Who Are the Key Voters Turning Against Trump?

Some interesting data from the lefty political scientist Ruy Teixeira (via The New York Times):

Joe Biden may be ahead in national and many battleground polls, but Democrats are still fretting about whether key constituencies will turn out in November. In particular, they worry about the level of support from young black and Hispanic voters — for good reason.

Mr. Biden’s margins among these groups, particularly African-Americans, tend to lag Hillary Clinton’s margins in the 2016 election (though the gap is smaller if you compare Mr. Biden’s margins now to Mrs. Clinton’s at the same point in her 2016 campaign). And young voters were notably unenthusiastic about the former vice president during the primary season.

But the Democrats have a secret weapon in 2020 on the other side of the age spectrum: senior voters. Among this age group — voters 65 and older — polls so far this year reveal a dramatic shift to the Democrats. That could be the most consequential political development of this election.

The bipartisan States of Change project estimates that Mrs. Clinton lost this group by around 15 points. By contrast, the nonpartisan Democracy Fund + U.C.L.A. Nationscape survey, which has collected over 108,000 interviews of registered voters since the beginning of the year, has Mr. Biden leading among seniors by about six points. We are looking at a shift of over 20 points in favor of the Democrats among a group that should be at least a quarter of voters in 2020. That’s huge.


This pro-Democratic shift is very much in evidence in 2020 battleground states. The list includes Florida, where seniors should be an unusually high 30 percent of voters (a 17 point shift); Pennsylvania (24 points); and Michigan (26 points). In short, the age group that was President Trump’s greatest strength in 2016 is turning into a liability. In an election where he will need every vote against a strong Democratic challenge, that could be disastrous — and a harbinger of a new, broader coalition for the Democrats.

 In conclusion, Teixeira explains these seniors are

liberal, but not especially, on some economic issues — and fairly traditional, but not draconian, on social issues. It’s easy to see why many voters who thought that was what they would get from a Trump administration are now disappointed. Combined with an age-related preference for normality and stability, that helps explain their movement away from Mr. Trump. They thought he would bring them closer to the America they wanted, with some of the decency and values of the past. As far as many white seniors are concerned, they didn’t get it.

For them, Mr. Biden seems like a comfortable alternative. He projects moderation and decency, an image burnished by his rejection of proposals regularly debated in the Democratic primary like Medicare for all and decriminalizing the border.

No doubt his appeal has been strengthened by the president’s response to the coronavirus, which has hit this group far worse than it has younger Americans. The president’s performance, and his ostentatious concern with reopening the economy rather than preventing deaths among the most vulnerable, has not gone down well with these voters.

Of course, if these seniors understood the radical lefties behind the mentally deteriorating Biden, they would rip their masks off and run to the polls if they had to and vote for Trump.

Trump is the definition of an erratic mixed bag but when it comes to the survival of the country in any decent sense, with Trump you are playing Russian roulette with bullets in probably two chambers with Biden its bullets in four chambers.

 -RW