People of Color are Going Red, and Blue is in Denial – BCB #93
Also: TikTok’s bearing on democracy, and same-side criticism of transgender policy
People of color are deserting the Democrats even faster than before
New polling from the New York Times shows that the Democrats’ lead among people of color is evaporating. As Financial Times data reporter John Burn-Murdoch explains:
Last week, a New York Times poll showed President Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by just 56 points to 44 among non-white Americans, a group he won by almost 50 points when the two men last fought it out for the White House in 2020… Data from America’s gold-standard national election surveys show Democrats’ advantage among Black, Latino and Asian voters at its lowest since 1960. Figures from Gallup show the same steepening decline.
This trend has been clear for over a decade, but even as it accelerates it is still being dismissed by Blue (e.g. as polling error.) Within Blue racial politics Red is “obviously” the more racist side — and this isn’t an unreasonable view, in a statistical sense. But this certainty is also a blind spot, perhaps a willful blind spot as Blue hopes that Americas’s shifting racial demographics will ensure a long-term victory for the Democrats. Unfortunately, this assumes that people of color will always vote first and foremost on the basis of race, an assumption which is itself prejudiced and misguided. (See: undocumented immigrant says Trump is racist and would vote for him if he could.)
Following this week’s poll, there has been much anxious discussion of this trend from liberals who may be used to assuming that people of color will “naturally” vote for Democratic candidates. To be clear, the majority still do, but the Blue advantage is rapidly shrinking. Burn-Murdoch suggests several reasons why this might be happening: only older Black Americans who witnessed the civil rights era retain strong ties to the Democratic party on that basis, while the GOP is no longer the party preferred by wealthy voters.
But perhaps more fundamentally, it seems that more non-white conservatives are beginning to actually vote conservative. Previously, non-white Americans with conservative views were far more likely to vote Democrat than their white counterparts, but as this graph shows, that trend is changing:
White people, of course, have never had a monopoly on social conservatism. As Burn-Murdoch writes:
History, culture and community have long overridden this misalignment between non-white conservatives’ policy positions and party choice. As recently as 2012, three in four Black self-identified conservatives were Democrats, but that has fallen to less than half. These voters won’t be won back by a bold environmental policy or defunding the police.
Nate Silver has further detailed analysis. This latest poll may not accurately predict the eventual vote spread in the 2024 election, but it’s still concerning news for the Democratic party, which routinely counts on people of color to swing elections in battleground states.
Beyond election season, this racial realignment may have profound and positive impacts on American conservatism, which could benefit from more diversity as conservatives of color feel less excluded. The way we think about the democratic process may need re-examining, as Yascha Mounk writes:
The recognition that American politics is highly fluid as well as deeply competitive has important implications for how to understand this political moment.
Persuasion matters. Partisans and activists like to claim that elections in a deeply divided nation are a matter of turning out the base rather than swaying the undecided. This stance is all the more attractive to them because it implies that no trade-off exists between ideological purity and electoral viability: There is, it would appear, no need to moderate to broaden your appeal. But the reality is very different: Voters do change their minds. Over recent years, they have done so en masse.
Is banning TikTok good for democracy?
Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that may lead to a ban or forced sale of TikTok. This has brought out both bipartisan support and wide dissent. Some have suggested that banning the app is unconstitutional, others that it could undermine America’s global moral authority as a defender of free speech and the open internet (after all, most of the world uses American social media). While there are real issues at stake here, foreign ownership is hardly the only reason that one might be concerned about a platform’s effect on politics.
When compared to other platforms, TikTok may not be uniquely threatening to democracy. Researchers from Accountable Tech scored top social media companies to assess “to what extent these platforms’ policies meet recommendations made in Democracy By Design roadmap – actionable, high-impact, and content-agnostic steps to protect the integrity of election.”
They concluded that none of the major social media platforms are adequately prepared to protect the integrity of elections in a year when two billion human beings worldwide are scheduled to head to the polls. But it was TikTok that scored highest on election preparedness—substantially higher than the platform formerly known as Twitter, which is still where the majority of regular users get their news.
Surprising validators in the transgender wars
Transgender people have become used to seeing their rights, status and identity made the subject of partisan political point-scoring, including between Red and Blue agitators who are not themselves transgender. We’re spotlighting two more nuanced and level-headed voices on the subject this week. In a striking essay featured in Tangle, Anonymous MD, a transgender Republican doctor, argues that gender dysphoria and transition are issues that need research and medical attention, not legislation.
The Right doesn’t view it through this lens, though. They seem disgusted at the direction their beloved institutions are going; they feel like they've blinked and ended up in an alternate universe, and they have no frame of reference for people with gender differences in their lives. The Left preys on their fears and sometimes states their intentions of dismantling the "old ways," denigrating conservatives as "bigoted." This leads the Right to be terrified as they watch their world melt away. Their fears are not entirely unfounded, as academic institutions are notoriously and almost unanimously biased toward the Left. And the Left has hijacked the issue of gender and made it about politics…
But because of the Right's fear-based approach, they are missing an opportunity to help children with gender differences who need, more than anything else, an unbiased and medical approach to treat their disorder. They could be the voice of reason here… But first they would have to consciously abandon their fear of the unknown, and be willing to separate the obviously anti-conservative agenda from all people who just happened to have gender differences. Not everyone is out to get you, I promise!
We’ve covered surprising validators before — people whose criticism is more powerful because it is directed at their own side — and sensible internal critiques of Red partisanship on transgender issues are welcome. Political scientist Damon Linker recently published “Ten Theses for Liberals on Sex and Gender,” suggesting compromises that will likely challenge everyone. Linker identifies strategic errors on both sides of the issue:
The Republican effort (recently tested in Missouri) to restrict gender transitioning by adults needs to be opposed, full stop. Conservatives have taken to describing such interventions as “mutilation.” Yet we live in a country and a culture in which adults routinely undertake all kinds of cosmetic plastic surgery: face lifts, nose jobs, breast enhancements, breast reductions, butt jobs, tummy tucks, Botox injections, and much else. … If conservatives want to begin describing all such efforts as forms of bodily mutilation and seek to regulate them more strictly, they are free to try it. What they can’t do is place pharmacologically and surgically facilitated gender transitioning for adults in a separate, restricted category by law. The attempt to do so is arbitrary and cruel, and liberals should be saying so loudly and without apology.
Linker also has strong words for liberals, who, he says:
…have been too quick to defer to the assumptions, priorities, and political strategies favored by transgender activists who affirm positions that are sometimes quite radical…
This has provoked a backlash on the political right that is gaining ground in states around the country. Democrats need a response that goes beyond doubling down on the maximalist position of activists and demonization of Americans who are troubled by it. They need a response that takes a strong stand against the most egregious moves being hatched on the right while also staking out a new position that’s more reasonable and closer to mainstream views on sex and gender.
The guiding theme here is respect for the right of adults to make choices that others might not—including choices they themselves may later regret. Both essays explicitly advise caution around children seeking medical gender transition, while making it clear that Red legislatures should not be stepping in to separate children from parents on that basis.
Allowing space for individual choice and acknowledging difficult emotional responses are cornerstones of conflict management. In a healthy democracy, it should be possible for Blue to allow Red to express discomfort without that discomfort dictating policy.
Quote of the Week
Some folks are upset about the TikTok ban, but at least that was voted on. Google and Apple ban apps every day, taking out competitors and apps they don't like, with zero accountability or oversight. One has to ask, what's the bigger threat to democracy?
– Andy Yen