Exit Poll: Trump Makes Big Gains with Minority Men and Women, Loses Support from White Men
The Republican Party’s minority outreach efforts were always treated with an element of derision, with jokes a-plenty about language like the “big tent party” or the “party of inclusion.” This was doubly true in the era of Donald Trump, easily pegged as the least inclusive Republican to ever take the Oval Office.
And yet, as Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway pointed out Tuesday on Fox News, the reason Trump carried Florida was his support from minority voters.
“One of the things that is definitely an emerging story is about the closing of the racial gap in voting,” said Hemingway, noting how part of the president’s win was due to the fact he outperformed polls in majority-Latino Miami-Dade County. “Donald Trump is obviously doing very well in Florida on the strength of minority voters. … There’s starting to be an indication this is happening in other states as well.”
“It is really stunning that it is Donald Trump, someone that the media have painted as a racist, racial demagogue, who is managing this transformation of the Republican Party toward a more multiracial, working-class party,” she added.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist best known as the driving force behind The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” decided the best way to react to the loss was to throw some racial obloquy at Florida’s Cuban community.
“One day after this election is over I am going to write a piece about how Latino is a contrived ethnic category that artificially lumps white Cubans with Black Puerto Ricans and Indigenous Guatemalans and helps explains why Latinos support Trump at the second highest rate,” she tweeted Tuesday.
One day after this election is over I am going to write a piece about how Latino is a contrived ethnic category that artificially lumps white Cubans with Black Puerto Ricans and Indigenous Guatemalans and helps explains why Latinos support Trump at the second highest rate.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) November 4, 2020
As for the various bigoted treacheries of the Venezuelan diaspora that makes up the other part of Florida’s anti-socialist voting bloc, I can’t wait to see the verbal prestidigitation Hannah-Jones uses to make them seem white.
The problem is that it wasn’t just those melanin-challenged Cubans who were voting for Donald Trump. There were plenty of other minorities who were doing it too.
According to The Washington Post, Edison Research national exit polling found that 55 percent of white women, 18 percent of black males, 8 percent of black women, 36 percent of Hispanic/Latino men, 28 percent of Hispanic/Latina women and 37 percent of all other voters cast their ballots for President Trump.
Except for white women, that meant Democrat Joe Biden won all of those groups, of course. However, every single one of them evinced gains from Edison Research exit polling from four years ago.
The only area where Trump lost votes? White men, with 58 percent of the vote. They gave Trump 62 percent of the vote in 2016.
Here were the other Edison Research numbers in 2016, according to CNN’s website: white women, 55 percent; black men, 13 percent; black women, 4 percent, Hispanic/Latino men, 32 percent; Hispanic/Latino women, 25 percent; other voters, 31 percent.
Yes, these are small gains. They’re also small gains that all go in the same direction. That’s statistically important, since it’s unlikely all of them moved the same way.
While Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project doesn’t get all the numbers entirely right here, the basic idea is intact: The president gained with every group except the white male patriarchy.
According to the exit poll, Trump did better in 2020 with every race and gender except white men.
Change from 2016:
White Men -5
White Women +2
Black Men +4
Black Women +4
Latino Men +3
Latino Women +3
Other +5 pic.twitter.com/hUc17Iy1ip— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) November 4, 2020
And by the way, those gains among Hispanic/Latino voters weren’t — indeed, couldn’t have been — among the Cuban and Venezuelan communities alone.
“In Texas, four in 10 Hispanics voted for Trump, up from three in 10 in 2016, according to exit polls in that state,” Reuters reported, using Edison numbers.
If you take one thing away from this, it should be what author Andrew Sullivan had to say.
“Wokeness is unfalsifiable. But this comes close,” he tweeted. “After four years of ‘white supremacy’, Trump doubled his vote among black women, and saw gains among all Latinos.”
Wokeness is unfalsifiable. But this comes close. After four years of “white supremacy”, Trump doubled his vote among black women, and saw gains among all Latinos. https://t.co/iGrgpNZeSf
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) November 4, 2020
If you have two things to take away from this, English journalist James Bloodworth also had a particularly relevant take.
“A media dominated by elite identity politics bamboozles us with a narrative and then stuff like this always seems to come as a total shock,” he said.
A media dominated by elite identity politics bamboozles us with a narrative and then stuff like this always seems to come as a total shock https://t.co/ha75DICIuM
— James Bloodworth ?? (@J_Bloodworth) November 4, 2020
Watching cable news these past few months, the general impression was whatever minority outreach Trump was doing was meant to stem a bloodbath. He was a bigot who’d made the White House into a pulpit of division — and Biden did his best to vitiate the racial atmosphere in America by dredging up the nastiest parts of Trump’s racial resumé and then insisting he was the only candidate who could heal America and make us whole again.
When people of color — from hip-hop artists to civil rights lawyers — came out for Trump, they were either mocked or marginalized. Here’s Sunny Hostin of “The View” calling black Republicans “props” in September:
TV’s dumbest lawyer Sunny Hostin calls black conservatives “props” for the GOP while she inadvertently reminds people that Democrats take black voters for granted. pic.twitter.com/ootsK3gdLX
— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) September 9, 2020
Of a more recent provenance is this clip from comedian Chelsea Handler, whose ex-boyfriend, rapper 50 Cent, voiced his support for the president. The very caucasian Handler told Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” that she “had to remind him he was a black person.”
This fit into a set of cozy assumptions we’d all agreed upon: Minorities weren’t going to vote for Trump, Biden was going to win the popular vote big, and this would come down to a handful of states that would prove how debased a system the Electoral College really is.
It’s come down to a handful of states, but that’s really about the only cozy assumption that’ll hold water once we’re finally done with this election.
The final RealClearPolitics national polling average had Biden up by 7.2 points. There are uncounted votes out there, but not enough of them that the current 1.6 percentage point spread will somehow blossom into a 7.2-point win.
And as for Chelsea Handler reminding her ex-boyfriend “he was a black person,” maybe she should have reminded more of her Caucasian ex-boyfriends that they were “a white person.” That seems to work better, from what we can see.
The best summation came from Sullivan himself, a disaffected HIV-positive LGBT (kind of) conservative known for embracing the intellectual side of the movement — particularly anything involving political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, his beau ideal. He’s not a man given to doffing the MAGA or KAG hat. And yet:
I thought a more multiracial conservatism could succeed despite Trump. I didn’t understand it could happen because of him.
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) November 4, 2020
Or maybe it was just those secretly white Cubans.
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