That Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries yesterday in clear and convincing fashion is old news, as is the fact that he, for better or for worse, is our 2020 presidential nominee. So unless anyone wants Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement chosen by Donald Trump, we have to root (and work) for him to beat Donald Trump this November. And on that front, the news is good.
In 2018, Democrats swept into power across the country, taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives in convincing fashion (flipping 41 seats), winning seven governorships, flipping six state legislative chambers, and winning over 300 state legislator seats. In 2019, we further picked up both chambers of the Virginia legislature, while winning governorships in Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky and holding another one in blood-red Louisiana. The Republican messaging was, “A vote for the Democrat is a vote for Nancy Pelosi,” and the voters were like, “Hell yes!”
Well, that’s partly true. The big overriding factor, of course, was antipathy toward Donald Trump—he motivated our side like never before, and Republicans couldn’t match that intensity. And, critically, Democrats made dramatic inroads into formerly Republican suburbs as educated white women switched allegiances for the first time.
In total, the House popular vote was 53.4-44.8 Democratic, a nearly 8-point spread. In raw votes, that was 60.6 million Democratic votes to 50.9 million Republican ones. Needless to say, anything resembling that spread this November would mean dramatic Democratic gains—from retaking the Senate to holding (and maybe even expanding our lead in) the House. We have key governorships and more state legislatures at play as well.
Of course, there’s one big difference this year from last: Donald Trump is on the ballot. That alone narrows the gap considerably. The other big difference? The stupid Electoral College.
As things currently stand, the presidential election will be won or lost in just seven states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That doesn’t mean other states aren’t in play; it doesn’t mean other states don’t matter down ballot. They almost all do! But if others flip in the presidential contest, this race is over. If Trump wins New Hampshire or Minnesota, he’s already won. If Democrats win Ohio or Iowa or South Carolina, we’re already in a 400+ electoral vote rout. Current public and private polling (including our own Civiqs numbers) show Republicans with a slight lead in Georgia, while the other six states are virtual ties. The popular vote won’t be close, but most of it won’t even matter unless it’s in that narrow playing field. So how does Biden’s performance right now speak to our chances?
Biden has underperformed with the Latino vote. Bernie Sanders was the beneficiary in the primary—the only group he improved on vis-a-vis 2016. Like working-class white men, however (more on that below), those gains could be less about Bernie himself and more about latent hostility toward the Obama administration in immigrant communities as a result of its aggressive deportation policies. The one exception is Florida, where a fresh Telemundo poll shows Biden in the lead, 48-37, among the state’s Latinos. Praising Fidel Castro, regardless of the context, was never going to play well. But even in Arizona, Sanders’ lead is only 47-40 among Latinos, suggesting that Biden is making late inroads into that community. Regardless, Florida is the biggest prize this November, and Biden seems to be in good shape among that critical constituency there. (In Arizona he’ll need to put in much more work.)
The Latino percentages of the populations of the battleground states are as follows: Arizona (31.6%), Florida (26.1%), Georgia (9.7%), Michigan (5.2%), North Carolina (9.6%), Pennsylvania (7.6%), and Wisconsin (6.9%).
Those numbers are big enough to swing tight races in all of those states, so Democrats will have to work hard to identify, register, and turn out Latino voters. This should prove to be Biden’s biggest challenge.
But Biden has crushed it with black voters. On Super Tuesday, Biden absolutely romped with black voters—58% in Texas, 61% in Alabama, 62% in North Carolina, and so on. Last night, with the abridged field, those advantages grew—87% in Mississippi, 72% in Missouri, 66% in Michigan. Black voters resurrected Biden’s campaign from the dead, and they are carrying him high all the way to the convention. This is critical, because we lost 2016 in large part because of widespread and systematic black voter suppression in battleground states we had lost in the 2010 Republican wave, specifically in Michigan (Detroit, Flint), Wisconsin (Milwaukee), North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham), and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).
We’ve won the governorships in those four states, and we hold critical secretary of state offices in all the battleground states except Florida and in Georgia (where Republicans suppressed the vote in order to narrowly win the 2018 governor’s race).
The black percentages of the populations of the battleground states is as follows: Arizona (4%), Florida (15.4%), Georgia (31%), Michigan (13.7%), North Carolina (21.1%), Pennsylvania (10.6%), and Wisconsin (6.3%).
This is why I advocate that Biden pick a black woman as his running mate and singularly focus on energizing this most-critical component of our base, shuttling among Milwaukee, Detroit, Raleigh-Durham, Philly, Atlanta, Miami-Jacksonville … and then rinse, repeat. (I am simplifying, of course, to make the broader point.)
Biden is holding white educated suburban voters who switched in 2018. This is a big one, with ginormous ramifications in critical battleground suburbs around Philadelphia, in Michigan, and, well, everywhere. Ground zero for the suburban revolution was Texas, where Democrats swept all suburban Houston and Dallas political and judicial offices. And I mean all of them. As David Jarman wrote in a 2018 post-mortem,
[M]ost of the Democrats’ most notable pickups in 2018 were in suburban areas that until recently were Republican strongholds, but where Republican performance collapsed in the 2016 presidential election over Donald Trump-related dismay. That trickled down to the congressional level in the 2018 midterm. The best-known example is, of course, Orange County, California, one-time epicenter of the Reagan Revolution, where the GOP delegation was wiped out entirely in 2018. But it also includes the suburbs of other Sun Belt cities such as Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta, and other longtime Republican hotbeds such as the suburbs west of Chicago.
Thus far, Biden has dominated in suburban counties, such as prototypical red-to-blue suburban areas in Northern Virginia (suburban Washington, D.C.) and the aforementioned Orange County, Houston, and Dallas suburbs. Biden also won suburban Detroit. Given that Biden won all counties in Michigan, that may not seem like much. But take Oakland County, which Hillary Clinton won 51-47 four years ago: She received 92,000 votes. Last night, Biden won it 56-33 with over 145,000 votes. Or how about Wayne County? Clinton won Macomb County 49-47 with nearly 48,000 votes. Biden won it 51-34 with 66,000 votes. Kent County, in suburban Grand Rapids, went 63-37 for Bernie in 2016. Biden won it 46-45, with his 47,500 votes more than Bernie’s 43,000 four years ago.
I focus on Michigan because Michigan is critical to a November victory, but the pattern repeats everywhere. Biden didn’t just spur more turnout than in past years; he also did so in these critical swing regions.
Indeed, it’s hard to see Democrats losing if we can hold this urban-suburban alliance.
But that’s not all!
Biden won back rural white voters who had defected to Bernie (and eventually Trump). Look at this:
Again, the trend presented everywhere. Biden won every county in both Michigan and Missouri last night, meaning that, in addition to the aforementioned urban and suburban gains, Biden has the potential to recapture some of that Obama-Trump vote. Not enough to win rural areas, but all we need is to make a slight dent.
The shifts were dramatic, leaving pundits to ponder last night: What, oh what might have been the difference between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden that changed these spreads, given that their politics were seemingly aligned? They were utterly perplexed. What possibly could’ve changed? (Hint: It has a penis.)
In fact—and this is fodder for a story of its own—the biggest miscalculation the Sanders campaign and movement made was thinking that those rural white voters were part of their socialist coalition. Quite explicitly, the Sanders campaign identified young voters and white working-class voters as its core. The reason their numbers are down by about half just about everywhere is that their young supporters never turned out, and that white working-class voters were happy to have another, more moderate penis to vote for.
Now, we know that 10% of Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump in 2016. And what do we know about those defectors? “[T]here is race. Nearly half of Sanders-Trump voters disagree with the idea that ‘white people have advantages,’” found political scientist Brian Schaffner. That’s these voters. They’re racist Democrats, they exist, they suck, and yet their votes could make a huge difference this November.
We thought they were socialist Democrats voting for Trump and were confused. It even led to Sanders saying stupid shit like, “[T]here are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American.” He was trying not to alienate part of what he thought was his base!
But they weren't socialists voting for Trump. They were racists voting against the woman in the primary, and then voting against her again in the fall.
Anyway, those racists and bigots are back onboard with our nominee. I won’t pretend to not be uncomfortable with that. But again, their votes count just as much as a righteous liberal’s vote.
Just like 2018.
This urban-suburban coalition, reinforced by a smattering of rural white support, is the reason we have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many of the governors and secretaries of state in critical swing states (and downballot battleground states and districts) that are working to remove impediments to voting and state-sponsored instruments of voter suppression in base Democratic areas (in mostly black and brown neighborhoods and on college campuses). It’s the reason we are within inches of taking a chamber of the Texas legislature, while making gains almost universally across the map.
Aside from weak Latino support, Biden is well-positioned to win in November and assist with continued downballot gains pretty much everywhere. As for that Latino support, it has to be a campaign priority as of yesterday. We’re going to need every single vote we can find and get.