Three reasons Biden is struggling with Black and Latino voters

jeffw@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 53 points –
Three reasons Biden is struggling with Black and Latino voters
vox.com

A recent spate of polling paints a bad picture of declining support for the president from voters of color. But just how worrisome is it?

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This is the best summary I could come up with:


So, to understand these trends, I’ve assembled a few theories, informed by conversations with pollsters, strategists, and Democratic party operatives, for why this polling gap continues.

“We can’t bury our head in the sand and give excuses about why the polling is wrong,” Chuck Rocha, the Democratic Latino consultant who has frequently been critical of his party’s work with voters of color, told me.

“Times have changed and if we continue to rely on these constituencies to vote at such a high number, I’m afraid Democrats will be disappointed unless we put in the work needed to get them there.”

Democrats seem to face bigger hurdles to retaining support from Black and Latino men, compared with women, while Biden specifically is underperforming with lower-income voters of color.

So it’s possible that Biden has artificially deflated support just because of who he is: his age, his background, his approach to politics, him being an old-school politician in a party that has increasingly become more progressive and wants more dynamism in their leaders,” Cox said.

As my colleague Andrew Prokop has explained, the polls conducted over the last year have told a consistent story — one of near-even support for Biden and his Republican rivals in battleground states and nationally.


The original article contains 2,076 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This is the best summary I could come up with:


So, to understand these trends, I’ve assembled a few theories, informed by conversations with pollsters, strategists, and Democratic party operatives, for why this polling gap continues.

“We can’t bury our head in the sand and give excuses about why the polling is wrong,” Chuck Rocha, the Democratic Latino consultant who has frequently been critical of his party’s work with voters of color, told me.

“Times have changed and if we continue to rely on these constituencies to vote at such a high number, I’m afraid Democrats will be disappointed unless we put in the work needed to get them there.”

Democrats seem to face bigger hurdles to retaining support from Black and Latino men, compared with women, while Biden specifically is underperforming with lower-income voters of color.

So it’s possible that Biden has artificially deflated support just because of who he is: his age, his background, his approach to politics, him being an old-school politician in a party that has increasingly become more progressive and wants more dynamism in their leaders,” Cox said.

As my colleague Andrew Prokop has explained, the polls conducted over the last year have told a consistent story — one of near-even support for Biden and his Republican rivals in battleground states and nationally.


The original article contains 2,076 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Democratic leadership always get lazy when it's time to re up.

You can tell this long article was written by a political junkie. Most voters, minority or not, don't pay attention to the political horse race, they judge the government on the economy. Inflation and high gas prices are the two things they hate most of all, and even if it's not entirely Joe Biden's fault, too bad; that's just how presidents are judged. No mystery there.

That doesn’t explain why he’s doing so poorly with these specific groups, who have been reliably Democratic voting in the past.

Probably because he called the black community a monolith while trying to pander to Hispanic voters, and the fact the Hispanic voters are very socially conservative.

But the trend is in line with the trend in the rest of the population. So the basic hypothesis should be that the things driving Biden's unpopularity in the broader electorate are also hurting him among minorities. Going beyond that, inflation is known to hurt economically disadvantaged groups more than others.

Have you considered applying to work for the democratic party as a campaign advisor? Sounds like you have some unique insights.

That is not true. There was a 538 podcast episode about this very topic recently. While Dems usually win overwhelming support from Blacks and Latinos, support for Biden is softer than for Dems in the past. Meanwhile, his support amongst white voters is higher than usual.

I also think it’s funny that you end by offering a hypothesis for why he’s losing support amongst this group. If there were no mystery, then you wouldn’t need to offer a hypothesis.