It’s all about race

One of the amazing features of modern American politics is how, in many ways, it’s really more about race– racial attitudes, that is– than ever.  That was the major theme of John Sides, Lynn Vavreck, and Michael Tesler’s terrific exploration of the 2016 election, Identity Crisis.  And after 3+ years of a Trump presidency, it’s more true than ever.  Among other things, we’ve seen a huge shift in a more progressive direction among white Democrats.

Ron Brownstein takes a look at all this, especially in the current context, and what it means for 2020:

The throngs of protesters demanding systemic changes in policing are marching directly into one of the deepest chasms between the two political parties.

The belief that widespread racism is no longer a problem in American society has become one of the core convictions uniting the modern Republican coalition, especially in the Donald Trump era, polls have found. Several academic studies found the belief that discrimination against minorities (and women) is no longer a problem was a far better predictor of support for Trump in 2016 than economic anxiety.

Democrats of all races, by contrast, are much more likely to say that discrimination against African Americans, including in their interactions with police, remains a structural feature of American society… [emphases mine]

This contrast looms heavily over the partisan reaction to the current eruption of protest. Since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last month, a chorus of prominent conservative voices have insisted it is a “lie” to describe racial discrimination as a pervasive problem. And, while some polls conducted amid the upsurge of protest hint that more Republicans may see discrimination as a problem, generally the surveys have documented the persistence of a huge gap between the parties on the issue.

Politically, the heightened focus on police behavior and racial inequities more broadly could compel Trump to squeeze out bigger margins and turnout from the white constituencies most skeptical that racism remains a widespread problem, in order to offset what could be a further decline in November among the groups in all races that do consider bias an enduring blight on American life. In that way, this latest crisis could force Trump to further double down on the underlying political bet he is imposing on the GOP: squeezing bigger margins from shrinking groups at the price of alienating groups in society that are growing.

Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts University who has conducted some of the central research on the role of racist and sexist attitudes in the 2016 vote, says that prospect leaves Trump navigating a very thin path. Comparing the election results in 2018 with those in 2016, his research found that House Republican candidates lost more ground among voters who agree that racism and sexism remain problems than they gained among those who do not.

“In 2018, Republican House candidates paid a pretty significant penalty for being tied to his racist and sexist views,” Schaffner says. Trump faces the same risk in November, he believes…

In a 2019 Pew poll, the share of all Americans who said blacks are treated less fairly in encounters with the police and in the criminal justice system reached about two-thirds. During Obama’s second term, Gallup had found that only about one-third to two-fifths of Americans agreed with those propositions…

The partisan numbers on these individual questions vary somewhat, but Pew and other studies have found the general movement in this decade toward greater concern about racial inequities among whites has been driven almost entirely by Democrats, with very little change among Republicans…

In the 2019 Pew study, less than half as many white Republicans as white Democrats said blacks are treated unfairly by the police or the criminal justice system, and the partisan gap was even bigger on hiring and the ability to access credit. Four-fifths of white Republicans said that people seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist is a bigger problem than people not seeing it where it does; four-fifths of white Democrats took the opposite position. Among all Republicans, more than twice as many said lack of motivation, rather than racial discrimination, was a “major reason” more African Americans don’t get ahead; Democrats divided more than 3-to-1 the other way…

One GOP pollster I spoke with, who asked not to be identified while discussing the party’s 2020 prospects, agreed that Trump’s response to the protests was likely to further erode his already tenuous position among college-educated white suburbanites, especially women. That will require him, the pollster said, to generate even bigger margins and more turnout from non-college whites, especially those outside of metropolitan areas…

“It’s impossible to say for sure,” Schaffner. “But it seems to me that there aren’t many more votes for Trump to win over by emphasizing the racist appeals.”

As he brusquely demands tougher crackdowns in the streets, Trump seems determined to test that proposition.