I know we’re likely not the first ones to point this out, but after going through our data in full recently, we’ve found that the media’s claims (even once-reliable outlets like NYT and WaPo) of a “minority swing” towards Trump in 2020 is complete and utter bullshit, especially among Latinos who did not support Trump in 2020 above 2016 levels. The media confusion on this appears to stem from an obvious blunder that we’re shocked hasn’t been pointed out yet among major news organizations: NYT, WaPo and the major news networks are basing their claims of a “pro-Trump” minority swing on exit polls done of Election Day voters, who tilted toward Trump among all demographics groups. After a fuller examination of data that we had in hand which sampled early and mail-in voters, and which another canvassing group has confirmed with us, it’s becoming clear that Trump’s shockingly high support in 2020 was almost all on account of an increase in white voters—Latinos absolutely did not increase their support compared to 2016, and there was at best a minuscule movement among African-American and Asian-American voters.
To flesh this out a little more, our (mainly Florida-based) group was going through some of the demographics of the November 2020 vote, to help guide preparations for GOTV and canvassing in 2022 and 2024. One of the central narratives that’s been getting pushed by the media, even by the once-venerable New York Times and Washington Post (and Miami Herald down here) has been a supposedly shocking increase in minority support for Trump in 2020 compared to 2016, with all the usual hand-wringing to go along with it. So we began going through our own GOTV data (both phone and limited door-to-door), which involved talking to Independents and even Republicans, across demographics, with voters with whom we’ve been in communication in many cases for over 20 years. Much of this was in Florida but also in Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas, and some scattered GOTV in other states. What we’ve found is that, somewhat as expected (when we were able to tabulate our data for Election Day vs. early/mail-in voters), there was indeed a swing towards Trump, including among Latinos. However, when we added in the data we collected among voters who voted early or mailed their ballots (voters who were completely missed by the exit polls), it became abundantly clear that Trump’s increased support compared to 2016 was entirely due to increases among white voters, and perhaps a very slight increase (1-2 percent) in African-American voters. Latinos voted very disproportionately through mail and early-voting, and when the full data were taken into account, their support for Trump dropped compared to 2016—Trump clearly got well less than one-third of the Latino vote, noticeably below his 2016 level, and even among Cubans his support dropped, esp. since younger Cubans voted early and by mail and trended increasingly Democratic.
The Asian-American and Pacific Islander vote for Trump appears little unchanged compared to 2016 (very low in both cases, perhaps about a quarter). His share of the native American vote appears slightly lower thus far (there was a lot of anger about the Keystone XL pipeline antics). The one disturbing tidbit of data from our partial sample thus far is that, even taking into account early and mail-in ballots, again appears to be that slight boost in African-American voters. We asked a series of questions (straight and open-ended) in conjunction with gauging voter preferences in our GOTV, and amid that tiny shift, there were mentions of Trump’s apparent support of HBCUs and the prison reform bill. Again, though, this shift is minimal, amounting to around 1-2 percent with support for Biden-Harris in the 80s to around 90 percent across several states. We’re still crunching the numbers but our findings thus far largely make sense with expectations, indicating that all the claims of increased minority support for Trump were largely bullshit, and based on wholly inaccurate Election Day exit polls.
If nothing else, this is making us increasingly angry about all the idiotic and inaccurate claims, even from NYT and WaPo, that minority voters were coming out more in favor of Trump. This sounded like bullshit to begin with and our recent analyses confirm these suspicions. The media should have someone in their ranks to point out a fact that now seems obvious—the exit polls weren’t reliable this year due to the heavy preponderance of mail-in and early voting. Trump’s gains are largely among white voters and whites only. There has been no supposed Latino shift in his direction, in fact Latinos now appear to be one of the groups that shifted hardest against him in 2020, and the media’s totally missing this. We’re not saying there weren’t mistakes in Florida in particular (clearly there were things the campaign could have done better, we’ll put up a separate diary on this), but the media’s been peddling a completely false narrative on this. We have to run to a meeting right now but if any of you have a chance, please start launching letters of the editor and comments towards the news outlets pushing this false narrative—they’re completely misleading the country on this.