In his article, “American Politics Now Has Two Big Racial Divides,” Perry Bacon, Jr. writes at FiveThirtyEight:
There’s been a recent flurry of studies and analyses that take a deeper look at the results of the 2020 election. These examinations don’t contradict our early interpretation of the results from the days and weeks immediately following Election Day: The overwhelming majority of voters backed the candidate from the party that they normally lean toward, though then-President Trump did slightly better with voters of color and slightly worse with white voters than he did in 2016. But the new examinations and other data tell a nuanced story about the role of race in the 2020 contest.
American voters …
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Remain deeply polarized based on ethnicity and racial identity;
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Were less polarized by racial identity in 2020 compared to 2016; and
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Are very polarized by attitudes about racial and cultural issues.
Bacon notes, further that “Despite the news coverage that sometimes implies that non-Hispanic white voters with college degrees are all flocking to the Democrats, about 42 percent of that group backed Trump in 2020, according to the recently released Cooperative Election Study. About 64 percent of Hispanic Americans backed Biden, per CES, which might be hard to remember amid the intense (and accurate) coverage of Trump’s gains among that voting bloc.” Drilling down, Bacon adds:
In many ways, the 2020 election was basically like every recent Americanpresidential election: The Republican candidate won the white vote (54 percent to 44 percent, per CES), and the Democratic candidate won the overwhelming majority of the Black (90 percent to 8 percent), Asian American (66 percent to 31 percent) and Hispanic (64 percent to 33 percent) vote. Like in 2016, there was a huge difference among non-Hispanic white voters by education, as those with at least a four-year college degree favored Biden (55 percent to 42 percent), while those without degrees (63 to 35) favored Trump. (There wasn’t a huge education split among voters of color.)1
Other surveys tell the same general story: Trump won white voters overall by a margin in the double digits and won whites without four-year degrees by even more; Trump lost among whites with at least a four-year college degree, lost by a big margin with Asian American and Latino voters and lost by an enormous margin among African Americans.
So the main reason that Trump nearly won a second term was not his increased support among Latinos, who are only about 10 percent of American voters and are a group he lost by more than 20 points. Trump’s main strength was his huge advantage among non-Hispanic white voters without college degrees, who are about 42 percent of American voters. His second biggest bloc of support was among non-Hispanic white Americans with degrees, who are about 30 percent of all voters. According to the CES, over 80 percent of Trump’s voters were non-Hispanic white voters, with or without a college degree. In contrast, around 70 percent of nonwhite voters supported Biden, and they made up close to 40 percent of his supporters. So it is very much still the case that the Republicans are an overwhelmingly white party and that the Democratic coalition is much more racially diverse.
There are no big surprises in those findings. But Bacon does note that Trump did a litle bit better with non-white voters in 2020, comapred to 2016. Specifically,
Trump did 7 percentage points better among Asian American voters in 2020 compared to 2016, 4 points better among Hispanic voters and 1 point better among both white and Black voters, per the CES. Biden did 4 percentage points worse among Asian American voters and 1 points worse among Hispanic voters compared to Hillary Clinton, while doing 1 point better among Black voters and 3 points stronger among white voters compared to Clinton.
Bacon explores possible some reasons for Trump doing a little better with these voters, but he sees no one reason that overwhelms all others. However, he notes, “It is a huge problem for Republicans that the clear majority of people of color vote against them, since that’s a big and growing bloc of the electorate. It is unlikely those broad dynamics will change.”
In a single week:
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/04/houston-official-federal-disaster-aid-widens-racial-inequities/
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/04/lawmakers-call-to-defund-immigration-cooperation-program/
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/04/congressional-democrats-push-bidens-cfpb-to-confront-racism%ef%be%a0/
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/04/gop-sees-democratic-departures-and-shutout-in-texas-as-good-omens-for-22/
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/03/following-backlash-biden-lifts-refugee-cap-to-62500/
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/03/democrats-urge-end-to-labor-practices-they-see-rooted-in-racism/
https://www.rollcall.com/2021/05/03/biden-administration-to-reunite-first-group-of-migrant-families/