Consider This from NPR - Why More White Voters Aren't Supporting President Trump In 2020

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

Polls show that Joe Biden has strong support among white voters with a college degree, especially white women, young voters, and those who live in cities and suburbs.That support adds up to record sup...port with white voters for a Democratic presidential candidate. Nearly half of white voters, overall, support Joe Biden. NPR's Sam Gringlas spoke with a few of them in battleground states. And NPR's Domenico Montanaro explains why this shift fits a longer pattern of the Republican party losing college-educated whites. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Questions about how white people voted in the last presidential election kicked off barely 24 hours after Election Day 2016. And Democrats bore the brunt of it. Is there a chronic problem for the Democrats with white working class voters? The answer seemed to be yes. And at the time, there was a lot of media attention paid to the so-called white working class. Has the relationship between the party and that very, very large block in the population, has it been broken? I was in an NPR studio that day after the election,
Starting point is 00:00:34 watching host Robert Siegel get into it with Michigan Democrat Debbie Dingell. I don't know that it's broken, but we as Democrats have to take a very strong look at what happened. What happened was Donald Trump won Michigan. but we as Democrats have to take a very strong look at what happened. What happened was Donald Trump won Michigan. Let's take a look at the electoral college map. And Wisconsin. With that win in Wisconsin. Look at how close he is.
Starting point is 00:00:57 Right now he has 257 electoral votes. And Pennsylvania. It's the first time Pennsylvania has gone red since 1988. This was the so-called blue wall of states where white voters had helped Democrats win for decades. And the wall comes tumbling down. This is the blue wall that Hillary Clinton had talked about. Now, the blue wall is shored up by white voters without college degrees.
Starting point is 00:01:16 And yes, a lot has been said about how Trump won the majority of them. But consider this. Polls show that this year, for a Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden is showing historically high support with white voters, running nearly 50-50 with the president. And that's a problem for Trump's re-election strategy. From NPR, I'm Audie Cornish. It's Thursday, October 22nd. Support for NPR and the following message come from America Media,
Starting point is 00:01:45 producer of the new podcast Voting Catholic, about what's at stake in the 2020 election from real people who struggle with the issues and bring their faith to the voting booth. Subscribe and listen to Voting Catholic wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from NPR sponsor ADP. With more than 70 years of experience helping businesses run smoothly. HR, talent, time, benefits, and payroll. Informed by data and designed for people.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Learn more at ADP.com. On the next episode of Louder Than a Riot, the 20-year fight to clear the name of former No Limit rapper Mac Phipps. Because me and my brother was close. The years that he lost, that's some of the best years of his life he done lost. For me, it just hurts. Listen now to Louder Than a Riot, the new podcast from NPR Music. It's Consider This from NPR. Overall, in 2016, Donald Trump won white voters by 20 points.
Starting point is 00:02:48 But this year, public opinion polls show Joe Biden outperforming Hillary Clinton with white voters in general. Good afternoon, Winnebago Democratic. How may I help you? Winnebago County, Wisconsin, went for Barack Obama twice, in 2008 and again in 2012, but then flipped to Trump in 2016. Six months ago, I was scared because I was here during the 2016 election and we were so confident, but we never seen stuff like this. This is unbelievable. Pan Henkel is a volunteer coordinator for Democrats in Winnebago County, that's southwest of Green Bay. In 2016, the party wasn't even sure it could keep paying rent on its headquarters. Now with all the
Starting point is 00:03:31 donations flowing in, Henkel says they have enough in the bank to pay rent in advance, for the whole year. I'm now, I've got so many volunteers, I'm not even knowing where to put them. I did have another gentleman this morning come in and say he wouldn't vote Republican again, and he was voting Democrat and took Biden's science. One thing Henkel says is accelerating the shift, the coronavirus outbreak in Wisconsin. My plan will crush the virus and will make Wisconsin greater than ever before. That's what's going to happen. In a visit to Janesville, Wisconsin this past week, the president told a crowd of supporters not to worry. You know, you have a spike, you have a surge,
Starting point is 00:04:08 but if you remember, two months ago, Florida had a big surge. But hospitalizations in Wisconsin have more than tripled in the past month. A couple hours south of Winnebago County, a field hospital just opened up on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair. One guy said he's been voting Republican for over 40 years, but he doesn't think he could go back to being a Republican because of the way they're thinking and the way they're supporting Trump. Pam Henkel spoke to NPR's Sam Greenglass.
Starting point is 00:04:37 He's been talking to white voters in battleground states who aren't voting for Trump this year. Hey there, Sam. Hey, Audie. All right, we just heard from Wisconsin. What's next? Okay, so let's hop across Lake Michigan to suburban Detroit. Nancy Stroll had voted Republican for a long time, until Donald Trump. I could not bring myself to vote for Trump. I just, I just couldn't. And when she knocked on doors for the Democratic congressional candidate in 2018, she says it was a lot of women who quietly told her they'd vote for the Democrat.
Starting point is 00:05:11 Stroll is 78, and she says a lot of seniors, too, don't want to vote for Trump. I'm looking in the rearview mirror of my life, but that's not the case for my son and his wife and for my nearly two-and- year old grandson and my nine week old granddaughter. Seniors can't hug their grandkids right now because of the pandemic. And she says a lot of them see Trump as being somewhat responsible for that. But Republicans like Stroll couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump in 2016. What are you hearing from voters who did? Well, first of all, I've talked to a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 and are planning to do it again. But then there's also people like Jim
Starting point is 00:05:58 Diaz. I'm 25 years old and I'm from Charleroi, Pennsylvania, which is in the Mon Valley. He works in glass installation. He's a union member, comes from this long line of organized labor and Democrats, and he lives in western Pennsylvania, a part of the state that fell on hard times when a lot of skilled jobs disappeared. Dias liked Obama, still does, absolutely would have voted for him if he was old enough at the time. But when he turned 18, he voted for Trump. Listening to Donald Trump saying, like, we're going to bring these jobs back to America, I bought into it. Like, I really bought into it. Because I thought, like, man, like, you know, my family has seen some good times in America. And that was all thanks to the steel mill. But when that dried up, well, you got to find other work. But since then, Diaz's political outlook has really shifted. A lot of it has been from
Starting point is 00:06:50 joining the union, growing up, following politics more. But he also says Trump didn't fulfill the promises he made. And he said it felt like Trump was prioritizing the economy over safety during the pandemic. This is the United States of America. We can rebound. However, like, we can't just like, reproduce people like, like our family members. Like, I can't get another mom. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I can't, like, replace these people. Like, I just question like, whether he cared about us. It's interesting, Sam. Joe Biden has spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania the past few months,
Starting point is 00:07:27 but specifically in these white counties that President Trump had won by large margins. And obviously, and Biden has said this, that, you know, if his campaign can cut into those margins even a little bit, it would make a difference. Exactly. But we're also talking about places Hillary Clinton won in 2016 that Biden wants to do even better in. Across the state, right outside Philadelphia, I talked to Jane Scalabati.
Starting point is 00:07:53 She's a special education teacher. And back in 2016, she basically saw the election as trying to pick between the lesser of two evils. In the end, on a last minute decision, I pulled the lever for Trump. She kind of regretted it right away. But her doubts accelerated as the pandemic raged on. The more and more I watched him speak and blame other people, the more I realized that I'm not quite sure we're looking at a full deck here.
Starting point is 00:08:25 Scalabadi is going to vote for Biden this year. the more I realize that I'm not quite sure we're looking at a full deck here. Scalabadi is going to vote for Biden this year. She even cut an ad with the teachers union about why she's supporting him. Can't change what you did, right? You can just move forward and try and do what you can to sway people the other way. Does this seem like a permanent political realignment or just a reflection of this political moment that we're in right now? I mean, are these voters more or less becoming Democrats? Or is this just a referendum on the president? Yeah, so I actually asked everyone I talked to this question, and I
Starting point is 00:08:58 heard a lot of different answers. So I want to introduce you to two lifelong Republicans in Michigan, Mitch Monin, I pulled lever for Ronald Reagan. And Jeanette Phillips. In my 20s, I joined the Republican Party as a lifetime member. It was very expensive to do, but I felt committed. And since 2016, both have become more and more dissatisfied with Trump. Monin is a business owner, former Army Ranger. He voted for the Libertarian in 2016.
Starting point is 00:09:25 He has a son who's disabled, and Trump's behavior has really gotten to him. Remember that moment on the campaign where Trump mocked a disabled reporter? So in this case, I'm going to be voting for Vice President Biden, not because I agree with his policies. I vehemently disagree with quite a few of them. But I truly believe that at his core, that he is a fundamentally decent human being. Both Monin and Phillips didn't like Trump's rhetoric when it came to the protests over racial injustice. She's voting for Biden for other reasons, too. The Republicans have blown the deficit up.
Starting point is 00:10:02 They don't care about the livelihoods of people who've lost their jobs. I lost my job three weeks ago myself. You know, they're clueless, I think, to what's going on. Would you call yourself a Democrat now? Or is it you are fighting back against Donald Trump until he is out of office? I don't think I can vote for a Republican for the next 10 years. There has to be payback for what has just happened these last four years. Not only that, but this lifelong Republican is now donating to the local Democratic Party and has signed up to be a Democratic precinct delegate with her daughter.
Starting point is 00:10:41 Monin is now proudly displaying a Biden sign in his yard. It's a big deal for him. But he doesn't see this as some kind of long-term shift. If the Republican Party can step back and take a hard look in the mirror, should Trump lose, he says. I do believe that this is a vote of this moment. It is singular in nature. And Adi, here's a part of the conversation that really stuck with me.
Starting point is 00:11:03 Everyone I talked to viewed this political moment as historic and recognized the weight of their votes. But Manin actually asked for a copy of the full interview we did so he could send it to his daughter as a kind of historical record of this time. Forty years from now, people are going to ask, what were you doing? I truly think this is a watershed moment for us as a country, as a democracy. And the ability to be able to have her share that and have her children listen to that, I think would be a pretty cool thing. Sam Greenglass, thanks for your reporting. Thanks, Adi. Political operatives like to say that for Democrats to win national elections, they need to win something like 40% of white voters.
Starting point is 00:11:49 This year, Joe Biden is polling around 50% with them. NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro told me that there are a couple issues that are driving them away. When you look at, for example, seniors, you know, white seniors in particular, you're seeing them also shift toward Biden. And some of that is because of coronavirus. But a big piece of this is just decorum. Some people gave President Trump a chance.
Starting point is 00:12:15 Whites in the suburbs who may have wanted to send a message to Washington, you know, just feel like he his competence level is not what they expected, not what they wanted. And they've gone the other way back to what they expected, not what they wanted. And they've gone the other way back to what they see as a quote unquote normal. You've been covering politics for a long time. And just stepping back for a moment, is there something to be said for how we're talking about white voters now? I mean, I remember after 2016, all the reporters, all the newspapers were sort of sending their correspondence to rural parts of the country to figure out white voters and J.D. Vance's hillbilly elegy, you know, becomes a bestseller. And it just seemed like maybe the political class was looking at white
Starting point is 00:12:58 voters differently. Well, look, you know, that's not a monolith. I mean, and, you know, when you talk about rural white voters, there certainly was huge strength for President Trump in the margins that he was able to turn out with them, a historic margin with rural white voters, white voters without college degrees. What the Trump campaign feels is that they can turn out even more of them at a higher rate than they did in 2016. But you're also seeing this backlash on another side, where white voters who live in suburbs and who live in cities who have a different way of life, who don't see the country culturally, the way President Trump does, especially on race, who are going in a different direction. The conventional wisdom among Democrats has been
Starting point is 00:13:41 that the future of the party is with young non-white voters, and that's where they should be focused. If Joe Biden wins by basically going the other way, appealing to older white voters, does it change the focus of the party in the future? I think in the short term, yes, but not in the long term. I mean, clearly there's a difference in how diverse both parties are. I mean, Republicans, it's a largely white party, almost overwhelmingly white. The Democratic Party has a much more diverse makeup. Certainly younger voters are even more diverse and have much more strongly progressive views in the base of the Democratic Party who are going to be more dominant in the next 20, 30 years when we're going to see as demography continues to change in this country,
Starting point is 00:14:21 it's already on that pace where you're going to see about 50-50 white to non-white by 2040, 2050. And that, you know, look, that's a long-term thing. But right now, 70% of the electorate still continues to be white. That's why President Trump was able to squeeze out that election. And some people wonder, was that one last ability to squeeze out that election? Are we going to see a fundamental change and crack up in the makeup of the parties, which is also totally possible? NPR political editor Domenico Montanaro. It's Consider This from NPR.
Starting point is 00:14:58 I'm Adi Cornish.

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