Ruy Teixeira is a Democrat who believes with good reason his party is on the wrong track. He keeps writing about it, and quite inadvertently ends up posting ideas Republicans can take heart in. We’ve referenced his material several times here at COTTonLINE.
Today he describes at some length findings by New York Times numbers guy Nate Cohn who sees non-white voters dropping away from Democrat positions on the environment, and on social issues. While a majority still support Democrats, that majority continues to shrink.
None of this means that nonwhite voters are now going to become a Republican constituency, despite these voters’ concerns about the Democrats and cross-pressures on issues. Hardly; Biden will likely carry these voters by a healthy margin in 2024. But it does mean that Democrats’ hold on these voters may well slip further in 2024, cutting Democrats’ margins dangerously among a group that has been the bedrock of Democrats’ electoral strategy.
Minority voters remember clearly they were doing better economically during the Trump administration than they have fared since under Biden. If the coming election is in fact between these two men, it will draw that contrast in stark terms. Teixeira indirectly admits he earlier got it wrong in assuming minority voters would always be loyal Democrats.
I’d direct your attention to the five small charts (above) which document the trends in Teixeira’s article, likely borrowed from Cohn’s work for NYT. The dotted line extensions reflect recent polling.
