Dem
51
GOP
49
The Cook Political Report has an article out entitled: "Trump's current numbers among Black and Latino voters are incompatible with any plausible Democratic victory scenario." Cook and his colleague, David Wasserman, are long-time observers of politics and generally call it like it is.
Here's the problem: Democrats don't do well with white voters, and especially with white men. They have to make that up with nonwhite voters to win. Sometimes they can and have done so. It is not impossible by any means. The final pre-election polls in 2020 had Biden ahead of Trump 84% to 9% among Black voters. The exit polls showed Biden winning among these voters 87% to 12%, which just says the undecided Black voters split evenly. Currently, Biden is leading among Black voters 71% to 21%. This is a huge change since 2020 and is much of the reason Biden is doing so poorly in the national polls and the polls of the more diverse swing states.
Now on to Latino voters. The final preelection polls in 2020 had Biden ahead with Latinos 58% to 32%. The exit polls showed that he did slightly better than that, 65% to 32%. Current polls have Biden leading among Latinos by the shockingly low 48% to 31%. This is also huge.
Next up are young voters. The 2020 pre-election polls had Biden leading Trump 60% to 31% among 18-34-year-old voters. The exit polls for 18-29-year olds was 50% to 40%. Part of that is the slightly different age ranges, but both are substantial leads. Now the polling average among 18-to-29-year-olds has Biden ahead by only 5 points, 46% to 41%.
There is some overlap, of course, since young Latino and Black voters cannot be double counted. Still, this shows serious weakness with groups Biden must absolutely win by very large margins to offset his expected loss with middle-aged white voters.
One small bright light is that Biden is doing better than usual with older voters. Republicans usually win this cohort by large margins, but Biden is trailing Trump only by 46% to 48% now.
It is not clear how Biden can reset himself with these groups with so little time left. He does have a few weapons, though. One of them is Kamala Harris. She can be sent out to talk to Black groups large and small and make her case. She can go to Black churches and, in the fall, HBCUs, and other groups trying to get everyone to vote. She can also talk about abortion day and night to almost any group of young voters. Television and online ads can harp on the near-certainty that if the Republicans get the trifecta they are likely to abolish the filibuster and ban abortion nationally. Then they will start working on banning contraception. That will certainly boost turnout among women and young voters. There are other things the campaign can do, but it has a lot of work to do. (V)