2020 VOTING COMPLEXITIES
Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial
Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other
Ideas.
Democrats may need to rethink their strategy as the class complexities and competing
desires of Latino and Asian-American demographic groups become clear.
Voters in Los Angeles on Election Day. Californians chose not to overturn a state ban on affirmative action despite
endorsements from powerful politicians. Credit…Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times
Michael Powell, The New York Times Online Edition, November 6, 2020; updated
January 3, 2021.
The proposition seemed tailor-made for one of the nation’s most diverse and liberal
states. California officials asked voters to overturn a 24-year-old ban on affirmative
action in education, employment and contracting.
The state political and cultural establishment worked as one to pass this ballot measure.
The governor, a senator, members of Congress, university presidents and civil rights
leaders called it a righting of old wrongs.
“Women and people of color are still at a sharp disadvantage by almost every measure,”
The Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial endorsement.
Yet on Election Day, the proposition failed by a wide margin, 57 percent to 43 percent,
and Latino and Asian-American voters played a key role in defeating it. The outcome
captured the gap between the vision laid out by the liberal establishment in California,
which has long imagined the creation of a multiracial, multiethnic coalition that would
embrace progressive causes, and the sentiments of many Black, Latino, Asian and Arab
voters.
Variations of this puzzle could be found in surprising corners of the nation on Election
Day, as slices of ethnic and racial constituencies peeled off and cut against Democratic
expectations.
“We should not think of demography as destiny,” said Professor Omar Wasow, who
studies politics and voting patterns at Princeton University. “These groups are far more
heterogeneous than a monolith and campaigns often end up building their own
idiosyncratic coalition.”
The California proposition that would have allowed affirmative action failed by a wide margin, 57 percent to 43
percent, and was voted down in each majority-Latino county. Credit...Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
Asian-American Californians opposed the affirmative action measure in large numbers.
A striking number of East and South Asian students have gained admission to elite state
universities, and their families spoke to reporters of their fear that their children would
suffer if merit in college selection was given less weight. That battle carried echoes of
another that raged the past few years in New York City, where a white liberal mayor’s
efforts to increase the number of Black and Latino students in selective high schools
angered working- and middle-class South and East Asian families whose children have
gained admission to the schools in large numbers.
“There’s more texture to California blue politics than you might think,” said Lanhee
Chen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University and policy
director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential run. “Identity politics only go so far. There
is a sense on affirmative action that people resent being categorized by progressives.”
Latinos, too, appear sharply divided. Prominent Latino nonprofit and civil rights
organizations endorsed the affirmative action proposition even as all 14 of California’s
majority-Latino counties voted it down.
Latinos make up more than half of San Bernardino County’s population, although
significantly fewer turn out to vote. More residents there voted on the affirmative action
proposition than for president, rejecting it by a margin of 28 percentage points. In rural
Imperial County, in the southeastern corner of the state, 85 percent of the population is
Latino. The voters there who gave Joseph R. Biden Jr. a nearly 27-point margin of
victory went against the affirmative action measure by 16 percentage points.
The results suggest that Democrats may need to adjust their strategy as the complexities
of class, generation and experience, and the competing desires of these demographic
groups become clear. Since the dawn of the 21st century, it has become commonplace
for party leaders to talk of a rising demographic tide that is destined to lift the
Democrats to dominance. That liberal coalition is seen as resting on a bedrock of uppermiddle-class
white voters, alongside working- and middle-class Black, Latino and Asian
voters.
In broad strokes, that narrative held. Black voters, along with a shift in the white
suburban vote, played a pivotal role in delivering Georgia to the Democratic column
(although so closely that a statewide audit … [took] place). So, too, Black voters in
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia voted overwhelmingly for Democrats — as did well-to-do
majority-white suburbs — and gave Pennsylvania and therefore the national election to
President-elect Biden.
In Arizona, Latino voters piled up large margins for Mr. Biden and tipped the state
narrowly into the Democratic column for the first time since 1996. Representative
Ruben Gallego, the Democratic congressman from Phoenix who is a former Marine and
a Harvard graduate, noted that several decades of aggressive tactics by Republican
governors and white sheriffs had stirred activism among the young Latinos who
dominate politics there.
“The Republicans caught Latino lightning in the bottle in Florida and South Texas, but
not here,” Mr. Gallego said. “We are very politicized. It’s just important that white
liberals don’t impose their thoughts and policies on us.”
Aside from those successes, however, the election presented complications wrapped one
inside another for Democrats. In Texas and Florida, in California and in Colorado (where
New York Times exit polls found that roughly 40 percent of white voters and 38
percent of Latino voters cast ballots for President Trump), the assumption that people of
color would vote as a liberal Democratic bloc often proved illusory.
A billboard supporting Proposition 16 in Inglewood.Credit...Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press
John Judis is a liberal writer and scholar who in 2002 co-wrote “The Emerging
Democratic Majority,” which became a seminal text for those who saw the Democratic
Party as a political tide rising. He has since backed off that a touch.
“‘People of color’ is a term that’s been adopted by the cultural left as a way of arguing
that if these groups proportionately voted Democratic in the past, they will do so in the
future,” Mr. Judis said. “I don’t see how you can make the argument.”
Viewing the Latino vote as monolithic fails, of course, to capture the often sharply
varying politics and ethnicities of people hailing from nearly two dozen countries on two
continents. The same is true when examining the behavior of Asian-American voters.
Philadelphia offers a snapshot: A record number of Latinos in the city, which is heavily
Puerto Rican and Dominican, turned out and buoyed Mr. Biden. Yet exit polls also
found that Latino voter support there for Mr. Trump leapt to 35 percent this year from
22 percent in 2016. In Milwaukee, an analysis by Urban Milwaukee reported an uptick
in the Latino working-class vote for Mr. Trump, although a majority still favored Mr.
Biden.
Supporters of President-elect Joe Biden in Philadelphia. A record number of Latinos in the city voted, with their
support for President Trump leaping 13 percentage points. Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Along the Rio Grande in Texas, where some Mexican-American families, known as
Tejanos, have roots that extend back four centuries, the vote margins shifted
dramatically in 2020. Latino turnout soared, almost entirely to the benefit of Mr.
Trump. Although Mr. Biden obtained more total votes in the four counties of the Rio
Grande Valley than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, his margins of victory fell sharply.
The reasons offered for these results include poor field organizing by the Democratic
Party, the cultural conservatism of some older Tejano families, and the fact that many in
these often-dense counties find good-paying jobs with the Border Patrol.
Many voters, too, worried that Mr. Biden and the Democrats would impose a new
coronavirus-driven shutdown, with dire consequences for the many thousands who own
and labor for small businesses. Prof. Omar Valerio-Jimenez grew up in the Rio Grande
Valley and teaches history at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Several of his old
friends and cousins voted for Mr. Trump.
“They faced this challenge: Do they continue to open our stores and restaurants and
churches, which lets us pay our bills,” he said, “or do we quarantine and not have the
money to pay our bills?”
Muslim voters also confounded Democratic strategists with their support for Mr. Trump
reaching 35 percent, according to The Associated Press. This, too, is a constituency
difficult to pigeonhole, as it encompasses Africans, Arabs, South Asians and Europeans.
“A sizable number of Muslims have experienced Donald Trump and to the surprise of
Democrats they said, ‘We want more of that,’” Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution
said.
Analyzing vote shifts is a tricky business, particularly when trying to gauge why some
Latino, Black or Arab voters moved from supporting a liberal Democratic candidate like
Mrs. Clinton in 2016 to voting for a populist authoritarian Republican like Mr. Trump.
Some analysts pointed to the appeal among male voters — regardless of color or
ethnicity — of Mr. Trump’s masculine persona. Others mentioned the performance of
the national economy, which had hummed along until the plague arrived.
Voters of color across the country surprised Democratic strategists with greater support of Mr. Trump than pollsters
predicted. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
There were small, intriguing changes in the Black vote as well. The Times’s exit polls in
Georgia found that 16 percent of Black men voted for Mr. Trump. (Compared with 7
percent of Black women there.) And to chart the votes along the so-called Black Belt in
Mississippi, which includes 10 counties along the Mississippi River, was to find that
although Mr. Biden won handily, his margin in nearly every county was two to three
percentage points smaller than Mrs. Clinton’s.
The unanswered question is whether the 2020 election will be a one-off, the voting
patterns scrambled by an unusually polarizing president who attracted and repelled in
near equal measure. If it signals something larger, political scientists noted, some Latino
and Asian voters might begin to behave like white voters, who have cleaved along class
lines, with more affluent residents in urban areas voting Democratic while a decided
majority of rural and exurban residents support Republicans.
Then there is California, where the sands of change blow in varying directions. In 2018,
Democrats swept the Orange County congressional seats. In 2020, the Republicans have
rebounded and taken at least two of those seats.
The Republican candidate Michelle Steel, who is Korean-American, came out against
the affirmative action proposition, a stance that proved popular with her AsianAmerican
constituents, as well as many white voters. And on election night, Ms. Steel
rode that support to a narrow win against the incumbent Democratic congressman,
Harley Rouda.
“This is the challenge for liberal Democrats,” Professor Wasow said. “In a diverse
society, how do you enact politics that may advance racial equality without reinforcing
racial divisions that are counterproductive and hurt you politically?”
Michael Powell is a national reporter covering issues around free speech and expression, and
stories capturing intellectual and campus debate. @powellnyt
#######
How Democrats Suffered Crushing
Down-Ballot Losses Across America
In statehouse races, suburban voters’ disgust with President Trump failed to translate
into a rebuke of other Republicans, ensuring the party’s grip on partisan mapmaking.
Members of Progress PA, a group of suburban women in the Pittsburgh area, rallying for Emily Skopov in Wexford, Pa., last month.
Despite Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in her district, Ms. Skopov, a Democrat, lost her State House race. Credit...Ruth Fremson/The
New York Times
Trip Gabriel, The New York Times Online Edition, November 7, 2020; revised November
28, 2020.
WEXFORD, Pa. — Just a few seats shy of a majority in the State House of
Representatives, Democrats in Pennsylvania this year zeroed in on Republican-held
suburban districts, where disdain for President Trump ran hot.
One of their prime targets was in the North Hills suburbs outside Pittsburgh, which are
home to big brick houses, excellent public schools and “the fastest-trending Democratic
district in the state,” according to Emily Skopov, the Democratic nominee for an open
seat there, who gamely knocked on the doors of Republican voters in the days before
Nov. 3.
She was half right. Joseph R. Biden Jr. carried Pennsylvania’s House District 28, after
Mr. Trump had won it by nine percentage points in 2016.
But Ms. Skopov, the founder of a nonprofit group who positioned herself as a moderate,
was defeated.
Across the country, suburban voters’ disgust with Mr. Trump — the key to Mr. Biden’s
election — did not translate into a wide rebuke of other Republicans, as Democrats had
expected after the party made significant gains in suburban areas in the 2018 midterm
elections. From the top of the party down to the state level, Democratic officials are
awakening to the reality that voters may have delivered a one-time verdict on Mr.
Trump that does not equal ongoing support for center-left policies.
“There’s a significant difference between a referendum on a clown show, which is what
we had at the top of the ticket, and embracing the values of the Democratic ticket,” said
Nichole Remmert, Ms. Skopov’s campaign manager. “People bought into Joe Biden to
stop the insanity in the White House. They did not suddenly become Democrats.”
That dawning truth is evident in the narrower majority that House Democrats will hold
in Congress next year, and especially in the blood bath that the party suffered in
legislative races in key states around the country, despite directing hundreds of millions
of dollars and deploying top party figures like former President Barack Obama to
obscure down-ballot elections.
This year, Democrats targeted a dozen state legislative chambers where Republicans
held tenuous majorities, including in Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina and
Minnesota. Their goal was to check the power of Republicans to redraw congressional
and legislative districts in 2021, and to curb the rightward drift of policies from abortion
to gun safety to voting rights.
But in all cases, Democrats came up short. None of their targeted legislative chambers
flipped, even though Mr. Biden carried many of the districts that down-ballot
Democrats did not. It could make it harder for Democrats to retain a House majority in
2022.
“In 2018 in the Philadelphia suburbs, you had rage voting against Trump,” said Senator
Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania, a Democrat. But this year, with Mr. Trump on the ballot,
the president brought out many more supporters who are occasional voters, diluting
what Democrats had widely anticipated would be another wave election for them. “It
may be suburban voters are still ticket splitters,” Mr. Casey said.
In the aftermath, moderate Democrats are feuding with progressives over whether
policies that excite the party’s base, such as higher taxes to pay for social programs,
policing overhauls and a rapid move away from fossil fuels, are a losing message with
swing voters. Progressives have responded that moderate candidates aren’t offering
voters an affirmative program to improve their lives.
Ms. Skopov echoed a Virginia congresswoman, Abigail Spanberger, who heatedly told
House Democrats on a private call after the election that the party must banish the
words “socialism” and “defund the police,” after Republicans defeated moderate
Democrats tagged with those positions, often inaccurately, in swing House districts
across the country.
Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia told House Democrats on a private call after the election that they should stop using
the phrases “socialism” and “defund the police.” Credit...Julia Rendleman for The New York Times
On Twitter, Ms. Skopov wrote that she had been “a casualty/collateral damage of this
offensively poor messaging.”
Mr. Biden’s winning margin of over six million in the popular vote obscured how narrow
his Electoral College victory was: He carried three battleground states — Arizona,
Georgia and Wisconsin — by fewer than 44,000 total votes.
“One of the big questions is whether a Trumpist 2024 candidate can be a little bit milder
so as to not alienate the suburbs, yet still inspire the low-propensity Republicans to vote
at 2020 levels,” said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. “If they can
pull that off, it’s going to be a very hard environment for Democrats.”
In the run-up to Election Day, the major legislative campaign committees for each party,
along with independent groups, poured record sums of money into races. For
Democrats, the aim was to take electoral districting power away from Republicans, who
after a red wave in 2010, drew gerrymandered maps that favored the party’s candidates.
The blue wave of 2018 left Democrats just a few seats away from a majority in a dozen
chambers, including Arizona’s House and Senate; statehouses in Iowa, Michigan, Texas
and Pennsylvania; and both the North Carolina House and Senate.
Democrats’ failure to flip any of their targeted chambers means that Republicans will
have control next year of 20 state governments that will collectively draw 188
congressional districts, according to one analysis. In a bright spot for Democrats, the
I
party is closing in on a supermajority in the New York Senate. That outcome would help
give Democrats control of mapmaking in states with a total of 73 House districts.
(An additional 167 districts will be in states with divided governments or where
independent commissions draw electoral maps.)
Republican mapmakers will seek to dilute the emerging Democratic strength in the
nation’s suburbs by packing some of those voters into urban districts while joining
others to conservative rural districts.
“The most important consequence of the elections is that Republicans prevented a
decade of liberal gerrymandering and gave Republicans the chance to take back the
House in 2022,” said David Abrams, the deputy executive director of the Republican
State Leadership Committee, which raised money for state races.
Texas was Democrats’ biggest failure. After flipping a dozen seats in the Statehouse two
years ago, the party was just nine seats shy of a majority.
Its most likely opportunities were nine Republican-held districts where former
Representative Beto O’Rourke surpassed Senator Ted Cruz in their 2018 Senate race.
Most of these districts were in the suburbs of Dallas and Houston. Yet Democrats failed
in all but one of the nine races, although Mr. Biden carried many of the districts. With
majorities in both legislative chambers and a Republican governor, Greg Abbott,
Republicans will control the drawing of as many as 39 congressional seats next year,
when Texas is projected to gain three House seats after the 2020 census, more than any
other state.
“I think that there were voters out there who were disgusted with Donald Trump and
saw Joe Biden as an alternative,” said State Representative Chris Turner, the chair of the
Texas House Democratic Caucus. “They said, ‘You know what, I’m not a Democrat —
maybe I’m an independent, maybe I’m a moderate Republican — I’m going to vote for
Republicans down-ballot.’”
Mr. Turner said Republicans successfully nationalized the races by accusing down-ballot
Democrats of seeking to defund the police, favoring socialism and aiming to ban fossil
fuels, even though none backed that agenda.
“I do think the Republican attacks, false as they were, made voters question whether we
could be trusted in terms of public safety or the energy industry,” he said.
In Arizona, a state that Mr. Biden won by about 10,500 votes in the latest count, the
president-elect became only the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the
state since 1948, largely by carrying the demographically evolving Phoenix suburbs.
But Democrats hoping to gain majorities in the State Legislature — where they needed
just three seats in the Senate and two in the House — came up short. Republicans
retained control.
Ballots were counted at the Maricopa County Recorder’s office in downtown Phoenix. Mr. Biden became the second Democratic
presidential candidate to win the state since 1948. Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
In the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, a Democrat won a Statehouse seat in 2018, in a
district no Republican had ever lost.
This year, outside groups spent $1.3 million trying to unseat the Republican state
senator from Chandler, J.D. Mesnard. Although Mr. Biden carried the district, Mr.
Mesnard won by an even larger margin than two years ago.
“Those voters, it seems like they registered their protest at the top of the ticket and then
reverted back to their typical voting behavior down-ballot,” said Charlie Fisher, the
executive director of the Arizona Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Although the State Democratic Party encouraged candidates to run on local issues,
Republican messaging in Arizona, too, succeeded in tarring moderate Democrats with
threatening public safety.
But Mr. Fisher disagreed that Democrats needed to back off progressive policies.
“I always reject this notion — it’s either we’re all in on progressive policies or on trying
to persuade independents and moderates to join us,” he said. “That’s a false choice.
What we need to do is both those things. The energy of our party is coming from the
progressives. We absolutely need to grow those numbers. But in Arizona we still need to
communicate with independent voters.”
Pennsylvania may have been the most frustrating state for Democrats down-ballot.
Two years ago, its candidates flipped a net of five Senate seats and 11 in the House. All of
the House pickups came in the Philadelphia suburbs, which were also the key to Mr.
Biden’s victory this month.
But Republicans retained their majorities in both chambers. Ms. Skopov, the losing
candidate in suburban Pittsburgh, was quick to tell voters while knocking on doors
before the election: “I’m a fan of our police. I’m not looking to defund police.”
Still, she was hammered in mailings by Republicans who portrayed her as having an
anti-law-enforcement position, which her campaign manager, Ms. Remmert, said did
great damage.
Ms. Remmert cautioned that if Democrats hoped to cement their 2020 suburban gains
in a presidential race in which Republicans put up someone less divisive than Mr.
Trump, they would need to recalibrate their messaging.
“A lot of the suburban districts that you’re trying to flip, you can’t win by just turning
out your base,” she said. “We could get every Democratic vote in those districts and
you’re still not going to win. You have to be able to turn out independents and
Republican voters for your message.”
Correction: Nov. 28, 2020
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a G.O.P. group. It is the Republican State
Leadership Committee, not the Republican Legislative Leadership Committee.
Trip Gabriel is a national correspondent. He covered the past two presidential campaigns and has served
as the Mid-Atlantic bureau chief and a national education reporter. He formerly edited the Styles sections.
He joined The Times in 1994. @tripgabriel • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 28, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with
the headline: Suburbs Went For Both Biden And the G.O.P..