Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot: Examining the current demographics of the Harris coalition and comparing them to the demographics of Biden’s 2020 coalition provides a window into understanding how Trump has positioned himself for a possible victory. Here are four key points of demographic comparison, using the gold standard Catalist data from 2020 and crosstabs from the New York Times/Siena survey (rated A+ in Silver’s pollster ratings) and from the running demographic averages maintained by Cook Political Report (CPR).
(1) It’s still a working-class election. As I have previously noted, the key demographic to keep track of is the working class (noncollege) vote. How these voters move will likely determine the outcome of the 2024 election. They will be the overwhelming majority of eligible voters (around two-thirds) and, even allowing for turnout patterns, only slightly less dominant among actual voters (around three-fifths). Moreover, in all seven key swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—the working-class share of the electorate, both as eligible voters and as projected 2024 voters, will be higher than the national average.
In 2020, according to the Catalist data, Trump carried working-class voters overall by four points but lost college-educated voters by 18 points. In the latest Times survey, Trump is carrying the working class by 13 points, a 9-point improvement over his 2020 performance. He is also losing the college-educated by 21 points, representing a 3-point slippage relative to 2020. But the net of these two changes is clearly in his favor. Indeed, given the preponderance of working-class voters in the electorate, to truly set off widening deficits among the working class Democrats would need margin gains among the college-educated that are 50 percent larger than their margin losses among working-class voters. That is not happening.
The Times data allow working-class performance to be broken down between whites and nonwhites. Among whites, Trump is carrying white working-class voters by 30 points, a 4-point improvement over his already-large 26-point margin in 2020 but losing college whites by 16 points, a 7-point deterioration relative to 2020 (CPR data show the same pattern but more muted). White college graduates are the major demographic where Democrats have consistently improved election-over-election since 2012. They look set to do the same in this election. If Harris is, in the end, able to overcome deteriorating working-class support it is likely to come from spiking support among these voters.
Looking at nonwhites, it is here that declining working-class support is most dramatic. Among nonwhite working-class voters, according to the Times data, Harris is currently leading by 26 points. That may sound like a lot but Biden carried these voters by 49 points in 2020. And Obama carried these same voters by 67 points in 2012! Thus Harris is running an astonishing 41 points behind Obama among nonwhite working class voters, an absolutely core demographic for Democrats.
More here.
