I’ve been critical of David’s analysis in that it misses, most notably, the shifting salience of immigration as a factor in Hispanic vote choice. But I’ll defend his honor on the “socialism” point. It helps to disaggregate the national, baseline shift toward Trump among Hispanic voters, and the far accelerated shift we saw in South TX and South FL. Your data rightly identifies that fear of socialism isn’t predictive of the former (national shift). But it was undoubtedly a major factor in the massive Miami swing, which cost Dems two House seats.
Compared to the national shift— which happens after the midterms— in Miami it *began* during the midterm, among Cubans, stoked by AOC’s primary win and the nomination of Andrew Gillum for gov. In 2019, it extends to Venezuelans, and in 2020 to Colombians and others trapped in the Miami media ecosystem.
The result is that in Dem 2way support you see Clinton16 - NelsonGillum18 - Biden20 among Miami Cubans go 45-39-31, and among non-Cuban/non-PR Hispanics 70-60-52.
Even then, “socialism” is an oversimplification of a broader, multi-pronged attack. But it remains a useful shorthand.
Very good write up and very clear for the depth of the analysis.
I have no disagreements with it as far as it goes, but let me suggest an additional factor beyond the topics and tenors of political and media discourse should be considered, especially the range of political activities approaching the 2020 election.
I refer to the regularly overlooked field program of Trump Victory in coordination with the RNC to 1) register new GOP voters and 2) to communicate more directly with a selected range of regional and ethnic groups.
This program was announced in late 2018 and launched in early 2019. It flew largely under the radar of national media, possibly through some combination of de-emphasis by the Trump campaign and disinterest from the general political press. But the campaign spent several hundreds of millions of dollars on these programs over the course of two years.
My general point is that Trump Victory and the RNC made specific and sustained efforts and expenditures to reach out to a variety of ethnic communities traditionally seen as well beyond their base. Hispanic/Latino voters being the largest of these groups, any impact from this kind of outreach would be most visible there. It would be remarkable of such field-level programs had no impact at all, especially when Democratic energy during this two year period were at first taken up by their primary process (the GOP didn't undertake any significant primary promotional program), and then hampered by concerns about COVID. Even during the final months of the Biden-Harris campaign, observers noted that Hispanic/Latino outreach did not seem to be a priority for the campaign.
A related theory is that some voter registration efforts of the Trump/GOP programs increased non-Hispanic GOP registration in demographically high Hispanic counties, creating the illusion that more Hispanic voters flocked to Trump than actually did. A precinct-level analysis of new voter registrations, along with party-changing re-registrations, might shed some light, I've been hampered by technical problems and poor availability to pursue this inquiry, but it shouldn't be too hard to demonstrate or disprove with appropriate access to underlying data.
"The chart below shows that pattern: respondents with the most favorable attitudes toward the police shifted sharply toward Trump, while those with the least favorable attitudes shifted sharply toward Biden: "
Is that what happened, or did people who were already going to vote for Trump become more pro-police while people who were already going to vote for Biden became more anti-police? Is there any way to disentangle this in the data?
I’ve been critical of David’s analysis in that it misses, most notably, the shifting salience of immigration as a factor in Hispanic vote choice. But I’ll defend his honor on the “socialism” point. It helps to disaggregate the national, baseline shift toward Trump among Hispanic voters, and the far accelerated shift we saw in South TX and South FL. Your data rightly identifies that fear of socialism isn’t predictive of the former (national shift). But it was undoubtedly a major factor in the massive Miami swing, which cost Dems two House seats.
Compared to the national shift— which happens after the midterms— in Miami it *began* during the midterm, among Cubans, stoked by AOC’s primary win and the nomination of Andrew Gillum for gov. In 2019, it extends to Venezuelans, and in 2020 to Colombians and others trapped in the Miami media ecosystem.
The result is that in Dem 2way support you see Clinton16 - NelsonGillum18 - Biden20 among Miami Cubans go 45-39-31, and among non-Cuban/non-PR Hispanics 70-60-52.
Even then, “socialism” is an oversimplification of a broader, multi-pronged attack. But it remains a useful shorthand.
We talked about the shift among younger, foreign-born Cuban voters here: https://equisresearch.medium.com/florida-deep-dive-on-the-cuban-vote-b5f66b0d9483
Very good write up and very clear for the depth of the analysis.
I have no disagreements with it as far as it goes, but let me suggest an additional factor beyond the topics and tenors of political and media discourse should be considered, especially the range of political activities approaching the 2020 election.
I refer to the regularly overlooked field program of Trump Victory in coordination with the RNC to 1) register new GOP voters and 2) to communicate more directly with a selected range of regional and ethnic groups.
This program was announced in late 2018 and launched in early 2019. It flew largely under the radar of national media, possibly through some combination of de-emphasis by the Trump campaign and disinterest from the general political press. But the campaign spent several hundreds of millions of dollars on these programs over the course of two years.
12/18/2018: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/18/trump-machine-swallows-rnc-1067875
5/8/2019: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-campaign-hires-nine-regional-directors-for-2020-election-11557355628
1/17/2020: https://www.amny.com/politics/trump-campaign-tries-robust-outreach-to-expand-his-appeal/
01/23/2020: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/23/republican-nationa-committee-trump-battleground-102937
There was a Latinos For Trump website, established in June 2019, whose content was updated regularly : https://latinos.donaldjtrump.com/
For contrast (in the order of effort and tone) the Biden campaign website had an issue page for Latino Community: https://joebiden.com/todos-con-biden-policy/
My general point is that Trump Victory and the RNC made specific and sustained efforts and expenditures to reach out to a variety of ethnic communities traditionally seen as well beyond their base. Hispanic/Latino voters being the largest of these groups, any impact from this kind of outreach would be most visible there. It would be remarkable of such field-level programs had no impact at all, especially when Democratic energy during this two year period were at first taken up by their primary process (the GOP didn't undertake any significant primary promotional program), and then hampered by concerns about COVID. Even during the final months of the Biden-Harris campaign, observers noted that Hispanic/Latino outreach did not seem to be a priority for the campaign.
A related theory is that some voter registration efforts of the Trump/GOP programs increased non-Hispanic GOP registration in demographically high Hispanic counties, creating the illusion that more Hispanic voters flocked to Trump than actually did. A precinct-level analysis of new voter registrations, along with party-changing re-registrations, might shed some light, I've been hampered by technical problems and poor availability to pursue this inquiry, but it shouldn't be too hard to demonstrate or disprove with appropriate access to underlying data.
Anyway, thank you for the article.
Fairly butt hurt that i subscribed to this and there have been no posts in months. Can i get refund back for my annual subscription? This sucks
"The chart below shows that pattern: respondents with the most favorable attitudes toward the police shifted sharply toward Trump, while those with the least favorable attitudes shifted sharply toward Biden: "
Is that what happened, or did people who were already going to vote for Trump become more pro-police while people who were already going to vote for Biden became more anti-police? Is there any way to disentangle this in the data?
That was very interesting. I thought the section on the police situation was very well put and easy to understand