Republican party is trying, successfully, to break any ties between Latino voters and the Latinos victimized by ICE, and to break the ties between trans people and the rest of the LGBT community. It’s the same deal the right has always offered: you’ll get screwed over, but at least you’re still above those people. They just have to offer it to more people now that the identity demographics of the USA are shifting away from them.
Tough to say. I'd have to think that by extension there is some resentment for Democrats stemming from the Obama admin. This was actually a NYT article on black communities in Minnesota not voting and I think there are some good insights on what might be pushing minority communities towards Trump/Republicans.
Oh yeah, I am sure that's true! The part that strikes me as odd though is that this year had century-breaking record turnout and the Democrats still barely squeaked by.
If turnout was down, I'd say, yeah, Biden is as inspiring as a wet noodle and people are justifiably concerned about the pandemic... but people actively made an effort to support the cheeto-in-chief.
The simple answer is that these folks are all bourgeoisie people that are voting based on class interest... but then why wouldn't they have just always voted Republican in past? Feel like something has changed.
My theory is after Bernie's run and Occupy we went into overdrive with anti-socialist propaganda. Except in America what constitutes socialism is so broad that what results is really just anti-collectivism. Instead of only eroding the cohesion of anti-capitalist groups, it harms the ability of any group to form a collective effort even if that effort is pro-capitalist. For some people categories like black, white, latino, or LGBT then become thought of more as forms of self expression rather than groups of people who have any special responsibility to each other.
I don't think they still have weighted those polls, all of the polls from day after the election were unweighted and heavily favored Rs because of in-person voters tend to vote R
