White voters are turning on Trump, new data shows. Why now?
By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
June 9, 2020 at 10:45 a.m. EDT
full article at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/09/white-voters-are-turning-trump-new-data-shows-why-now/?fbclid=IwAR1CjEBVbrf6a565y4NLPDmdcAlkWvQ5s2JFPsba6dFszMUNv75BRNBFuIE
excerpt:
In the mythology that holds sway over President Trump’s political imagination, the massive crises rocking the country — pandemic, depression, the worst civil unrest in 50 years — are all being alchemized by Trump’s magical reality-bending powers into political gold.
Trump has hoped to use these events to solidify his grip on his base, by vowing to protect Trump country from a disease ravaging urban America, by harnessing the supposed populist rage of Real American workers against Democratic elites locking down economies, and by repurposing “law and order” race-baiting to transform Joe Biden into an ally of crime and urban mayhem.
We know from Trump’s sliding approval and Biden’s growing lead that these efforts are failing. For now, anyway.
But a new analysis by Nate Cohn of the Upshot, and some new Post polling, shed fresh light on why they might be failing — and on what it means that Trump’s alchemical powers are deserting him.
Trump is slipping among whites
Cohn’s analysis finds that Trump’s slippage is driven largely by his eroding support among white voters, particularly those said to be his base. Cohn averaged together recent high-quality polls and found that Biden’s overall lead over Trump has expanded to 10 points, up from six points earlier this spring.
Specifically, Cohn found that in this average of polls, Trump’s edge over Biden among non-college-educated white voters has slipped by 10 points. He now leads among them by 21 points, versus 31 points earlier this spring, the latter being about the same lead Trump commanded among them in 2016.
As Cohn notes, the shift among this demographic “would be enough to assure Mr. Biden the presidency, given his considerable strength among white college graduates.”
Indeed, as Cohn also points out, white college grads now back Biden by 20 points, up four points from two months ago and up eight points from 2016, when Trump won in part by not losing educated whites by the margins many of us wrongly expected.
Biden also continues to hold an average lead of seven points among seniors, Cohn finds, which is striking amid all this unrest and amid Trump’s bluster about responding with “ STRENGTH!”
None of this was supposed to be happening.
A cultural shift in white America?
One possible reason for all this can be found in the new Post/Schar School poll: There is a very large shift underway in how white voters view the issues underlying the protests.
Only 35 percent of Americans overall approve of Trump’s handling of the protests, the Post poll finds. Meanwhile, 74 percent support the protests and 69 percent say the killing of George Floyd shows broader problems in how police treat black Americans.
Full coverage of the George Floyd protests
But note these findings among whites: Only 39 percent of them approve of Trump’s approach, while 57 percent disapprove; 69 percent of them support the protests; and 68 percent of them say Floyd’s death reveals systemic police mistreatment of blacks.
continues at washingtonpost.com |
