A Aug. 22-24 survey of registered voters conducted for NPR by Greenberg, Quinlan,Rosen and Public Opinion Strategies found John Kerry Leading George W. Bush 50% to 45% in a two man race and Kerry 47%, Bush 43% and Nader 3% in a three way match-up.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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There’s been a lot of buzz about the fresh analysis of the 2024 elections by Democratic data hound David Shor, so I tried to summarize his findings and their implications at New York:
Arguments over how Trump won and Democrats lost in 2024 remain in the background of today’s political discourse: Trump fans are focused on exaggerating the size and significance of the GOP victory, and Democrats are mostly settling scores with one another. But there’s also some serious analysis of hard data underway. And this week, an election diagnosis from Blue Rose Research’s David Shor, who was interviewed by Vox’s Eric Levitz and the New York Times’ Ezra Klein, is drawing particular attention.
Shor’s findings largely confirm the conventional wisdom about how Trump won in 2024, including three main points: (1) Trump made significant gains as compared to his 2020 performance among Black, Latino, Asian American, immigrant and under-30 voters; (2) Trump did better among marginally engaged voters than did Kamala Harris, reversing an ancient assumption that Democrats would benefit from relatively high turnout; and (3) inflation was the overriding issue among persuadable voters, even as Democrats overemphasized the threat to democracy posed by Trump’s return to power.
It’s Shor’s explanation of why these trends occurred that’s most interesting. Among every Trump-trending slice of the electorate, unique pressures related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the dramatic inflation that followed undermined support for the incumbent Democratic Party. But there were some other things going on. For example, the non-white-voters trends reflected, Shor told Levitz, a delayed ideological polarization that had hit white voters decades ago:
“If we look at 2016 to 2024 trends by race and ideology, you see this clear story where white voters really did not shift at all. Kamala Harris did exactly as well as Hillary Clinton did among white conservatives, white liberals, white moderates.
“But if you look among Hispanic and Asian voters, you see these enormous double-digit declines. To highlight one example: In 2016, Democrats got 81 percent of Hispanic moderates. Fast-forward to 2024; Democrats got only 57 percent of Hispanic moderates, which is really very similar to the 51 percent that Harris got among white moderates.
“You know, white people only really started to polarize heavily on ideology in the 1990s. Now, nonwhite voters are starting to polarize on ideology the same way that white voters did.”
To put it another way, non-white voters were disproportionately loyal to the Democratic Party for many years, and that loyalty inevitably began to wear off. The intense ideological polarization of the 2024 election sped that process along, even though one might expect that Trump’s barely concealed racism and overt nativism would slow it down. Why didn’t they? Mostly, Shor suggests, because Trump-trending voters weren’t viewing or reading media coverage of the 45th president’s horrific views and conduct:
“People who are the least politically engaged swung enormously against Democrats. They’re a group that Biden either narrowly won or narrowly lost four years ago. But this time, they voted for Trump by double digits.
“And I think this is just analytically important. People have a lot of complaints about how the mainstream media covered things. But I think it’s important to note that the people who watch the news the most actually became more Democratic. And the problem was basically this large group of people who really don’t follow the news at all becoming more conservative.”
The massive impact of diverse media consumption is most evident in Shor’s analysis of the single-most-stunning finding about the 2024 results: the huge gender gap among young voters, with Trump doing exceptionally well among young men, as he explained to Klein:
“18-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to support Donald Trump than 18-year-old women, which is just completely unprecedented in American politics …
“If you look at zoomers, there are some really interesting ways that they’re very different in the data. They’re much more likely than previous generations to say that making money is extremely important to them. If you look at their psychographic data, they have a lot higher levels of psychometric neuroticism and anxiety than the people before them.
“If I were going to speculate, I’d say phones and social media have a lot to do with this.”
Klein suggests some very specific points of divergence between young men and young women that Shor agrees with entirely:
“It seems plausible to me that social media and online culture are splitting the media that young men and women get. If you’re a 23-year-old man interested in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and online, you’re being driven into a very intensely male online world.
“Whereas, if you’re a 23-year-old female and your interests align with what the YouTube algorithm codes, you are not entering that world. You’re actually entering the opposite world. You’re seeing Brené Brown and all these other things.”
Finally, Shor provides some definitive evidence that Democratic messaging about Trump’s anti-democratic characteristics fell on rocky ground. By an astonishing 78 percent to 18 percent margin, voters said “delivering change that improves Americans’ lives” was more important than “preserving America’s institutions.” This finding suggests that in 2024, and right now, Democrats should exploit Trump’s broken promises about the economy and other practical concerns instead of focusing on how Trump has broken those promises. This isn’t a binary choice as much as a perspective on how to talk about outrages like Elon Musk’s assault on the federal government, which negatively affects the benefits and services Americans rely on and is intended to benefit Musk’s fellow plutocrats via skewed tax cuts and paralysis of corporate oversight, as Shor told Levitz:
“Trump and Elon have really spent the first part of their term diving into the biggest weaknesses of the Republican Party — namely, they’re trying to pass tax cuts for billionaires, they’re cutting essential services and causing chaos for regular people left and right, while trying to slash social safety net programs. It’s Paul Ryan–ism on steroids.”
Did the NPR survey include only NPR listeners? If so, it is perfectly irrelevant since these people are much more intelligent than average Americans.
I would love to get more feedback on ED’s question. Do any of you personally know of anyone who voted for Gore in 2000 and who will be voting for Bush in 2004? I do not know anyone. In addition, with all of the stories I have read over the past year, I have only heard of one person who voted for Gore and who will vote for Bush — with literally dozens who voted for Bush who are undecided or who will definately vote for Kerry. Since this is a very unscientific sample, can anyone provide more data points?
Thanks,
Paul
It’s easy for some of the Blitzer/Dobbs polls to be manipulated. Atrios is famous for “torturing” them by sending literally thousands of hits to their polls. However the polls on the main page draw a much larger audience, and I would think it’s hard to ‘freep’ a poll with half a million responses. I still think it is likely that they simply reflect the blue state views. But the blue states probably account for more than 60% of the population. So that begs the question, how does a Gallup poll of 800 people break down demographically?
Kaus, I didn’t mean those turncoat politicians. I was talking about the average electorate. Ed.
Ron Silver a dem? Are you kidding. He’s been a right-winger for yhears.
I vote in some of those on-line polls on CNN Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs has one every day. They are always like 90% for the Liberal view. Cnn is not so Liberal but not as far to the Right as FOX. So it’s hard to tell how true these polls are.
I happened by an online poll on the CNN website which had almost 500,000 responses! And the results were 58% Kerry, 40% Bush. At the very least this says that people who use the web regularly are overwhelmingly for Kerry. This also jibes with Kerry’s margins on the East and West coasts. And it suggests that these national polls are heavily skewed to midwest states. Is that possible?
All Kerry needs to say regarding the war on terror now that Bush says it cannot be won — Bush is wrong! We not only can win the war on terror we WILL win the war on terror! I’m sorry the President feels we do not have the capacity to win this war, for the American people expect victory.
Ed, there are some Dems supporting Bush. Zell Miller, Ed Koch, Ron Silver come to mind. All together there’s probably several dozen of them in the nation, and they’ve all been recruited to appear at the RNC.
Scott.. this is a great moment for Kerry to talk on foreign policy.. great moment for him to talk about alliances to win this war on terror… its a beaming opportunity… I just hope these folks can ride this wave to the shore..
cheers
he said the war on terror can’t be won? I missed that – we need to go after that bigtime – don’t remember any Democrats saying the war on terror can’t be won – we just said invading Iraq wouldn’t contribute to it . . .
I wonder why I don’t see or hear of any Demorcrats for Bush? But, I know of a whole bunch of Republicans for Kerry? I bet there are very few if any one that voted for Gore who are going to vote for Bush. The numbers are many who voted for Bush in 2000 and now are voteing for Kerry.
It looks like Bush is softening his stance on everything… he agrees that he was involved in that smear campaign, he agrees that Kerry is a hero and served honorably, he says that the war on terror cant be won anymore.
Are we talking a flip-flopper here? Are we seeing a president who has become soft on the under belly? Are we looking at someone who has shifted position on his base and expects them to follow? Is he now appealing to a different type of voter, moderates maybe? Where is he going with this softer Bush approach?
Are we now being shown a compassionate Bush? No staying the course anymore? Maybe he turned the corner himself and left the economy behind.
I hope the DEMS realise that he is providing added fodder and fuel for direct attacks on his policies. He has literally opened a gaping hole on his presidency and left it there for issues to be put on the table and debated. There is even room to classify him as a flip-flopper because this new approach goes contrary to everything he has been preaching for the past four years.
Rise up Kerry supporter and DEMS… another golden opportunity is here.
Cheers
John Kerry said the same thing on Chris Matthews show a while back. He said “Chris, I am going to win this thing”!
It means that when you overcount Republicans and undercount Democrats, Republican candidates usually come out ahead.
Call me crazy, but we’re going to win this thing.
So you can choose your poll: Gallup and others have Bush ahead, Zogby and NPR have Kerry ahead. Who knows what it all means, except that we (Dems) have to keep working and donating money to the cause right up to election day.