My Wall Street Journal op-ed

Seniors for Biden, surprises in 50,000 YouGov/Economist interviews, changing party coalitions, the politics of sporting events

No. 310 | April 12, 2024

🗳️ Elections

Patrick Ruffini: Latino and Black Voters Could Elect Trump (The Wall Street Journal)

“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.”

Kyle Kondik: Seniors for Biden? Looking Into the Polls Among Another Key Subgroup (Sabato’s Crystal Ball)

“Horse race presidential polling has shown some significant weaknesses for President Biden among at least a couple of key subgroups: young people and Black voters.

However, some polls have also shown Biden doing unusually well among senior citizens.

The oldest voters have generally voted to the right of the national vote in recent cycles, and that is probably what we should expect in 2024 as well, despite these polls.”

Ronald Brownstein: Why Biden’s fate may be settled in the Rust Belt not the Sun Belt (CNN)

“Democrats are looking at a 2024 Electoral College map very few of them expected.

President Joe Biden’s breakthrough 2020 wins in Arizona and Georgia seemed to confirm that the party’s future was increasingly reliant on Sun Belt states rapidly growing more racially diverse.

But seven months before his rematch with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, Biden’s most promising path may run directly through the three Rust Belt states that he recaptured in 2020 after Trump dislodged them from the ‘blue wall’ in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That’s the conclusion of a broad array of Democratic strategists.”

@Danrosenheck: 🧵on a few interesting nuggets from our story this week on lessons from our 50K YouGov polling sample (Twitter)

📊  Public Opinion

Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation (Pew Research Center)

“The contours of the 2024 political landscape are the result of long-standing patterns of partisanship, combined with the profound demographic changes that have reshaped the United States over the past three decades.

Many of the factors long associated with voters’ partisanship remain firmly in place. For decades, gender, race and ethnicity, and religious affiliation have been important dividing lines in politics. This continues to be the case today.

Yet there also have been profound changes – in some cases as a result of demographic change, in others because of dramatic shifts in the partisan allegiances of key groups.”

🏀 Sports

Mike Shannon, Will Feltus, and Ben Angle: What Watching the Masters (and Other Sports) Says About Your Politics (Campaign & Elections)

“When the world’s top golfers gather in Georgia this week for the Masters, not much will be different from the tournament’s past editions. Patrons won’t be able to carry phones or cameras. Pimento cheese sandwiches will sell for an absurdly low price. The winner will receive the coveted green jacket. And television viewers won’t have to suffer through a single political ad, including Joe Biden’s recent spot attacking Donald Trump’s golf game.

In this regard, the Masters broadcast is truly ‘a tradition unlike any other’ among major sporting events. Commercials are limited to just four minutes each hour split among a handful of corporate sponsors, effectively making the broadcast a politics-free sanctuary. Golf fans of all partisan stripes can agree this is the equivalent of a hole in one.”