Tipsheet

NYT Analysis: Biden Support Eroding Among These Key Groups

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  September 08, 2023 12:01 PM

A follow-up to my 'yes, Trump could win in 2024' analysis from earlier in the week, courtesy of Nate Cohn at the New York Times.  He looks at data tracking voters of color and sees some red flags for Democrats and the Biden campaign.  There may be off-setting factors at play that cut in their favor as well, but if Team Blue's grip on voters of color continues to loosen, that's a five-alarm fire for their party.  No wonder they've been ratcheting up the dishonest racial demagoguery to 11 recently.  Part of that is just muscle memory; it's what they do.  But part of that may be deep-seated concern that the coalition is in danger, and therefore needs some bullying.  Are they looking at numbers like this?

President Biden is underperforming among nonwhite voters in New York Times/Siena College national polls over the last year, helping to keep the race close in a hypothetical rematch against Donald J. Trump. On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by just 53 percent to 28 percent among registered nonwhite voters in a compilation of Times/Siena polls from 2022 and 2023, which includes over 1,500 nonwhite respondents. The results represent a marked deterioration in Mr. Biden’s support compared with 2020, when he won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters. If he’s unable to revitalize this support by next November, it will continue a decade-long trend of declining Democratic strength among voters considered to be the foundation of the party.

Take a glance at these graphs:

If you click through and see additional charts, it's clear that Democrats have lost ground across the board among non-white voters -- and particularly among the working class, non-college-educated voters, and men.  That's a familiar realignment story among white voters, but it's also applicable to non-whites, too.  Cohn notes that Biden has plenty of time to build back energy and support within his base, but warns, "the possibility that his standing will remain beneath the already depressed levels of the last presidential election should not be discounted. Democrats have lost ground among nonwhite voters in almost every election over the last decade."  He adds, "Biden’s vulnerabilities — like his age and inflation — could exacerbate the trend, as nonwhite voters tend to be younger and less affluent than white voters. Overall, the president’s approval rating stands at just 47 percent among nonwhite voters in Times/Siena polling over the last year."  These sentences are nightmare fuel for Democrats:

Mr. Biden’s weakness among nonwhite voters is broad, spanning virtually every demographic category and racial group, including a 72-11 lead among Black voters and a 47-35 lead among Hispanic registrants. The sample of Asian voters is not large enough to report, though nonwhite voters who aren’t Black or Hispanic — whether Asian, Native American, multiracial or something else — back Mr. Biden by just 40-39. In all three cases, Mr. Biden’s tallies are well beneath his standing in the last election. The findings are echoed by other high-quality national surveys. These show Mr. Biden faring as poorly among nonwhite voters (or even somewhat worse) as he does in the Times/Siena data...The survey finds evidence that a modest but important 5 percent of nonwhite Biden voters now support Mr. Trump, including 8 percent of Hispanic voters who say they backed Mr. Biden in 2020. Virtually no nonwhite voters who say they supported Mr. Trump — just 1 percent — say they will back Mr. Biden this time around.

Republicans don't need to peel off legions of nonwhite voters to win nationally. Even modest defections could make all the difference in very close states, where tens of thousands of votes (in places like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin) could have flipped the 2020 election away from Biden. On the other side of the ledger, if Democrats are either able to mitigate this underperformance, or marginally improve among white voters -- especially if January 6th and Trump's legal woes hang over the election -- that could offset the damage we're seeing in the statistics above. If Trump is convicted of a crime before the election, which is a real possibility, that could also be a major problem.  This should be obvious, but a new CNN poll finds that most Republican voters wouldn't see a criminal conviction as disqualifying for Trump. Independents disagree:

That same survey, however, shows -- yet again -- a very competitive general election at this stage:  

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I mentioned on Wednesday that's easy to envision Biden losing somewhat handily to a 'generic Republican,' and it looks like Nikki Haley might fit that bill in the eyes of voters.  She leads the incumbent by six points in this poll -- as opposed to virtual ties against Trump or DeSantis.  Those top lines may bounce around, but the overall takeaway, again, is that roughly a year out from the general election home stretch, Biden is strikingly vulnerable -- including against Trump.  I'll leave you with Kornacki (MSNBC's well-regarded political data guru) basically pleading with leftists in his social media feeds to stop screaming at him about how the data pointing to a close race is GOP propaganda, or wrong, or skewed: