Lately I’ve seen some polls that show Trump either losing or narrowly winning white voters. There have been lots of blue checks on social media getting their hopes up that Biden is going to win white voters:
This Forbes article from a week ago cited a poll that showed Trump and Biden tied with white voters at 48%.
It was an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll.
The Washington Post gleefully reported that “white voters are turning on President Trump”:
At a website called “Politics USA,” an article from June declared that “White voters are fleeing Trump and flocking to Joe Biden.” It cited analysis by the New York Times‘ poll nerd Nate Cohn, but we’re not going to link to the NYTimes because they’re the enemy of the people. But you can read an excerpt from the article at the Politics USA link.
It’s because of headlines like these that I’ve been continually saying the polls are wrong: because Biden is not going to do well with white voters. Not anywhere as well as the polls are showing. And probably not even as well as Hillary did with white voters in 2016.
The media has been saying white voters are abandoning Trump. This has been a consistent wishful-thinking narrative of theirs since mid/late 2017.
It’s not true. Not at all.
Trump is not losing white supporters. Not by a long shot. You have to understand the type of person who voted for Trump in 2016: these are not people that are going to abandon him over bad press. These are not people who are going to abandon him over his tweets.
All of this stuff was known in 2016. And they voted for him anyway. They will not be shaken loose easily.
They don’t believe a word the media says. They haven’t for a long time. If you think any of the media’s malicious lies against Trump—Russia, Charlottesville, Ukraine, Impeachment, etc.—are going to change any 2016 Trump voters’ minds, you are utterly delusional. They don’t believe a word the media says. They didn’t in 2016, they don’t now.
If the media and the Democrats really want to shake Trump’s white supporters loose, they would attack him from the right. Because while he’s been pretty good about keeping his promises, and while by any objective standard he’s been at least an above-average president during his first term, there definitely are a lot of 2016 Trump supporters who have been underwhelmed by his first term.
But at the end of the day, they know There Is No Alternative (TINA) to Trump. They will not get better results with Biden in office. Even the self-described “accelerationists” who think that by making things worse it will hasten the kind of revolution they want, these people are A. Mostly all talk, B. Mostly under the age of 30 and therefore don’t know what they’re talking about (despite the fact that the alt-right are admittedly generally in the top-95%+ intelligence tier), and C. Very small in number.
There Is No Alternative to Trump. And every last one of his supporters knows this. No matter how disappointed some of them may be in Trump’s first term—which has largely been hampered by bureaucratic and Congressional obstruction, as well as the media’s scandalmongering and heinous lies—they know there is no way in hell that voting for Biden advances the football for them in any conceivable way. Deep down, they know that they’d be fools for making perfect the enemy of the good.
And this is why Trump is not going to lose support with white voters: because if there are any white voters disappointed in him, it’s because he hasn’t been rightwing enough. Not because he’s been too far to the right.
The likelihood of Trump losing white support from 2016 to 2020 is extremely low. His white supporters voted for him in 2016 the because they wanted the Wall and out of disgust over the corruption of the Clintons. They are not going to abandon him for the party of open borders and, uh, the Clintons. They see Biden as one and the same with the Clintons: they know they’re all part of the same Democratic inner-circle. This is why it’s mind-boggling to see polls that show Trump and Biden tied with white voters or even with Biden winning white voters.
That is not going to happen.
If you don’t believe me, then ask yourself if this political climate—the one of BLM, race riots, rampant anti-white racism and, above all, steadily growing white consciousness of the changing demographics of the country—is one that is likely to make Trump the first Republican since 1964 to lose the white vote. Be honest with yourself.
Trump will not be the first Republican to lose the white vote since 1964. You know it. I know it. We all know it.
Let’s look back on past elections just to get a frame of reference for how Republican candidates—good ones, so-so ones and bad one alike—historically perform with white voters. All data via Cornell’s Roper Center:
- Trump won white voters 57-37 in 2016.
- Romney won 59-39 in 2012.
- McCain won whites 55-43 in 2008.
- Bush won 58-41 in 2004.
- Bush won 55-42 in 2000.
- Dole narrowly won white voters in 1996, 46-44 over Clinton. Perot won 9%.
- Bush won the white vote in 1992 41-38 with Perot taking a whopping 21%.
- 1988: Bush won whites 60-40 over Dukakis.
- Reagan won whites 66-34 in 1984.
- Reagan won the white vote 56-36-8 in 1980 over Carter and third-party candidate John B. Anderson.
- Ford won the white vote 52-48 in 1976.
- I couldn’t find data from 1972 but I’m certain Nixon won white voters given that he won the election in one the biggest landslides ever. And he probably won them in 1968, too.
The last time a Republican lost the white vote was 1964. We know this because the country was over 85% white back then and LBJ won by a national popular vote margin of 61-38.
Republican average of white vote share since 1976: 55%. And that’s including the three elections (1996, 1992, 1980) where a third-party candidate won a meaningful number of white voters.
Since 2000, Republicans have averaged 56.8% of the white vote.
Democrat white vote average since 1976: 40.2%.
Since 2000: 40.4%
So, since 1976, Republicans have won the white vote by an average margin of 55-40%. 15 points.
And since 2000, Republicans have won the white vote by an average margin of 56.8% to 40.4%. That’s an average margin of 16.4%.
Biden will not be the first Democrat to win the white vote since 1964. I would stake my life on this.
White voters—mainly non-college whites—are ride or die for Trump. They stuck by him through all the bullshit and slander of 2016. If they were going to abandon him, they would have done so before the 2016 election—like the media kept predicting would happen then, kept pretending like it was happening after Trump was in office, and is to this day pretending is happening.
All of the media’s hoaxes and scandals did not dislodge Trump’s white voters. They just didn’t. Trump has not betrayed them but even if white voters have been underwhelmed by his first term, that still would not be cause to vote for Biden. Any white voter disappointed by Trump’s first term is not voting for Biden. Because if Trump disappointed at all, it was because he didn’t go far enough to the right.
Trump supporters are loyal. They knew full well what they were getting into in 2016. Nothing that Trump has done since he took office has been “too conservative” for the people that voted for him in 2016. He has not been anything other than the guy they thought they were voting for in 2016.
Because that’s the only reason you’d switch from Trump 2016 to Biden 2020, right? If Trump was too rightwing for your tastes. I’m telling you: nobody who voted for Trump in 2016 has caught the vapors over his brashness or his tone.
All of the weak-kneed “But His Tone!” Republicans who would be prime targets for the Biden campaign to flip probably didn’t even vote for him in 2016 to begin with. They were scared away from him from the very start.
If anything a lot of those voters have seen the light and become Trump supporters over the past four years. I personally know at least ten people who fall into this category. Imagine how many more there are out there.
Any poll showing Biden winning white voters has zero credibility.
There’s a better chance of Trump winning 40% or more of the Hispanic vote than there is of Biden winning 45% or more of the white vote. Take it to the bank.
I would be less surprised by Trump winning 13% of the black vote—something no Republican has done since Ronald Reagan in 1980—than I would by Biden winning 45% of the white vote.
White voters have not abandoned Trump since 2016. The idea that they did not know what they were getting into, or the idea that as President Trump has been completely different from what people thought they were getting in 2016: absolute and utter nonsense. It’s all wishful thinking by the media and the beltway elite.
If anything Trump is going to improve with white voters. Notably college educated whites who thought he was icky in 2016. So many of them who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him but also couldn’t vote for Hillary and either sat out 2016 or voted independent: they’re going for Trump now, and there’s a lot of them out there.
That’s why I’ve been saying for four years: 2016 was Trump’s floor. The mere fact that he won was an eye opener for a lot of people: “Oh wow, maybe there is a method to his madness. Maybe the media had this guy all wrong…” that was the thought process for lots of conservative leaning voters who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016.
Remember for a long time there were Republicans who thought Trump was trying to throw the election for Clinton, that he wasn’t actually conservative, or that he was trying to run as a publicity stunt. They didn’t think he was serious right up until election night. And then he won and they realized he was for real.
The moment Trump won in 2016, a lot of conservatives who had been either ambivalent towards him or even outright opposed to him realized, “Oh, wow, this guy knows what it takes to actually win, unlike those losers Romney and McCain.” These people have become some of the most hardcore Trump supporters around. And even though the media hasn’t given them any coverage, they’re out there, they’re pissed, and they’re voting for Trump on November 3rd.
I would not be surprised if Trump even expands on his margin with white voters this time around. If you think that’s doubtful, just ask yourself if the Democratic Party has done anything—anything at all—to make itself more appealing to white Trump voters since 2016. No sane person would say they have. In fact, it’s kind of incredible to see just how much the Democrats have managed to alienate white voters in such a short period of time, the last three months in particular.
Biden was already fighting a major uphill battle with white voters before the George Floyd Riots. Remember, Hillary lost white voters by 20 points in 2016. That was Biden’s starting point. Over the past three months, it’s almost as if the Democrats were trying to shed white voters. You’d have to be on serious Schedule-1 narcotics to believe the events of the past three months have made Biden more popular with white voters.
The idea that Biden is even remotely competitive with white voters—much less leading, or even tied—is so outlandish that it’s honestly hilarious to see blue checks say with a straight face that it’s happening.