Peer pressure
The political scientists Chryl Laird and Ismail White used a creative strategy several years ago to study the voting patterns of Black Americans. Laird and White took advantage of the fact that some surveys are conducted through in-person interviews — and keep track of the interviewer’s race — while other surveys are done online.
In the online surveys that Laird and White examined, about 85 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats. The share was almost identical during in-person surveys done by non-Black interviewers. But when Black interviewers conducted in-person surveys, more than 95 percent of Black respondents identified as Democrats.
It is a fascinating pattern: Something about talking with a person of the same race makes Black Americans more likely to say they are Democrats. As Laird and White concluded, voting for Democrats has been a behavioral norm in Black communities. People feel social pressure from their neighbors, relatives and friends to support the Democratic Party.
Similar social pressure exists in other communities, of course. A liberal who attends a white evangelical Southern church — or a conservative who lives in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood — knows the feeling. And Laird and White emphasized in their 2020 book, “Steadfast Democrats,” that Black Americans have behaved rationally by sticking together. It has allowed them to assert political influence despite being a minority group. Consider that President Biden’s vice president and his only Supreme Court pick are both Black.
Still, the political unity of Black Americans is surprising in some ways. “Although committed to the Democratic Party, African Americans are actually one of the most conservative blocs of Democratic supporters,” White and Laird wrote.
One important thing about behavioral norms, though, is that they can change. If voting Republican becomes more acceptable in Black communities, the number of moderate and conservative Black Americans who do so could rise quickly.
Ideology vs. identity
This newsletter is the second in a two-part series on the recent rightward shift of Black, Asian and Hispanic voters. Today, I want to look at possible explanations.
The first is the social dynamic that White and Laird described. It also applies to Asian and Hispanic voters. Across minority groups, voting Republican recently seems to have become more acceptable.
“Nonwhite Americans who previously may have voted Democrat for identity-based reasons are increasingly likely to vote more sincerely according to their conservative ideology,” Emily West, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, told Thomas Edsall of Times Opinion.
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| By The New York Times | Source: Gallup |
The second explanation is that today’s Democratic Party is out of step with the views of many voters of color, especially working-class voters. On some issues, the problem fits a simple right-left framing: Democrats are to the left of most voters.
Even when elected Democrats are more moderate, the party’s image is shaped by highly educated progressives who have an outsize voice because they dominate higher education, the entertainment industry and parts of the media and nonprofit sectors. It’s worth remembering, as the Pew Research Center has reported, that the most liberal slice of Americans is disproportionately white:
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| By The New York Times | Source: Pew Research Center |
Voters of color are often more moderate. They are more religious on average than progressive Democrats. Most voters of color favor tighter border security. Many support expansions of charter schools or vouchers. Many favor both police reform and more policing. Many support civil rights for trans Americans — but not allowing all athletes to choose whether they participate in female or male sports.
Racial minorities, as Marc Hetherington of the University of North Carolina told Thomas Edsall, “are much more tradition-minded and authority-minded” than white Democrats.
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| Top: Voting forms in Los Angeles. Bottom: A polling site in Austin, Texas. Top, Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times; bottom, Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times |
Other political issues are more nuanced than a right-left framing. Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, has suggested that voters of color may be frustrated with his party’s lack of a bold economic vision, and that’s plausible. Many working-class voters lean to the right on social issues and to the left on economic issues (but not so far left as to be intrigued by socialism). They favor a higher minimum wage, trade restrictions and expanded government health insurance.
Biden favors these policies, too. But Democrats have come to be seen as the party of the establishment, my colleague Nate Cohn notes. Many working-class voters see Democrats as socially liberal defenders of the status quo. Republicans, especially Donald Trump, increasingly seem to represent change, as ill-defined as that change may be.
Political diversity
My list here isn’t exhaustive. (Here is Nate’s list.) Some voters of color, like white voters, also seem frustrated by recent price increases and worried about Biden’s age. And voters of color are obviously a politically diverse group, who include many liberals and who have a wide array of views.
But that’s the point. Many Democrats have imagined people of color to be a uniform, loyal, progressive group, defined by their race. They are not. The party will have a better chance to win their votes if it spends more time listening to what these voters believe.