A lot of men were biting dogs in pre- and post-election analysis. “Trump Is Losing Ground With White Voters but Gaining Among Black and Hispanic Americans,” 538 (10/19/20) reported. “The Trump Vote Is Rising Among Blacks and Hispanics, Despite the Conventional Wisdom,” declared an NBC article (11/2/20). “Many Latino Men Are Supporting President Trump This Election,” said NPR (10/28/20), while a CNN headline (11/4/20) said, “More Latino Voters Support Trump in 2020 Than 2016.”
“Many” Latino men supported Trump (NPR, 10/28/20) in the same sense that “many” people in Maryland voted for him—while the vast majority did not.
Is that really what the exit polls showed, though? The polls conducted for leading media by Edison Research said in 2016 that Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump among Latino voters by 36 points (65% vs. 29%), whereas in 2020, the exit polls said that Biden won those voters by a 34-point margin (66% to 32%). That’s a less-than-seismic shift to revolve a trend piece around.
The Black vote had slightly more movement, from an 80-point margin for the Democrat in 2016 to a 75-point lead in 2020, but neither dismal showing was anything for Trump to boast about. The bottom line, obscured by these demographic gee-whiz stories, is that Trump had a 15-point advantage among whites and a 46-point deficit with people of color.
Another theme of campaign analysis was Trump’s supposedly fading appeal among seniors: CNN (10/6/20) wrote about “How Trump’s Losing Among Seniors at a Historic Rate.” “Trump Is Losing Seniors. Here’s Why,” Politico (10/15/20) offered. “Trump Trails Among Seniors, Key Group in Many Battleground States,” the Wall Street Journal (10/18/20) reported.
Again, that’s not quite what the exit polls showed. Voters over 65 are still Trump’s best age cohort, giving him 51% of their vote, just 2 percentage points less than he won in 2016. Biden did a little better among seniors than Hillary Clinton did, so Trump’s margin shrank from 8 points to 3 points. But the more dramatic change was among voters under 30, who gave Clinton an 18-point lead and Biden a 27-point one—a surge in youth support that went largely unremarked by media (FAIR.org, 11/3/20).
Exit polls also complicated a favorite trope of campaign coverage: Trump’s “white working-class base.” It’s true that Trump does 15 percentage points better among white voters without college degrees than with them—but what if class involves not just education, but money? Among the almost three-fourths of voters whose households make less than $100,000 a year, Trump trails badly: Biden showed a 15-point lead (57%/42%) among those who make less than $50,000, and was 13 points ahead (56%/43%) with the $50,0oo–$99,999 bracket. Only among the wealthiest quarter did Trump have a lead, winning $100,000+ households 54% to 43%.
Voters with more money tend to vote Republican: There’s a dog-bites-man story that you don’t hear a lot about.
Thank you for this. It clears up much of the delusional information.
Wealthy voters don’t vote in person. How can there be an exit poll represwenting them?
Thanks for the clarity, there’s a lot of crap flying around now. Most especially laughable is the claim that the election was close because of the leftists! Wow, if nothing else, these guys are creative, thanks again, Mike Liston
Both parties don’t talk about the poor because they turn off people who don’t want fairer distribution of wealth—social programs to help people who can’t work & or sufficiently support selves or families. They equate compassion & humane policies with Socialism, loss of wealth, government control, authoritarian rule, Communism. Trump fomented this by politicizing Covid virus mitigation (mask wearing ) as needing to preserve freedom, supporting White supremacists in their blaming Blacks for their own poverty,
To be fair, all I read at the mainstream media after the elections was precisely what you say. Trump had a minority, with black voters of all genders a very small minority of people of color for him.
But he seems to have had a few more voters of color for him than in 2016. And this is a message media can tell us after 4 horrible years with Trump, is it? CNN – I guess it was called “6 early thoughts about 2020 voters” – said black voters went up from a meagre 8% in 2016 to a still meagre 12% in 2020’s exit polls. Latinos were up a bit to 32%.
For a reader of mainly leftist media of your country those early figures were extremely surprising. After 4 years of Trump I rather thought the horrible man and his party had some 5% of all people of color for him at highest. So – the media did not get it all wrong this time?
That younger people in their majority do not vote reactionary or highly conservative is also no surprise worldwide, is it^^? That Biden himself and Kamala Harris are center Democrats and hardly leftist people (up to now) – is worth adding too. So from our point of view there are all reasons to celebrate that Trump is no longer president. But it really is a nightmare to see how close he came!
And there is not a lot to jubilee about that two center-Democrats have won, and not Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar or Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, I would say? As far as I know FAIR your positions are hardly even remotely similar to what – up to now – Kamala Harris and Joe Biden stood for.
I would wish for as objective news as possible, and it would be great we found it in leftist alternative media and there was no need at all to check CNN^^.
Please quit doing what the main-stream media does and conflating Mexican-American voters with Cuban- and Colombian-American voters just on the basis of language of country of origen. Last time I looked, Pence and Maxine Waters both spoke English and they are not part of a voting block called – I dunno – Americanx? We are not them. We don’t vote like them. We have our own identity. There are a lot of us. Arizona didn’t “turn blue” – that’s organizing that started in 2010, recalled Russell Pearce (main power behind the Show Me Your Papers Law), defeated Arpaio in 2016, and finally, with the Native American vote, changed Arizona this election. So quit with the “Latinx.” It is meant to deceive. Break it down properly. We are tired of being invisible.
(ps – I am generally a fan of FAIR and I am also a contributor.)
“Latinx” is so Anglo-centric it hurts. It is a a woke neo-colonization of a culture and language.
Good work here Jim. With just 6 corporations in ownership of 90% of the media and not obligated to be honest in reporting, we have a mess on our hands each and every day that distorts sound decisions. It cuts both ways, as the many passionate Biden supporters I have talked with are impressively uninformed of his past actions and current positions. I greatly fear that his commitment to further impoverish people for the sake of war, wall street and other corporate interests will lead to a competent authoritarian in the next election, as opposed to Trumps baffoonery.