Exit poll results and analysis for the 2020 presidential election

Lots to digest.

One thing the author seems to be unaware of is the fact that one cannot lump “Latinos” into a single stereotypical group. The author seems to be surprised that the Latinos in Florida are very different from the others. Lumping Cubans into the Latino monolith is like placing Alabamans and New Zealanders in the same group because they both happen to speak English. In fact, the Alabamans probably vote much more like the Cubans.

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One point bears repeating, although I point it out far too often. The country is sharply divided between poorly educated whites and all others.

Trump’s support among the poorly educated whites (about 35 points) is a bit stronger than Biden’s support among “all other” (about 25 points).

White, no degree (35% of total) all other (65%) actual popular vote
Trump 67% 37% 47.5%
Biden 32% 62% 50.8%

But that is offset by the fact that the “all other” group is larger in size, so Trump loses more ground with that group than he gains with the poorly educated whites.

White, no degree (35% of total) All other (65%)
Trump +17 million -23 million

There has been quite a metamorphosis of the parties over the recent decades. In Ike’s day, blue collar whites voted for Democrats. It’s no simple matter to explain why they changed. Back then the union workers were voting in their own economic interest, for a decent working wage, a social safety net, and better educations (promising upward mobility) for their children. Now they seem to be voting against themselves, for a party that opposes affordable universities and universal health care while pushing tax breaks for corporations and the rich.

31 thoughts on “Exit poll results and analysis for the 2020 presidential election

  1. People like Steverino basically see this comic as a valid response to MAGA’ers getting called out.

    So basically, having the attitude that we believe and do shitty things, but when someone else calls it out that’s EXACTLY why these people don’t vote Democrat? Its like a post-truth society, don’t call out out while we’re logically incorrect, because we’ll just vote out of spite against you. Instead, you need to appeal to our post-truth knee jerk emotions and be understanding and not talk so much about the racist assumptions about society and the economy aren’t true. If you can’t do that, then it’s all your fault for not appealing to our fragility! That just makes me hate you more!

    It’s ridiculous. Then people like Steverino say, well they don’t care about the middle class because no one does anything. You’re the one choosing to make it a gender/race identity issue and vote out of spite over that, the actual POLICY for the middle class is better on paper still. Who tries to push bills through Congress to raise the minimum wage to a living wage and who blocks it? Who’s the one who pushed and passed a corporate tax cut of 15% less so corporations have more money to run small businesses out? Who’s the party responsible for union busting over the years? Talking about doing nothing, what has Mitch McConnell done except block bills for the past 10 years and take calls and meetings with tobacco lobbyists, huh?

    I agree the messaging should be different, but the policy has not changed. It’s just your logic center is in emotion and knee jerk reaction instead of looking beyond what is said. Well they want to protect immigrants now so that means they’re not for the middle class.

    Pretty sure they can do both, you’re the one choosing to be offended about equality messaging for whatever stupid reason makes you mad about it, and thinking that’s changed the actual policy at all. These bills are being proposed and shot down on the spot, and its the side you’re voting for that does that, and does push big business corporate conglomerates. No one else.

    1. Hey, you’re being unfair to Mitch McConnell. He HAS done something: he helped the shipping company his wife’s family owns make a lot of money! And he kept the gullible people of Kentucky from finding out.
      That’s TWO things!

      Otherwise, spot on, IMO, Indy.

  2. LBJ was keenly aware of the power provided by racism…

    “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

  3. Let’s be honest: the Republican Party has won over the non-college educated white vote almost entirely by appealing to racism, whether latent or not, and bigotry. The “Southern Strategy,” first developed by the Nixon campaign in 1968, has been slowly and significantly ramped-up over the course of the last 50+ years to the fever-pitch it’s reached now.

    The Republican Party’s three main constituencies are now the rich, evangelicals — who have their own brand of racism and fanaticism — and uneducated whites who eat up the bigotry the GOP feeds them. They’ve become the party of ignorance and science/facts denial (as greatly and tragically evidenced by the current pandemic). Not exactly the recipe for a healthy society, particularly if you’re not white, Christian, or straight.

    1. Lee Atwater, GOP Campaign Strategist:
      “Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger”. By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this”, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger”. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.”

      There’s one additional aspect: Abortion rights. There are a lot of single issue voters who vote GOP because they claim they’ll get rid of abortion.

      1. I agree completely with both of those points. Racism + abortion = the poorly educated white vote. To me it’s the only real explanation for why they so often vote against their own socio-economic interest. (I’m not convinced that they truly buy into, or even care about, trickle down.)

        1. I think the working class voters who came of age during the Reagan Administration truly believe in the ‘trickle down,’ anti union and anti regulation stuff. I think it is still an especially powerful selling point in many of the Southern States and probably in the industrial Southern Midwest as well (Ohio and Indiana.)

          One of the ironies of the 2016 campaign is that at times Trump campaigned on and probably won in part based on repudiating the Reagan Revolution. Of course, he didn’t govern that way in the slightest (except for the partial opposition to free trade, but free trade was a late comer to Reaganomics.) I follow a number of liberal neoclassical economists on twitter who were genuinely surprised at how closely Trump enacted further Reaganomics policies.

        2. At some point these people have turned to be so absorbed in a nationalistic personal identity based off racism and authoritarianism I think the point is they no longer care or believe it’s something else.

          When you don’t have the education to look a little deeper than surface level anecdotal tribal instinct, then the problem is ALWAYS the race, religion, or non-conformity. Plus people who conform to authority are generally motivated by fear tactics.

          So while a logical person can say corporate tax cuts actually help to run small businesses into the ground, allow executives to buy back stock to make themselves richer, and use the money to absorb companies and dump jobs – these people do not get it. All Republicans have to say when a platform reverses this is well – the Deomocrats are RAISING taxes. It doesn’t matter to who, how much, or anything like that – just say raising taxes and you’ve swayed the dimwitted in this area.

          And in the end problem is ALWAYS because someone isn’t supporting the troops or police enough, fake evangelical Christian enough, straight enough, white enough, or conforming enough. The uneducated are swayed by simple stereotypical anecdotes that they look out for and will obviously find through targeted media nowadays to make it true.

          Here’s the minority on food stamps spending it on things they shouldn’t, here’s the immigrant that went nuts and committed domestic violence, here’s the black gang member that got shot. They should control their ‘own’ people, they’re the real problems with society. The person getting welfare but also buying a phone is the real decline, not the executive that just cashed out $10 mil after manipulating the stock market to their advantage.

          That’s really it for them, they’ve internalized the stereotypes they’re looking for. A white kid shoots up a church and the police take him to Burger King and its unfortunate mental illness, a black kid loots and they should be be executed. A white executive does coke its a lifestyle, put it in rock form and a minority smokes it in a back alley, its a mandatory prison term.

          That’s really the jist of it. They don’t even believe it’s voting against their cause, because in every instance it will be some race, religion, or not conformist ruining everything for society – and if everyone else were just a little more white, patriotic, and christian then it would all would just magically fix everything.

    2. Ahahahahahaha….. you guys crack me up. I love the “analysis” of the mind of the blue collar worker by over educated, elitist, “intellectuals”. The irony is that basically every post on this subject is precisely the reason why the blue collar worker now votes GOP. You could not be more tone deaf.

      1. You tell everybody here you’re a wealthy Ivy League Educated something. What would you know about the mind of the blue collar worker?

      2. You should be comforted by the fact that no one would ever associate you with the words”Intellect” or “intelligence”.

      3. I live in the South, and am around more of these people than you Steve. A Jewish New Yorker knows why Southern people vote Republican? Really?

        I could tell you exactly what each of these people would give as their answer is to voting for Trump. And I’m not out there doing ‘elitist’ lecturing or anything on it either, like you think liberals do. I mind my own business unless I’m confronted with something, which never happens.

        The irony is thinking there’s this big liberal intellectual elitist out on every corner being preachy about it, when the only people I EVER see typing politics to their personality is Trump supporters. I don’t think I’ve seen a single Biden sign or bumper sticker this entire process, but I’ve seen Trump supporters with giant American flags and Trump flags rolling around in pickup trucks quite a bit.

        The framing of the message definitely needs to change knowing these people, but that’s just because of their own ridiculous personal identity in the first place. You can boil down a policy with effective simple comparisons and simplifying economics much better than the Democrats do.

        1. Why do you think that Steve really is a Jewish New Yorker? I don’t believe a word Steve says.

          1. Are you insulting the integrity of someone worth least $170 mill who doesn’t date hobbits? Shameful.

        2. I was referencing the liberal elitists commenting on this post. In fact I never see any of them in NYC boardrooms or zoom calls these days. Why? Because liberal elitists talk and pontificate but they don’t actually do anything. The ones who can afford to live in Manhattan are usually trust fund silverspooners. The Dems I know like money and low taxes. They are just socially liberal. As far as “knowing the mind of the blue collar worker”, I grew up blue collar in a union family.. Most of my family voted for Dems for years. The dem party only cares about “people of color” and illegal immigrants now. Not middle class America. Obama started it and now the wackadoos are running with it.

          1. And what specifically did Obama do to the “Middle Class”?

            Was it like the GOP who send jobs overseas, defund education so people can’t be retrained and give more money to people who don’t need it?

          2. Obama didn’t do anything for the middle class. That the entire point. His entire presidency was focused on expanding social safety nets and programs for the poor and lower class minority communities. Meanwhile the 1% reaped all of the rewards of his “recovery” and the middle class, especially blue collar manufacturing was cratered. That’s why they voted for trump. And now the coastal trust fund and “intellectual” liberals are turning their collective noses up at those former democrats. It’s ok, Biden is going to send all of you back to the fringe where you belong and maybe some of those hard workin blue collar workers will return to the dem party.

  4. My theory on the shift in blue collar voters from the democratic ticket to republican… It’s because of 2 things…

    1. Republicans have convinced blue collar workers that when their party is in power the rich have more money to create jobs (trickle down – a proven fallacy because when the rich have more money they want to keep it).

    2. The Republicans have convinced blue collar workers that the American dream is alive and well and theirs for the taking, if they just work hard enough. The reality? The rich do not want blue collar workers to better themselves. Why do you think they make education unobtainable for low income families? They will never accept them as equals no matter how much they want it. Just ask them if you can come to visitor’s day at their country club.

    1. I think social issues are important as well. “God, Guns and Gays” as well as “Acid, Amnesty and Abortion” tend to influence the vote of blue collar workers the most.

    2. It amazes me how people still fall for the scam of Trickle Down (neé Voodoo) economics. About 50 years of operating under it and still *zero* positive results for anyone other than the very rich (which, of course, is the entire point). You’d think that sooner or later these folks would figure out that they’ve been conned, but here we are.

    1. They conform very closely to the exit polls from the 2018 mid-terms and the 2016 Presidentials.

      For example:

      In 2016, Trump held a 37 point lead among poorly educated whites, and they comprised 34% of the voters. (In 2020 it was 35 points and 35% – statistically identical.)

      That makes sense, because the results of the election itself were about the same in both elections. Trump lost the popular vote by 2.1 points in 2016 and is losing in 2020 by 3.4 points. That tiny difference is enough to turn around indididual states from Trump barely winning to Trump barely losing.

      That’s the problem with the electoral college. Your vote is meaningless in Wyoming or California. The only thing that really matters is how they vote in the swing states, and the margins there are usually quite small, so small shifts make a big difference in the results.

      1. I’ll do you one further: the Electoral College is wholly un-democratic in its nature. It was a pragmatic compromise when first implemented, but has far outlived whatever benefit it once provided and is one of the greatest failures of the Framers.

        No democracy should be held hostage to the minority based solely in the broken mechanics of the electoral system. But that’s exactly where we’re at and where we’ll stay.

        1. I agree, Kevin. I would further argue that a major reason why the Electoral College is undemocratic is because the Senate is undemocratic. Two Senators for EVERY state was, as you say, a pragmatic compromise at the time.

          But it has been pointed out that that is unlikely to change in not just the foreseeable future, but pretty much ever.

          Which might make doing anything about the Electoral College impossible either.

          That leaves UncleScoopy’s proposal to split California into four states as the most feasible reform.

  5. There are a lot of doubts about the accuracy of the exit polls as well, though I’m sure they’re not miles off.

    There are a number of psephologists (the science of studying election results) who will use the data from the individual precinct result vote total to confirm or question the results of the exit polls as best they can.

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