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.
The difference is there in both 3-day and 7-day tracking data. Never mind! Strange though how the spread is similar in both 3 day (4.6) and 7 day (3.7). The one day jump must have been enormous to add 2% difference to the previous 7 day average.
Probably a sampling error. When you take a poll every day, you wind up with a bad sample now and then. When looking at a tracking poll, the important thing is the trend, not the daily number. The trend for Bush has been downward since the end of the convention and Kerry’s trend has been upward since then. When the bad sample rolls off, the numbers will narrow again.
Rasmussen just switch from a 3 day rolling average to a 7 day or 14 day rolling average. This could explain the sudden jump in the number since it would include some of the early post-convention data If true it will smooth out in about 4-7 days.
Any body have suggestions though on why Rasmussen’s rolling daily poll suddenly showed what had been a Bush lead of one percent or less for several days jumping to about five points today? This is a three day rolling poll, so if the numbers are remotely correct, something weird happened. I’d love for somebody to ‘explain’ this since Rasmussen has not seemed off base before. T.J.
Yeah, tony, that occurred to me, too (the most famous example is the percentage of people who, post-assassination, said that they had voted for Kennedy–it was a huge percentage). In this case, the other numbers are not representative, either. 80 percent white, 10 percent black, 7 percent hispanic, whereas those last two numbers were in the 12-13 percent range in the 2000 census. What are the demographics of people who no longer have land lines, but only cell phones? Who will they vote for? Does any pollster know?
Remember that when people are asked who they voted for in 2000, it’s quite likely that some will be in error. Perhaps they did not actually vote, but want to identify with a winner, so they say they voted for Bush. Or perhaps they want to convince themselves they voted for a winner and so say they voted for Bush. Evidence of differential reported voting patterns in 2000 does not necessarily mean you’re looking at a nonrepresentative sample.
Never mind. I just found it’s the Democracy Corps poll.
Paul, what new poll are you referring to? The Democracy Corps survey? I know that the Time magazine poll had an similar unrepresentative majority of Bush 2000 voters.
The biggest difference between now and last month is that all polls switched to using LVs, which exaggerated bush bounce. Conversely it will also underestimate the drop in the bounce.
Page 19 of this new poll shows that of those who were polled, 43 percent voted for Gore in 2000, and 51 percent voted for Bush. Since we all remember that more people voted for Gore in 2000, there seems to be a bias in the polling sample towards Bush. There is no indication that the polling percentages were weighted to account for this, but it’s hard to believe that wouldn’t be taken into account.
What I don’t understand is how many news magazines are continuing to use poll data taken during the Republican convention. Today’s TIME had the same Sept. 7 poll that most newspapers stopped citing over a week ago.
Seems to me like in the information age the print media is always a bit behind the curve.
My post should say Kerry is leading by 1 among LVs.
timshel, They likely rounded off the numbers. If the Kerry number is 46.4 and the leaning Kerry is 1.4, that adds up to 47.8, which rounds off to 48.
Here’s more good polling news: Harris has Kerry leading by among LVs, and Bush’s reelect number is just 45 percent. I read this on the Wall Street Journal site.
Presumably roundoff error is playing a role here.
It looks to me like they have their own totals incorrect. When asked who you would vote for (or something similar),
46% said Kerry
1% said Lean Kerry
48% said Bush
1% said Lean Bush.
Wouldn’t that mean the poll shows Bush ahead 49 to 47, as opposed to 49 to 48?