Latino and Black Voters Could Elect Trump: Even a Modest Racial Realignment Would Provide the Margin of Victory for Republicans in November; Biden Loses Support Among Black Men, WSJ Poll Finds

Latino and Black Voters Could Elect Trump:

Even a modest racial realignment would provide the margin of victory for Republicans in November.

American politics may be on the verge of a racial realignment. Polls show Donald Trump within striking distance of a majority among Hispanic voters and as much as 20% of the black vote. That would be an unprecedented showing for a Republican in modern times. Among white voters, polls show little change since 2020, meaning that shifts among nonwhite voters could decide the election. If even a modest realignment happens, Mr. Trump will almost certainly win. If it doesn’t, he is the underdog.

The GOP’s voting base is changing, but the Republican campaign apparatus and donors haven’t fully woken up to it. The time for aggressive investments to register and mobilize new voters was yesterday.

As Republicans have gained working-class voters and lost college-educated ones, the party has ended up on the back foot in special elections. These contests tend to be decided by affluent voters, who vote frequently. But 2024 isn’t a special election, and Republican victory hinges on turning out the kinds of voters who come out only in presidential elections—as it did when these turnout patterns helped Mr. Trump win in 2016 and outperform pre-election polls in 2020.

Mr. Trump’s campaign against voting by mail in 2020 was self-defeating, so it is encouraging to see Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law and the new Republican National Committee co-chairman, express support for legal ballot harvesting. But the GOP needs to go further and begin talking to younger nonwhite voters, men especially, driving home their shift to the right. These votes could also prove decisive in an expanded Senate battleground that includes Michigan and Nevada.

Polling shows that the strongest shifts to Mr. Trump are happening among those on the fringes of politics—people who could easily stay home. Our polling in 2023 for the Texas Latino Conservatives PAC showed Mr. Trump doing 20 percentage points better among nonvoting Latinos than among those who voted in the 2022 midterm election. This is no longer the Republican Party of the country club or the older white voter. Rather than pining for the voters of yesterday, Republicans should be focused on getting their new coalition to the polls.

The wind is at Republicans’ back: Polls show their biggest gains are coming among nonwhite moderate or conservative voters who already agree with them on most issues. While black voters—and Latino voters to a lesser degree—have historically voted as a bloc, more are now voting ideologically, boosting Republicans. —>READ MORE HERE (or HERE)

Biden Loses Support Among Black Men, WSJ Poll Finds:

New survey of seven battleground states also shows some Black women are weighing other options

President Biden faces a dual-natured challenge to shore up his support with Black Americans, one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies.

Perhaps the most urgent: More Black men said they plan to back Donald Trump this fall, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll of seven swing states.

While most Black men said they intend to support Biden, some 30% of them in the poll said they were either definitely or probably going to vote for the former Republican president. There isn’t comparable WSJ swing-state polling from 2020, but Trump received votes from 12% of Black men nationwide that year, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large poll of the electorate.

In the WSJ poll, 11% of Black women said they were either definitely or probably going to vote for Trump. In 2020, the AP poll found, 6% of Black women nationwide backed Trump.

“I think winning back more Black men is going to be key for him,” Michael Bocian, a Democratic pollster who conducted the WSJ survey, said of Biden. Bocian completed the poll along with the company of Tony Fabrizio, a Republican. Fabrizio, who worked for a pro-Trump super political-action committee when the survey was conducted, has since joined the Trump campaign.

On the other hand, while Black women are less likely than Black men to support Trump, some are exploring other options, including third parties and potentially staying home.

In a sign that Biden hasn’t yet won commitments from many of these voters, some 42% of Black women in the survey fell into a group that the Journal pollsters say are up for grabs in the election, or still persuadable in their vote choice. These voters say they have not yet decided on a candidate, might vote for an independent or third-party option or are likely—but not certain—to back one of the major-party candidates.

While Latino women and Black men in the survey also signaled in large numbers that they remain persuadable in their vote choice, the share of Black women is noteworthy, given that they are among the most loyal Democratic groups in the electorate.

Biden’s standing has taken a hit with some Black voters as they—like many others—express discontent with his performance on broad issues such as the economy and immigration. While the Black gender split on Biden mirrors one that exists with the electorate overall, losing Black support in particular would be a blow to Biden’s re-election prospects, given how vital Black Americans are to the Democratic coalition. —>READ MORE HERE (or HERE)

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