With less than three weeks until Election Day, national polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by less than three points. Because Republicans have a structural advantage in the Electoral College, this means the presidential election is a pure scramble. To talk about all things election-related, I recently got on the phone with Nate Cohn, chief political analyst at The New York Times, who oversees the paper’s polling operations in conjunction with Siena College. did. (Full disclosure: Cohn and I work together at The New Republic and are friends.) In a conversation edited for length and clarity, we discuss why Republicans are increasing voter registration. and what we can learn from the Times. A massive new poll of Black and Hispanic voters and how polling organizations are trying to predict turnout this year.
What can you say about how voter registration numbers have turned out this year, especially in the seven battleground states, and what do you think we can learn from them?
Voter registration numbers aren’t completely final yet, so it’s worth paying attention to that first. However, in states that register by party, voter registration has shifted toward Republicans in nearly every battleground state. Over the past four years, Democratic registration among young voters has completely collapsed. And voters in many of these states are likely becoming more conservative.
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But it’s important to disentangle the different ways that voter registration can change. One is when someone reregisters to vote and changes party affiliation, which is often a lagging indicator. Perhaps they are people who continued to vote for Trump for years despite being officially registered as Democrats, and then re-registered when they moved. And there are also newly registered voters, which will mean a change in the composition of the electorate. The overall change in voter registration includes both. Newly registered voters overall aren’t that bad for Democrats, but it varies widely by state. Some states, like Arizona and Florida, have a large number of newly registered voters who are Republican. Some states, like Pennsylvania, appear to have a better balance of newly registered voters.
Is there any reason to think these new voters aren’t being picked at the polls?
It depends on how the poll is conducted. Most campaign polls are based on lists of registered voters. So when these people register to vote, they end up on the list of people to call. And when we weight polls, we try to match the composition of registered voters. For other polling organizations, this may not be the case. Perhaps you are participating in an online panelist poll that says you live in Florida and are weighting the poll to match the political identity of Floridians as reported in the 2020 exit polls. Maybe. And if the electorate changes after 2020, there may be no way to pick it up without doing a ton of modeling, which, frankly, most pollsters don’t do.
Do you have a theory as to why voter registration is so beneficial for Republicans? My gut feeling is that it’s because there’s an unpopular Democratic incumbent.
In the long run, the Democratic advantage in party identification clearly diminishes, and perhaps even reverses, when pollsters simply ask, “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” Ten years ago, Democrats had a large lead, but now Republicans often have a narrow lead. And you can see that in the voter registration numbers. I think this is rooted in a deeper shift in what voters have perceived in the Trump era, and it works both ways. There are many independent-minded Republicans who voted for Trump who did not consider themselves Republicans in 2016. But now that the party is so clearly defined around Donald Trump, they consider themselves more clearly Republicans than ever before. It happened before. On the flip side, I think there are a lot of Democratic-leaning voters who have a deep attachment to the Democratic Party but have never actually voted Democratic because they oppose Donald Trump.
Telling yourself the story that the political shift around Trump has increased the percentage of Republican-leaning voters who identify as Republicans, while perhaps a small number of Democrats have gone through the same process. Can be done. An identification with the Democratic Party as much as it was repulsed by Donald Trump. By the way, I think this is an optimistic story for the Democratic Party. That’s because a change in identity doesn’t necessarily mean a decline in the proportion of voters who actually lean Democratic.
We conducted a large-scale poll of black and Hispanic voters. Since becoming a candidate, Kamala Harris has increased her support among black and Hispanic voters compared to Biden before he dropped out. But it still falls short of Biden’s 2020 results. What did you learn from the survey?
I just agree with what you said, but if you look at the balance between this poll and other polls, Harris did much better in the summer than Joe Biden, but Biden did much better in 2020. Turns out it was much worse. It is also worth noting that Biden did poorly in 2020. It was worse than Hillary Clinton in 2016 and worse than Barack Obama in 2012. Therefore, this is a low point for Democrats among black and Hispanic voters. Among black voters, if the polls are correct, Harris could do worse than any Democrat since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act. And that could be a low point for Hispanic voters, too. Trump’s strength in today’s polls is comparable to George W. Bush’s performance among Hispanics in 2004.
There are many theories as to why Democrats do relatively poorly among black and Hispanic voters, and I think we’ve found support for almost all of them. The idea that there are young black and Hispanic men being entertained by President Trump was found to be supported. It found support for the idea that many low-income black and Hispanic voters are upset about the economy and would prefer Donald Trump to help them personally. We found support for the view that many black and Hispanic voters are disappointed in the Democratic Party and believe it has not kept its promises over the past 15 years.
This is a big change, and it’s not really surprising that such a big change requires many different factors all pointing in the direction of the Republican Party. By the way, this is the same thing that happened to white working-class voters in 2016. We can argue about whether it’s the economy, whether it’s because of sexism, whether it’s because of racism, and all sorts of other theories, but the question of what enabled the Republican Party’s rise is that there’s no basis for all of these theories. And all of them were probably doing something to help Donald Trump.
Democrats seem to be losing votes from both the right and left among black and Hispanic voters — you’re talking about voters who actually enjoy Trump and who are disappointed that Democratic policies weren’t strong enough. We talked about voters who are, and all of this suggests. The Democratic Party’s problems are not simply solved by going to the right or to the left. This is probably the same point you made about white working class voters. It is not clear which direction can be taken to win back these voters.
absolutely. It would be a mistake to view this through an ideological lens. Some of these voters hold conservative views on many of today’s important issues, such as immigration, and others identify with things like Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy. I think it’s true that there are. But for me, the defining feature of Trump’s appeal is that in many ways he has broken the traditional left-right divide in American politics. His rhetorical orientation is populist. He is the kind of anti-establishment candidate who can appeal to voters dissatisfied with the status quo. All of this could be said to varying degrees about Obama in 2008 or 2012.
And while many black and Hispanic voters may not have been very far to the left or right ideologically in 2012, they are very sympathetic to the basic populist orientation of the Democratic Party. Ta. And Donald Trump’s message and his rhetoric is very appealing to many people who would have voted Democratic in the past. A bunch of rhetorical arguments about the system being corrupt can be captured on both the left and the right. But at this point, I think it’s fair to say that Donald Trump is doing it far more than Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris.
