Pew Research released their deep dive into the 2020 presidential elections a couple days ago. It’s a good survey because Pew’s sample size is huge (over 9,000 respondents) and each respondent is cross-checked with state voting databases to confirm they are actual 2020 voters. Pew conducts a similar survey following every November federal election, so it’s possible to compare results to 2016 and 2018 as well.
Reviewing the results, I began thinking about the key political factors that are going to play a big role in shaping the outcome of the 2022 and 2024 elections. I know it’s awful early to be thinking about those contests and there’s a lot that needs to play out between now and then that is both foreseeable (the end of the pandemic, pending infrastructure legislation of both the structural and human kind) and unpredictable (who would have thought in 2017 that a global pandemic would have been a major issue in the 2020 election?) but based on Pew’s findings, developing trendlines, and what we know now about the current political environment, we can identify a few things to keep our eyes on over the coming months in order to assess the parties’ electoral prospects.
Before jumping into that, though, let’s take a moment to consider how the electorate changes from election to election. It goes without saying that electoral results differ from one election to the next. Some of that, of course, is attributable to differences in candidates, but one thing that tends to hold true from cycle to cycle is that Republicans and Democrats will face off against one another. That generic competition between the parties is a fairly enduring and determinative feature of American politics. But what accounts for the swings in fortune for either party from election to election? How does a candidate from one party succeed in one election but then lose in the next despite running in a district whose voters remain mostly unchanged?
The answer to that question hinges on two decisions voters make: 1.) Who to vote for, and 2.) Whether to vote.
Let’s begin by considering how voters decide whom to vote for. Most people think variation from election to election is mainly driven by voters changing their political preferences. This is not true—I would guess you could accurately predict how 80-90% of Americans will vote in 2024 by asking them today which party’s candidate they plan to vote for, and for most of those people, their choices will track with whichever party’s candidates they supported in the past—but it accounts for some variation. The fact is voters, including independents, don’t change their partisan preferences all that much in their lifetimes. In every election there will be some partisans who switch parties and those changes need to be tracked to take into account long term trends in bloc voting.
Now there are some genuine independents who flit back and forth between the parties, but these truly undecided and unaffiliated voters are relatively small in number with preferences that are difficult to pin down. They are also typically not the great, fair-minded democratic deliberators the mainstream press makes them out to be either. Independents tend to be “low-information” voters whose lack of ideological constraint suggests they only follow politics in passing and base their vote more on impressions and the political buzz around candidates than as a result of a more sustained engagement with politics. (This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since many “high-information” voters are either a.) Inflexible in their preferences even when presented with evidence their preferred partisan candidates should not be trusted with public office or b.) Consume heavy amounts of poor political information.) The reasons they cite for supporting candidates often seem like the product of random selection. In close elections, independents can make a difference, but other factors often matter more than the independent vote.
Other voters can be described as cross-pressured; that is, their political beliefs and identities pull them in different partisan directions. Think for example of a female white-collar professional who prefers business-friendly economic policies such as lower taxes and deregulation but is also strongly pro-choice and favors laws that would promote gender equality. Such a voter could support a free market Republican; they could also support a Democrats with strong feminist credentials. These voters don’t necessarily change their minds on issues but instead shuffle their political priorities from election to election depending on which issues are prominent at the time. The number of cross-pressured voters, however, has been declining recently, as political polarization has prompted many voters to adjust their political views to make them more consistent with their preferred party’s platform.
A more decisive factor in contemporary elections is voter engagement and disengagement. The most reliable voters in any state or federal election are the party faithful. Parties cannot win elections if they fail to turn out their base voters, meaning parties go to great lengths to please them by delivering on campaign promises, avoiding issues that might divide the party, or opposing the actions of the opposition. Given the ideological diversity found in today’s big tent parties, however, it is not always possible to please every party faction. Sometimes parties even end up disappointing large swaths of their own voters. Instead of voting for the opposition (which would entail a violation of their personal ideological principles) disappointed partisans may instead choose not to vote, which on a large enough of a scale would go a long way toward depriving their party of victory. This level of engagement/enthusiasm and disengagement/disillusion is critical when explaining a party’s success at the ballot box.
Finally, generational change is a factor worth paying attention to as well. A new cohort of citizens aged 18-19 becomes eligible to vote every election cycle. At the same time, many older voters pass away and (contrary to what Trump says) no longer vote. If younger voters are of a different partisan persuasion than older voters, we could possibly expect a shift toward the party favored by younger voters. But turnout among younger citizens is lower than among older citizens, and it takes a while for young voters to become regular voters. Additionally, blocs of new voters become activated each cycle depending on which issues gain prominence from cycle to cycle. Consequently, it may take years for that shift toward the political inclinations of younger voters to be felt. (It should also be noted that young voters are also more likely than older voters to change their minds as they grow older, as their political views are still in a formative stage.)
Those are the factors I think a lot about when trying to figure out how the electorate might change over time. With those ideas in mind and Pew’s data handy, here are the questions I’m trying to answer looking forward to 2022 and 2024.
1. Will young voters remain engaged? For the first time in decades, members of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers no longer constitute a majority of voters. Members of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers made up 44% of the electorate in 2020, a big drop from 52% four years earlier. This may have major implications for elections going forward since young voters—particularly the Millennial/Gen Z cohort—favored Biden over Trump by 20 points (58%-38%).
The good news for Republicans is that they were able to narrow their margins of defeat among Millennials/Gen Z and Generation X from 2016 to 2020, which I suspect may be the product of convincing reluctant 2016 conservatives to come to the polls and recruiting young first-time voters in their 20s-40s. The bad news for Republicans (beyond their 20 point deficit) is that the pool of potential Baby Boomer and Silent Generation voters is maxed out and will only dwindle over time. Even if Republicans maximize turnout in those groups, their clout will still shrink.
Democrats won’t be able to take advantage of that, though, unless they continue to turn-out younger voters in large numbers, which isn’t guaranteed. Young voters move a lot, meaning they have to take the time to re-register to vote; it also means get-out-the-vote operations may have a harder time getting them to the polls. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, while the high stakes of the 2020 election certainly motivated many young people to vote, they have not developed voting habits that would more closely guarantee their participation in future elections. Hopefully they don’t regard their participation in 2020 as a one-off activity. Maybe voting to stop Trump and collectively succeeding in that endeavor will reinforce the importance of voting for this generation.
2.Will suburban and higher income voters continue shifting toward Democrats? America’s suburbs have long been viewed as political battlegrounds, and Republicans have historically had an advantage there. That advantage has slipped, though, and may be going away. In 2016, Trump won suburban voters 47%-45%, while in 2020, Biden won them by eleven points (54%-43%). Some of the shift may be explained by the growing diversity of America’s suburbs as non-White Americans continue to turn out in large numbers for Democrats, but Biden managed to trim Trump’s support among White suburbanites from 16 points (54%-38%) in 2016 to 4 points (51%-47%) in 2020. (I wonder how much of the shift in suburban voting is a result of millennials with families moving from urban neighborhoods they lived in as single young adults to suburban communities now that many are married with children.) The erosion of support for Republicans in the suburbs is significant because suburban voters make up roughly half (52% in 2020, 50% in 2016) of all voters.
(Trump, for his part, went from getting blown out by 46 points [70%-24%] in urban areas in 2016 to getting blown out by 33 points [66%-33%] in 2020, a trend Democrats will want to keep their eyes on. Urban areas as a whole are not going to turn red anytime soon, but small percentage shifts in large urban areas like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which moved 3.5% to the right in the last election and delivered Trump 17.9% of its vote, can potentially have an outsized impact on electoral results statewide. Fortunately for Biden, that shift in Philly was offset by his gains in the Philadelphia suburbs and the Lehigh and Wyoming Valleys. BTW: Did you know Joe Biden was born in Scranton? Who knew…)
Higher income voters are also shifting their support away from Republicans. For years, higher income voters tended to vote Republican. That’s changed, however: In 2016 those earning over $100,000 (25% of the population) supported Clinton over Trump 49%-45%, while in 2020 Biden blew those margins open to 56%-43%. At the same time, however, those earning under $50,000 (35% of the population) also supported the Democratic candidate (51%-41% in 2016, 53%-44%). Trump won the $50,000-$100,000 middle range 50-44% in 2016 and 52-47% in 2020. (Contrary to popular belief, poorer voters still favor Democrats, as they have for decades.)
Again, I wonder how much of that shift among high-income voters can be attributed to aging millennials pulling in higher wages. But a big part of the shift is related to educational attainment. It used to be that voters with more education voted Republican. That was a deceiving observation, however, because education was often correlated with income, and if one controlled for education it was clear income was the driving factor in vote choice, with those earning higher wages at every educational level tending to vote Republican. It is in educational attainment that we now see the sliding percentages. In 2020, 18% of all voters had a postgraduate degree, and they supported Biden over Trump by 35 points (67-32%). College graduates (21% of all voters) went to Biden by 14 points (56%-42%). Trump won those with some college (32% of all voters) by 1 point (50%-49%) and those with a high school diploma or less (29% of all voters) by 15 points (56%-41%).
Educational attainment also scrambles evaluations of race. Whites with a college degree backed Biden by 15 points; whites without a college degree voted for Trump by 32 points. (Trump won all Whites by 12 points.) Meanwhile, Hispanics with a college degree—roughly 1 in every 5 Hispanic voters—supported Biden by 39%; among Hispanics without a college degree, that margin dropped to 14%. (Black Americans both with and without college degrees supported Biden by 84 points.)
(Why does increased educational attainment lead people to vote Democratic? I suspect the college experience tends to make college graduates—particularly White college graduates—more receptive to diversity and multiculturalism and sympathetic to those who have historically faced discrimination in the world. Additionally, college graduates are more likely to find employment in dense urban areas with greater diversity both in the workplace and in society. They are therefore more responsive to claims about social injustice, which is a cornerstone of the Democratic Party. Many []but not all] non-college graduates have not had those similar experiences and therefore may not be as responsive to such claims or regard them as political priorities.)
It was often assumed that suburban and higher-income voters vote their pocketbook (or perhaps formed their view of the wider world through the lens of their pocketbook.) Trump seems to have upended that calculation, with suburban and higher income voters setting aside their traditional pocketbook concerns to register their discontent with Trump’s bigotry and autocratic tendencies. If their perception of Trump’s threat to democracy subsides, however, or if the price tag of Biden’s domestic agenda strikes many as too high, would the margins among these voters begin sliding back to Republicans? (This is why Republican claims that Democrats are in the pocket of big business ring hollow; if these Democratic voters were to prioritize their self-interest over their social concerns, they’d be voting Republican.)
3. What will happen to the gender gap? In 2016, Trump won men by 11 points (52%-41%) while Clinton won women by 15 points (54%-39%). In 2020, Trump won men by 2 points (50%-48%) while Biden won women by 11 points (55%-44%). Given the higher turnout in 2020, these results mean Biden won slightly more female voters than Clinton but Trump likely managed to convince a share of conservatively-inclined female voters who refused to vote for him in 2016 to head to the polls for him in 2020. But it’s that margin among men that is most striking. Geographic distributions of voters aside (we’ll save concerns about the Electoral College and gerrymandering for another day) it’s hard to imagine how Republicans can compete nationally if they can’t offset Democratic advantages among women by driving up margins among men.
And remember: Much of Trump’s appeal was supposedly based on his hyper-masculinity. Maybe that hyper-masculinity was too toxic for many male voters, particularly among those living with female voters. Consider this: Trump’s support among married women rose from 48% in 2016 to 53% in 2020 while support for the Democratic candidate basically held steady (47% to 46%). But among married men, Trump’s margin of victory dropped a full 20 points, with Trump’s support declining from 62% to 54% and support for the Democratic candidates increasing from 32% to 44%. What happens if that hyper-masculine aspect of Republicans’ appeal is toned down? That could actually be a way for Republicans to bring more men back into the fold.
4. Can Democrats keep Hispanics from drifting Republican? This is the development that has Democrats most anxious. Clinton won 66% of Hispanics in 2016 while Trump won 28%, but in 2020 Biden won Hispanics with 59% of the vote while Trump pulled in 38%. Trump did substantially better among Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and in southern Florida. Reports suggest Trump’s border security push resonated with Hispanic voters in southern Texas (many of whom are multigenerational Americans) and his attacks on the Democratic “socialist” agenda turned out Cuban American voters in the Miami area. Democratic appeals to Hispanic voters were also ham-fisted in the way so much of their messaging got reduced to immigration and in how they glossed over important distinctions among Hispanics by grouping them all together under the label of “Latino.” (The experiences of Hispanic Americans vary greatly by national origin and how long ago they or their families can claim citizenship as Americans.) This development will have major implications for how competitive Democrats can be in Florida, Texas, and (potentially) Nevada. (Biden did not slip among Hispanic voters in Arizona.)
5. What will turnout be like in the current high polarization/high engagement political environment? Since the 1970s, voter turnout in presidential elections has hovered somewhere in the 50% range with no clear upward or downward trend. It reached a low point of 49% in 1996 when Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole and Ross Perot for re-election and peaked at 58.2% in 2008 when Barack Obama won his first term over John McCain. Turnout in 2020—and remember, this was with a pandemic going on—was 66.8%. About 27,000,000 more Americans voted in 2020 than 2016, which did not have a shabby turnout rate (55.7%). In this way, 2020 looks like a real outlier. That’s what may lead many to question the predictive utility of Pew’s 2020 study. How many 2020 voters are likely to return to the polls in 2022 and 2024, will those who sit out the election come disproportionately from some groups rather than others, and how will that shape the results? Has the dam broken on our political polarization, driving more impassioned voters to the polls? Or will we return to a more predictable cohort of voters? Turnout tends to be higher among older voters (who trend Republican) and higher-income Americans (who are starting to trend more Democratic, although lower-income voters make up a greater proportion of the electorate.)
6. Will Trump be an advantage or liability for Republicans going forward? So much seems to hinge on this question. Trump drove a lot of Republicans to the polls. No Republican has ever won more votes for president. He also drove a lot of Democrats to the polls to stop him and couldn’t crack 47% of the popular vote. When Trump wasn’t on the ballot in the 2018 midterms but sitting in the Oval Office, Democrats took back control of the House of Representatives. When he was on the ballot in 2020, Republicans lost control of the Senate but clawed back seats in the House. Republicans would probably like to run on Trump’s playbook to maintain their base and against Biden’s agenda to lure back wayward Republicans and cross-pressured voters, but it’s not clear how Republicans would fare nationally without Trump leading the charge and rallying the supporters he brought into the party. But if Trump is out front and the elections become yet another referendum on him, Republicans may again find themselves at a disadvantage. Yet after 1/6, how many voters have become permanently turned off by the autocratic bent of the Republican Party (or, more terrifyingly, more wedded to the GOP)?
Of course, Trump’s “Save America” message could not only fall flat in a booming post-pandemic economy (not that his supporters would notice) but might also expose his whole movement as a massive grievance machine. That could save Democrats in 2022. But midterm elections are tough on incumbent parties, and Democrats don’t have margins to spare in either house of Congress. That job would get tougher if Biden’s agenda stalls on Capitol Hill, which would likely prompt many Democratic voters to sit out the midterms while Republicans rally to stop the libs. At the same time, many Democrats in toss-up districts are probably worried about alienating suburban and higher-income voters who voted for Biden but not necessarily for the progressive domestic policies Congress is currently pushing.
But that dilemma also seems to clarify for me at least what the way forward for Democrats ought to be. Democrats need to emphasize that not only is Trump a threat to democracy, but so are conservative domestic policies that exacerbate inequality, poverty, and racial disparities in America and that drive middle- and working-class Americans toward the desperate measures of Trumpism. Saving democracy requires not only standing up to Trump and his autocratic wannabes in the Republican Party but passing a progressive legislative agenda that makes American society more equal, prosperous, and fair. In other words, progressive economic policies are good for America’s pocketbooks and American democracy. That’s a message that should resonate with Democratic voters looking for economic relief in a system that feels stacked against them as well as higher-income and suburban voters who have started supporting the Democratic Party as a way to halt the nation’s slide toward autocracy.
Thanks for reading. A holiday is coming up, so I may take a few days off from writing. If you don’t hear from me Tuesday, I’ll definitely be back next Friday.
Photo credit: Pexels.com
Exit Music: “Turn Back the Hands of Time” by Tyrone Davis (1970)