Sifting through more data from the 2022 midterms, there was one indicator that surprised and concerned me, so I wrote about it at New York:
As analysts pick over the results of the 2022 midterm elections, there have been a lot of mixed messages for Democrats. Yes, they performed better than you might have expected for the party controlling the White House, especially considering the president has underwater job-approval ratings. And yes, Democrats benefited from an unusually robust performance among young voters, who often don’t participate in midterm elections. But at the same time, Democrats didn’t significantly improve their performance among other key demographics, notably Black, Asian American, and Latino voters. As my colleague Eric Levitz observed, Democrats remain dangerously dependent on white college-educated voters who remain sympathetic to Republican economic messages.
Worse yet for Democrats, there is growing evidence that their single most loyal demographic group, African Americans, was underenthused in 2022. The New York Times’ Nate Cohn looked at the preliminary numbers and sounded the alarm:
“Georgia and North Carolina are two of the states where voters indicate their race when they register to vote, offering an unusually clear look at the racial composition of the electorate. In both states — along with Louisiana — the Black share of the electorate fell to its lowest levels since 2006.
“In all three states, the turnout rate among Black voters was far lower than among white voters. In North Carolina, for example, 43 percent of Black registered voters turned out, compared with 59 percent of white registered voters — roughly doubling the difference from 2018 and tripling the racial turnout gap from 2014.
“While similarly conclusive data is not available elsewhere so far, the turnout by county suggests that a relatively weak Black turnout was a national phenomenon.”
Low Black turnout in Georgia and North Carolina is especially significant because Black candidates (Senate candidate Cheri Beasley in North Carolina and Senate Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in Georgia) headed up the Democratic tickets in both states. It’s not like the old days when Black voters were being urged to support white conservative Democrats to thwart even more conservative Republicans.
If the signs of relatively low Black turnout in 2022 are accurate and representative, what do they mean? Cohn offers some possible explanations:
“Still, relatively low Black turnout is becoming an unmistakable trend in the post-Obama era, raising important — if yet unanswered — questions about how Democrats can revitalize the enthusiasm of their strongest group of supporters.
“Is it simply a return to the pre-Obama norm? Is it yet another symptom of eroding Democratic strength among working-class voters of all races and ethnicities? Or is it a byproduct of something more specific to Black voters, like the rise of a more progressive, activist — and pessimistic — Black left that doubts whether the Democratic Party can combat white supremacy?”
It’s possible to overinterpret Black voter trends. According to exit polls, the Democratic share of Black voters dropped from 90 percent in 2018 to 87 percent in 2020 and 86 percent in 2022 — not exactly a deep plunge. And some of the negative turnout trends may be attributable to voter-suppression efforts in Republican-controlled states rather than Black voter disaffection with Democrats. In Georgia, moreover, there are encouraging signs about Black early voting turnout in the U.S. Senate general election runoff contest between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.
But any way you cut it, Democrats have both a practical and a moral responsibility to boost Black voter participation in elections going forward. In particular, President Joe Biden, whose nomination and election in 2020 depended heavily on Black support, should devote a lot of attention to rekindling the fires of affection in this critical segment of the electorate.
An astonished reaction from the Bush-Cheney team? Probably not. Unlike the Washington press corps, I credit these guys with having a brain in their head. No doubt they’re busy trying to estimate the magnitude of the spike to be generated by the Saddam Trial, and trying to figure out if they can time it to coincide with November. If not, an invasion of Syria might do the trick.
I’m wondering whether the CBS/NTY poll might be the start of the first anti-spike in the Bush presidency, brought on by angry conservatives protesting the immigration reform and trip to Mars. Time will tell.
What are we as Democrats doing to get this issue out into the debate?
Um . . . Teddie gave a nice speech the other day. You get a pat on the head, Ted!
But seriously, it sends me into the slough of despond to watch our media. I never used to be one of those conspiracy-theorist types, ranting about the “corporate media, bought and paid for,” but lately . . . you’ve just gotta wonder.
In addition to the media’s shameful performance, there’s our leading Democrats, who really did, as Dean claims, roll over for Bush on the war. They only began to make an issue of the deception after Dean started gaining traction with his anti-Iraq war message, and even then they’re in a tricky spot: they all still justify their votes, when they manifestly should have known better. Only a few Dems (Fritz Hollings comes to mind) have said flat-out, I voted for the war and I shouldn’t have because I was duped. Would that Kerry just ‘fess up.
What about the Weapons of Mass Destruction? Even those shells found by the Danes lask week and paraded as having residue of blister gas have proven negative for chemicals. Where is the backlash? Where’s the scandal? Where’s the public outcry?
Are there going to be hearings on this or what? What are we as Democrats doing to get this issue out into the debate?
Pessimism confirmed! I see that the CBS News Web site headlined this poll “Bush’s Approval Sinking,” but the NYT (much more important) had the more equivocal and therefore “objectively pro-Bush” (ha ha) “Poll Bolsters Bush on Terrorism but Finds Doubts on Economy.”
Neither the article nor the headline are really out of line (like USAT’s puff piece), because the numbers ARE equivocal. Still, the news about Bush’s approval sinking doesn’t show up until paragraph three. Buried further in the data or the graphs are two other numbers that are very negative for Bush: his historically high disapproval rating (45 percent) and the re-elect matchups showing a negative two percent against an unnnamed Dem.
The Pessimist here: But how will the press play all this? I see that NYT headlined it properly (Bush Support Sinking), but will the rest of the media follow suit? I mean, let’s not forget that Ruy pointed out USAT’s astonishginly dishonest headline and story from their poll last week: something like Bush Approval Soaring, but you had to go to their Web site and look at the raw data to find out that his approval had actually sunk 3 points.
And let’s not forget Time magazine’s wonderful cover story on Dean last week, the one about all the doubts about his electability, the one that didn’t bother to inform readers until the third-to-last paragraph that their own poll showed Dean only six points behind Bush, and running ahead of the rest of the Dem pack in one-to-one matchups.
I pretty much agree with Scout.
The thing people are learning about the Bush administration is that the good news, be it about the economy or Iraq or whatever, never stays good, whence the smaller and smaller bounces. You can be spun only so many times before you stop placing any credit in it. Bush is very close to quota with most Americans.
The Chopped Down Christmas Tree continues…
Since 9/11, Bush has had huge peaks followed by slow declines. Each one, however, peaks smaller and declines faster than the last; we may have seen the absolute last “branch” of the tree, if you will, with the Saddam Capture, and I think the Mars Initiative was an attempt to get more “bounce”. But there wasn’t, and this is a good sign. In an election year, domestic ideas are key, and Bush doesn’t have any- and with the deficit looking like it is, I think people might actually get sick of hearing “taxcuttaxcuttaxcut” as a sound domestic policy.
Great blog, by the way.
One of the indicators that it would evaporate quickly was that in the December poll (which I thought I had around here somewhere, but can’t find so figure my like of hard figures ) when respondents were asked:
SPLIT HALF – ASK EITHER 53 OR 54
53. Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power is worth the potential loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 51% | Not Worth It 41% | DK/NA 8%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 47% | Not Worth It 43% | DK/NA 10%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 54% | Not Worth It 37% | DK/NA 9%
54. Do you think result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 41% | Not Worth It 53% | DK/NA 6%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 39% | Not Worth It 54% | DK/NA 6%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 44% | Not Worth It 49% | DK/NA 7%
When Saddam was taken out of the equation more people (nearly a majority) said – “Not Worth It”. This was right at the time of the capture. So it was clear that as Iraq returned to being about an ugly occupation in a country that seemed fairly ungrateful for their liberation, that wasn’t speeding towards democracy and less about eliminating public enemy number two – then Saddam’s capture would not provide sustaining political capital.
One of the indicators that it would evaporate quickly was that in the December poll (which I thought I had around here somewhere, but can’t find so figure my like of hard figures ) when respondents were asked:
SPLIT HALF – ASK EITHER 53 OR 54
53. Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power is worth the potential loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 51% | Not Worth It 41% | DK/NA 8%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 47% | Not Worth It 43% | DK/NA 10%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 54% | Not Worth It 37% | DK/NA 9%
54. Do you think result of the war with Iraq was worth the loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq or not?
9/28-10/01 ’03 | Worth It 41% | Not Worth It 53% | DK/NA 6%
12/10 – 13 ’03 | Worth It 39% | Not Worth It 54% | DK/NA 6%
12/14 – 15 ’03 | Worth It 44% | Not Worth It 49% | DK/NA 7%
When Saddam was taken out of the equation more people (nearly a majority) said – “Not Worth It”. This was right at the time of the capture. So it was clear that as Iraq returned to being about an ugly occupation in a country that seemed fairly ungrateful for their liberation, that wasn’t speeding towards democracy and less about eliminating public enemy number two – then Saddam’s capture would not provide sustaining political capital.