Voters of color are backing the GOP at historic levels

We’re in the doldrums of the 2022 election season. Outside of the rescheduled Maryland primary, there are no federal primaries this month. That means political media denizens are looking for almost anything that they can focus on.

They got it last week in the form of a New York Times/Siena College poll, which had all sorts of good data in it from a potential 2024 Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch to the 2022 race for congressional control.

But there were two nuggets in the poll that got me thinking the most. One was about voters of color, and the other was on the coronavirus. The first is where we’ll begin our look at the political week that was.

In a divided world, racial and gender divides are declining

The Times poll showed that Democrats were ahead by around 25 points among voters of color on the generic congressional ballot,

Democrats trailed among White voters on this same question by 10 points.

A 35-point racial gap is minuscule by historical standards.

The average showed Democrats up by 30 points among voters of color and losing White voters by 14 points — a somewhat larger 44-point racial gap but still historically small.
In fact, it’s the smallest divide this century.

For perspective, consider recent elections. The racial gap between White voters and voters of color in 2020 races for the US House was about 63 points, according to an average of CNN exit poll and Catalist data. It was about 64 points in the 2018 midterms.

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