lhe Democratic Party, a multicultural party par excellence, is usually described as a “coalition of ethnic minorities” with progressive whites, residents of large cities on the east and west coasts of the United States, joined by the most progressive elements and the most often. working class union members.
This coalition is today seriously weakened: a good part of the working class – affected by the economic crises and the deindustrialization of the Midwest – has abandoned the Democratic Party to join the Republican Party. The phenomenon is old: Richard Nixon, already in the 60s, managed to seduce workers in the construction industry. More recent and more worrying for Kamala Harris’ candidacy in the 2024 presidential election is the slow disaffection of “ethnic” populations in crucial states, which will participate in the electoral college elections. According to the latest polls, this discontent is low – a few percentage points – but enough to change the elections, if success is reduced to a few thousand votes.
The signs of the erosion of the black vote are multiple. In 2020, 92% of African American voters supported Joe Biden. Today, according to a survey published on October 13 in the New York Times conducted with Siena College, only 78% of likely voters show a preference for Kamala Harris, compared to 15% for Donald Trump. Keep in mind the importance of gender gap : According to the same source, 83% of black women favor Harris, compared to 12% for Trump, but only 70% of black men express the same preference, while 20% prefer Trump. The latter, according to other surveys, and especially the youngest, did not take Trump’s racist and conspiratorial statements seriously, but rather considered them “fun”in tune with hip-hop and rap culture, so appreciated by this category of voters.
The African-American supporters of the Republican candidate gathered within the “Black Men for Trump” Advisory Council affirm, in a letter, that it must be understood that their vote has nothing communal: “African Americans are not a monolithic bloc and our vote is not predetermined simply because a candidate looks like us. »
A certain sexist culture
The same erosion of the Hispanic vote, observed among others by the same survey of the New York Times : 56% of Hispanic likely voters say they favor Harris, compared to 37% favor Trump. In 2020, Biden had the support of 59% of Hispanic voters. The 3-point gap is small but notable; it is more pronounced within the crucial states. A certain machista culture explains, in part, this erosion, especially among young Hispanics, the majority of whom remain indifferent to candidate Trump’s xenophobic comments. The Hispanic vote is even less monolithic than the black vote, and second- or third-generation voters of Mexican origin have little sympathy for the new “undocumented immigrants” from Guatemala, Honduras or Venezuela.
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