The NPR Politics Podcast - Voting Is About To Begin. How Has The Electorate Changed?

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

There are fewer white people without college degrees, more Latino potential voters in key states and a rise in Asian American voters in Nevada. We have a detailed conversation about what that could mean as presidential election voting gets underway this week.This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is TJ Curtis. I'm currently watering my school garden at Wellington Elementary in Wellington, Utah. This podcast was recorded at 12.04 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will still be eagerly awaiting the

return of my students for the beginning of the school year, hoping that they're surprised as I am at how great our garden's done. Enjoy the show. Oh, that's so cute. What a cool project and happy school year. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Today on the show, how the country's electorate is changing and what that means as voting gets underway around the country. It's that time. So let's start with a group we hear a lot about, white voters without college degrees.

Domenico, they're a key group because they're just a really big group in this country, right? How have their numbers changed? Yeah, they are a big group in the country. In fact, in all of the seven swing states that we're paying attention to, the three blue wall states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the four Sunbelt states, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, they are the largest single group, but they're on the decline everywhere, which makes the job for Trump and his campaign to turn out these voters a lot more difficult. They're a key group for Trump, and they're on the decline everywhere, which makes the job for Trump and his campaign to turn out these voters a lot more difficult. They're a key group for Trump, and they're a shrinking share of the electorate, essentially, right?

Yeah, they are. And when you look at all the seven states, they've gone down a couple points just since 2020. And if you zoom out and go back to 2008, take Wisconsin, for example, was 66% non-college white voters. Now it's only down to about 58%, 59%. So that's a big shift. And you're also seeing an increase in those blue wall states of white voters with college degrees, which is a group that's now moved more heavily toward Democrats, a group that had been pretty

heavily Republican in years past. And now Trump has really sort of traded out those white college educated voters who tend to vote in higher numbers for these lower propensity voters. And that is a big warning sign potentially for his team, especially when their turnout operation is also a big question mark. But one interesting and important thing about this group, the white non-college voters, these voters are actually quite different depending on where in the country you're talking about. Yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, voters without college degrees who are white in the blue wall states, for example,

vote very differently than those same voters in North Carolina and Georgia, the two southern states that are part of this group of swing states. When you look at the voters in North Carolina and Georgia, they voted something like 78, 79 percent for Trump in 2020. When you look at the Blue Wall states, they're only about the high 50s, 60 percent for Trump. And that really makes a big difference. And that's something that Kamala Harris is continuing to try and do, which is reduce, you know, a net positive for Democrats. But I do think, and I would argue, this does present a sort of optics challenge for Democrats, right? The party has long promoted itself as the party on the side of the working man, so to speak. So it's not surprising that there is some concern that, you know, non-college white voters having slipping support there is a problem. That's why you see so much jockeying for the union vote, for example. But I think this concentration of college educated folks in the party is going to

present an interesting issue as the party tries to tackle its elitism problem. I think overall, it is going to be interesting to see if this is a high turnout election or a low turnout election, because what we've seen is because so many higher education white voters are concentrated in the Democratic Party, it has been easier for Democrats to overperform in low turnout, like special elections. But if this is a high turnout election, I'm curious to see like what this would mean. And Domenico, when it comes to the white voters with college degrees, I think I heard you say they're becoming higher propensity voters. What's happening with that group? White college educated voters are among the highest propensity voters. About eight in 10 of them vote in every election. As compared to white voters without college degrees, only about six in 10 of them vote in these elections. The Trump folks see that as an

opportunity. But in an election like this one, when turnout experts say it's going to be lower turnout than 2020 because of the lack of mail-in voting everywhere in the same way that it was during the pandemic, that these lower propensity voters tend to then go on the decline in those lower turnout elections. But what we're seeing is in the blue wall states in particular, the white population in those states is more educated than at any other time. Whites with degrees are up eight points in Pennsylvania, six points in Wisconsin, five points in Michigan since 2008. In Wisconsin alone, they're up four points just since 2020. And this really has to do with sort of the reshaping of the Rust Belt, where the jobs are. There was a time, obviously, when people could have jobs in factories, have two cars, own a home, maybe even have a vacation house somewhere. That's no longer the case. And the younger population knows that they need to get college degrees. And we're seeing that help increase the college educated white population in those states. And that's helping Democrats. So interesting. I mean, how does that translate into messaging from the campaigns and into turnout strategy? I mean, I'm thinking back to 2016 when

we heard Trump talk about, you know, I'm for the educated and the not so educated. He clearly knew who some of his constituency was, but what does it look like now? Well, I think the fact is when we're talking about who these groups are appealing to with Democrats appealing more to white college educated voters and Republicans and Trump specifically appealing to white voters without college degrees, that means it's going to be a lot harder work for the Trump campaign to turn out their voters. And generally, now that we're past Labor Day, this is the time for mobilization. And you know, the Trump folks have had a real question mark around their turnout operation. The Democrats have way more staffers on the ground. They have more volunteers. They have more offices. You know,, because, I mean, there's only so much electorally you can draw from with just white, non-college educated voters.

I want to talk about that more in just a moment. But first, let's take a quick break. And we're back. And let's talk more now about Latino voters, another significant and growing group in the electorate, but hard to talk about as a single group. What do we know both about their numbers and their voting habits, Domenico? Well, obviously, just broadly, Latinos are the most crucial growing piece of the population that have really become a real political factor, especially in the Southwest, in Arizona and Nevada, where, for example, from 2008 to now, Arizona's eligible voting population of Latinos went from 19% to 29%, up 10 points. In Nevada, from 13 points to almost 20 points. That's really, really important because Democrats have obviously done better with Latinos over the past decade than Republicans.

And I mean, that's really reshaped the political landscape, you know, not just for the presidential election, but for the kinds of senators, for example, that are there. There's four senators now between Nevada and Arizona who are Democrats or caucus with Democrats. Latino voters are such an interesting group because they are such a big and growing group. And there is diversity within the Latino voting bloc. I mean, as you cover this election, what are you watching for among this, again, growing group? Well, Latinos are certainly not a monolith. And I identified Arizona and Nevada because it's more of a similar group together than

in a place like Florida, for example, which is far more drawing from South America, more of a Cuban population in South Florida, for example, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, very different than those of Mexican descent, mostly in the Southwest and West. So there's a big difference in the kind of appeal, for example, that Trump was able to make to the voters in South Florida to be able to say that Democrats are trying to implement communism, for example, that message doesn't really work as well in the Southwest as it does in Florida. Yeah. And I also want to say the sort of inroads that Trump was making with Latino voters in the past couple of cycles does seem to be reverting just a little bit back into the favor of Democrats

with Vice President Harris now as the Democratic presidential nominee. At first blush, look like these are like fickle voters. But this is, you know, what's important to know about Latino voters, a big part of the electorate is really young and new voters in general. So they just don't have the kind of like party loyalty that you would see among particularly white voters and black voters. And so I think what, you know, at least what folks have told me who who poll Latino voters is that a lot of especially Latinas like, you know, Hispanic women were sitting out the election because they did not like Biden and they did not like Trump. And that seems to be changing a little bit now. You know, I think the question is, like, how much of that support and like the inroads that Trump was making, can he actually hold on to?

Because I think by and large, he's angling for Latino men. That's a place where he sees like an opening. Yeah. How does gender come into this quickly? I mean, we've talked before on this podcast about some of the movement among Black and Latino men in Trump's direction that we were seeing earlier on. Of course, that was before Harris entered the race. Yeah. And there's no real evidence at this point as far as having seen votes that have taken place to show this real shift of Latino men or young black men toward Trump. We've seen a little bit in polling, but you have to remember national polls have very high margins of error when it comes to these subgroups. So a lot of pollsters who poll with bigger groups of Latino men and black men kind of are urging a little bit of caution on that storyline.

But I will say that there has been a fairly consistent trend of at least young black men and young Latino men who were not as enthused about Joe Biden, for sure, and that his numbers were lagging. Harris has seemed to do a little bit better, quite considerably, actually. But when I talked to some demographers, like Bill Fry from the Brookings Institution, told me that what's really important to watch as part of the equation here is white college-educated women for Democrats, because they likely offset Trump's potential advantages with non-college minority men. And I think that that's really notable considering the prevalence of abortion rights as an issue and Harris trying to use that to turn people out.

Okay, we've talked a lot about the Southwest. What other groups are you watching in the West, Domenico? Well, I think Asian Americans are a sometimes overlooked population. The AAPI population in Nevada's more than almost anywhere else. There's certainly a large percentage around the Atlanta metro area in Georgia as well that we've seen had some degree of sway in the 2020 election. Arizona also about 5% of the eligible voting population are AAPI voters. So really key in the Sun Belt, which is really diversifying. Okay, pivoting over to the Southeast for a second, a couple of states that get a lot of attention because they're purplish states are Georgia and especially North Carolina. I think we're hearing

more about that this cycle. Also two states with significant suburban populations and a lot of diversity. How do demographics of these states factor into the kind of attention they're getting from the campaigns? Well, I think it's notable because obviously we talk about the diversity of the Sunbelt states and no two states really represent that better than North Carolina and Georgia. You know, the white non-college population is still the largest block in both of these states, about a third in both of them. But when you look at black voters in North Carolina, about one in five, when Georgia, almost one in three. So you have significant populations of minorities in those states who have really helped Democrats do better. Now,

Democrats have done better in Georgia overall. Now they have two senators, for example, in Georgia who are Democrats. That's because a third of the state are black voters. In North Carolina, the reason why Kamala Harris seems to be holding up in the polls is because white college-educated voters in North Carolina vote a little bit more for Democrats than those white college-educated voters in Georgia. Yeah. I mean, there's Research Triangle Park there in the center of the state with Raleigh, Durham,

and- Chapel Hill. And Chapel Hill. How could I forget? I went to UNC Chapel Hill. And that part of the country has some of the highest concentration of people with higher degrees, master's, PhD, stuff like that. So when I lived there, Democrats were

winning statewide races. And I think Barack Obama had won the year I was there as well. So, you know, there's a there's a recent history of that coalition of like minority voters, but also these white college educated voters being sort of like a tipping point in a state like that, that where it always has very close elections for the most part. Well, to give one example in North Carolina, when George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004, he won Wake County, where Raleigh is. That county now in 2020 voted for Biden 62-36. So that should show you the kind of growth you've seen in the research triangle with white college educated voters mostly. Yeah, in two decades.

Okay, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.