Oh ‘tis hand-wringing season once again. This time around we seem to be coming back full circle to the Great Freak Out of ‘04, when the race was oh so close.
Except, not really.
Recently several new polls have reverted to the 2004 electorate for their Likely Voter screens. Apparently, now that the really popular black guy is leaving, people of color are going to stay home. Now one could stop right there and ruminate on this assumption, which seems predicated on the belief that minority voters will be LESS likely to vote when there’s an overt neo-fascist, white nationalist, anti-immigrant candidate, who has been endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan — because the really popular black guy isn’t on the ticket. I mean one could take a second to think about exactly WHOSE set of assumptions we’re talking about here. But that’s not what I want to talk about.
I want to talk about 2004. Because when I read the fearful comparisons to 2004 and how we could be in danger of a repeat scenario I notice that there isn’t much mention of HOW Bush won 2004. And that’s too bad, because one of the reasons Shrub got the edge that year, is one of the reasons why Trump isn’t likely to repeat Shrub’s success. A familiar reason, one that’s been discussed a fair amount, but still gets swept aside by some when emotions and fear kicks in:
Minority Voters.
Yeah. We don’t like to think about it, and frankly — since it’s been 12 years — a good chunk of kossacks probably don’t even know about it: George W. Bush. Shrub. 43? Actually had support from us PoCs.
Per Pew:
An analysis of census and exit poll data suggests that President Bush took 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004.
Religion appears to be linked to President Bush’s improved showing among Hispanics in 2004 over 2000, when he took 34 percent of Latino votes.
40%. FORTY.
But wait, there’s more. The Chicago Trib:
WASHINGTON — When the final votes came in, President Bush's black vote looked like a drop in the bucket amid his national flood, but it looked like a big hole in the bucket for his Democratic opponent.
In a black turnout that surged about 25 percent from 2000 to 13.2 million voters, 11 percent of it went to Bush, compared to a paltry 8 percent in 2000.
But the real cost to Sen. John Kerry appeared in key battleground states like Ohio, where Bush received an impressive 16 percent of the black vote, 7 percentage points more than he received in 2000, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
A recent poll by the Joint Center, a Washington-based think tank specializing in black issues, forecast a surprisingly large black turnout for Bush..
From a post by Jonathan Tilove I found:
David Bositis, an analyst of black politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, calculates that if Kerry had won black votes at the same rate as Al Gore, he would have gained 55,000 that instead went to Bush _ a net switch of 110,000.
Kerry was trailing Bush by 136,000 votes in Ohio when he conceded, having concluded that counting the more than 100,000 provisional ballots couldn’t change the outcome. With those additional 110,000 black votes, Bositis said, the identity of the next president might still be in doubt.
Bush scored a similar gain with black voters in the battleground states of Florida, where the 13 percent contributed to his comfortable victory, and in Pennsylvania, where Democrats were able to absorb the 16 percent and still win.
In a year when Democratic organizers in black America adopted the mantra that “every vote counts,” the Bush campaign proved it.
All that with just a few minutes of googling.
W believe it or not actually gave a damn about securing minority votes. In fact I posit that had Cruz been the Republican nominee he would have used Bush’s playbook and posed a serious threat with an appeal to conservative church goers.
So okay, let’s pretend that magically all the minority voters that have increased over the last TWELVE YEARS disappeared, Kobached as part of some massive unprecedented voter purge. Where does that leave Trump:
Fivethirtyeight:
POLLSTER |
CLINTON |
JOHNSON |
STEIN |
TRUMP |
ABC News/Washington Post |
83% |
4% |
8% |
2% |
Fox News |
85 |
7 |
— |
1 |
Marist |
89 |
5 |
3 |
2 |
NBC News/Wall Street Journal |
86 |
0 |
4 |
1 |
Average |
86 |
4 |
5 |
2 |
Trump is in fourth place among black voters
Fox News did not include Jill Stein in its horse-race question.
Trump’s 2 percent is just flat-out awful.1 And it doesn’t seem like a statistical fluke: Trump’s lack of appeal among black voters is pretty consistent, at 1 percent to 2 percent across the polls, and he trails Stein in the three post-convention surveys that included her.
And If you think Trump actually went from 2 percent to 20 percent per that LA Times poll, I’ve got a hotel to sell you. With the best stage to give an announcement. Tremendous stage. The best:
As for the Hispanic vote, Latino Decisions has been all over that:
New Latino Polling: Trump on Track for Historically Low Performance & Helping to Drag Down GOP Brand
I think that suffices but if you want the numbers:
Donald Trump is on track for a historically low performance among Latino voters – Latino voters nationwide favor Hillary Clinton by a 70%-19% margin:When asked about the head-to-head matchup between the Clinton and Trump, Latino voters nationwide prefer Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 70%-19% margin. This puts Trump on track to underperform Mitt Romney’s historically poor performance among Latino voters in 2012, when Latinos supported President Obama by a 75%-23% margin over Romney, according to Latino Decisions 2012 Election Eve polling (71%-27% in media-sponsored exit polls).
Yeah. That’s some outreach-around if you ask me.
So.
How is this like 2004?