Democrats are sweating 2024 and for good reason. Whereas they’ve managed to keep up a pretty great front going into the 2020 and 2022 elections, 2024 sees them losing support in places they were guaranteed in the past.
June has been bringing in one bad piece of news after another for the Biden campaign, as Biden is fumbling demographics that Democrats should easily be raking in, including the youth and black votes.
As Nick Arama wrote Monday, Democrats seem aghast as the amount of black voters who have headed for the greener pastures of the Republican Party, specifically the Trump aspect of it. CNN was so taken aback by the drop in black support that the words “holy cow” were being repeated on air.
“Holy cow, folks, holy cow. Look at this. Joe Biden was up by 80 points among this group back at this point in 2020, look at where that margin has careened down towards. It’s now just, get this, 37 points,” said CNN data analyst Harry Enten.
It doesn’t help that Trump is increasing in black support, going from seven percent in 2020 to 21 percent in 2024.
Holy cow.
As Arama noted, that’s a 43 percent drop. Moreover, that’s not just a simple voter migration, that’s a rebuke. Black voters are historically Democrats by and large, and now they’re sending the message that they’ve had it. The bl ack voters in Detroit who met with Trump had a lot to say on the matter. They too are tired of watching everything from the economy to the military turn to garbage under the Biden administration. They remembered a time when their community’s did well while Trump was in office, and they want him back.
Speaking of Latinos, Ipsos found that Biden’s support among that demographic is plummeting while Trump’s is also rising thanks mostly to a flagging economy that they too remember was better under Trump. As it stands, Biden still holds the majority of that community at 41 percent while Trump sits at 32, however before Biden’s team celebrates, they should know that this was a six point drop from this time last year.
Then there’s the youth vote, which did some real damage against the Republican Party in 2020 and 2022. Here, the Democrats are also watching the support of young Millennials and Gen Z walking out the door:
There are also signs young people are slowly warming to the Republican Party, despite Biden’s efforts to keep them on side by trying to cancel student debt, expand affordable housing and reverse curbs on abortion rights.
The share of Americans between 18-29 who identify as Republicans has ticked higher, from 24% in 2016 to 26% in 2020 and 28% so far this year, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows.
You can practically see the shine from the beads of sweat forming on Democrat collective foreheads from your living room window. The Republican Party has always been a white party by majority, and it was something the Democrats always used as a way to paint the Republicans as racist and hateful toward minorities. Yet, the groups that were usually swayed by this aren’t buying it anymore. The damage Democrats did to the economy is so bad that it drove many of these groups to Republican tents, where they’re finding out they aren’t the racist, bigoted monsters they were painted as.
The question is, will this have a more lasting effect, not just into November but beyond.
When Budweiser put Dylan Mulvaney’s face on a can, it drove beer drinkers to find a different brand, and they found better beers to enjoy for about the same price. Now, necessity seems to be driving voters out of the Democrat Party, where they may find a better brand of politician in the Republican Party. If Bid Light is still feeling the pain from their departed customer base, will Democrats?
Time will tell, but the door is now wide open for this possibility.
We could be witnessing a turning of the political tide in real time.