It’s not necessarily a new bit of data, mind you, but it is the rate at which black and Hispanic voters are flipping to the GOP that should encourage local health officials to start regular wellness checks on Democratic politicians in their area.
The Wall Street Journal‘s latest poll tracking where voters are right now is an absolutely painful poll for Democrats where demographics are concerned. The Democratic Party has been the party of “Demography is Destiny!” for decades, predicting that a more diverse America means their chances of staying in power grow.
But this poll… man, it’s just brutal for them.
About 17% of Black voters said they would pick a Republican candidate for Congress over a Democrat in Journal polls both in late October and in August. That is a substantially larger share than the 8% of Black voters who voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 and the 8% who backed GOP candidates in 2018 House races, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large survey of voters who participated in those elections.
Among Latino voters, Democrats held a lead of 5 percentage points over Republicans in the choice of a congressional candidate in the Journal’s October survey, a narrower advantage than the Democrats’ 11-point lead in August.
Both findings suggest a deterioration in Democratic support as Latino voters show high degrees of concern about inflation and the direction of the economy. Latino voters in 2020 favored President Biden over Mr. Trump by 28 percentage points and Democratic candidates in 2018 House races by 31 points, VoteCast found.
Things are a lot worse on the Latino voter front when you remember that there is technically no such thing as a Latino voter.
There are Cuban- and Venezuelan-American voters who back Republicans at far higher rates than, say, Mexican-American voters. But even Mexican-American voters are shifting hard to the right in places like Nevada and Arizona, swinging both of those states to the GOP.
But the shift in Black voters to the GOP must be painful to the Democrats. They have treated the Black community as guaranteed votes for so long that they just can’t fathom not having them. This, of course, has led Stacey Abrams and others to say that black men are just being “tricked” by the GOP this election cycle.
This is a big shift, and it’s not because the GOP is tricking anyone. The Democrats have repeatedly shot themselves in the foot this election cycle, ignoring the problems Americans are facing and focusing on pushing forward on their extreme agenda. This election is an own-goal of massive proportions, and these demographic numbers are just more proof of that.