After President Trump won the 2016 election, there was a big debate over the role “identity politics” played in his victory. Some scholars argued that many white voters without a college degree — a group that proved pivotal in that election — jumped from supporting then-President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 largely because they liked Trump’s framing of identity issues, such as immigration, more than Hillary Clinton’s.<a class="espn-footnote-link" data-footnote-id="1" href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-talking-about-race-hurts-democrats-why-is-biden-so-far-ahead/#fn-1" data-footnote-content="
That finding is disputed by other scholars, who argued that Obama-Trump voters were not that conservative on identity issues.
“>1 After the election, some (usually white) liberal and Democratic-leaning voices said that Democrats needed to abandon “identity politics” or face more defeats like Clinton’s. Otherliberal voices (often Black) said that Trump had successfully tapped into the racist views of many white Americans. Both of those perspectives implied that debating issues of identity and race was bad for Clinton and good for Trump, and in the future it would be good for the GOP and bad for Democrats.
Never mind all that, at least for now. America is talking about identity and race, and so are bothpresidential candidates. And all that racial talk seems to be helping Democrats, not Republicans. Joe Biden led Trump by about 6 percentage points in national polls on May 25, the day a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. Biden leads Trump by an average of nearly 10 points now, after weeks of race and racism dominating the national discussion.
But it’s worth exploring this question: Why aren’t identity politics backfiring on Biden and helping Trump? It’s hard to say for sure, but here are five theories, ordered roughly from strongest to weakest.
Trump is in the White House now
Some political science research suggests that public opinion on major issues tends to move against the sitting president. So if President John Doe says he hates Granny Smith apples, Americans will begin consuming them by the bushel. And that pattern has already played out with Trump, with Americans becoming more supportive of immigrants and Obamacare, likely in reaction to the president’s attempts to limit immigration and repeal the health care law.
So in terms of identity politics and their role in presidential elections, it may have been that a racialized discourse was electorally bad for Democrats when their party controlled the White House, like in 2016. But this kind of discourse is fine and perhaps even electorally beneficial for Democrats with a Republican president in office.
Also, the story here could simply be that Trump is a flawed candidate who was going to struggle in 2020 no matter what issues were dominating the news at the time. After all, he was viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of voters on Election Day in 2016, according to exit polls, and he has remained fairly unpopular throughout his presidency. In 2019 and earlier this year, Democrats spent a lot of time debating which of their potential presidential candidates was most “electable.” But Biden’s almost-10-point lead suggests that basically any of the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would likely be leading Trump right now if he or she were the presumptive Democratic nominee.
2016 was a fluke and identity politics don’t always hurt Democrats
Part of the focus on identity issues as an electoral liability stems from the current makeup of swing states and the Electoral College. White voters without degrees have become increasingly Republican-leaning and represent a disproportionate share of the electorate in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. So Democrats need to worry more about appealing to white voters without degrees to win an Electoral College majority than they would if presidential elections were decided by a simple national plurality vote. Thus, a lot of post-2016 coverage started from the assumption that Democrats have an identity and race problem because they must appeal to white voters without degrees and that voting bloc — at least based on the 2016 results — seemed to be put off by Democrats’ approach to identity issues.
But that framing might be wrong, or at least a bit overstated. Why? First, there’s an alternate reading of the 2016 results that suggests race wasn’t an unusually important factor in motivating the white voters who switched to Trump. Second, the overall racial dynamics of American politics are not that bad for Democrats and perhaps even favorable to them.
Zoom out beyond 2016 and take the long view: The last seven presidential elections have featured four Democratic victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College (1992, 1996, 2008, 2012); one instance where the GOP won the popular vote and Electoral College (2004); and two kind of fluky GOP wins in which Republicans lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College (2000, 2016).
That long view doesn’t look great for Republicans, and identity and race help explain why. Democrats have been handily winning the vote among Asian, Black and Hispanic Americans, who combined are growing as a share of the electorate. (The share of nonwhite U.S. voters was about 26 percent in 2016, compared to about 13 percent in 1980.) Democrats’ status as the party of minorities helps them in some ways, requiring the GOP to consolidate an increasingly high percentage of the country’s white voters to win elections.
But it isn’t easy or necessarily guaranteed that the Republicans will overwhelmingly win the white vote overall or the white non-college vote specifically — even in an election that’s centered on race. The 2017-2018 period was full of racialized political debate, most notably on immigration policy, but the exit polls suggest Democrats lost white voters without a college degree by 24 percentage points in 2018, compared to 37 points in 2016. So far in 2020, pollsshowBiden losing white voters without a degree by a margin closer to 20 points.
In short, the evidence suggests that Trump’s approach on racial issues never really appealed to people of color in the first place and, outside of November 2016, it has also been really off-putting to white voters with degrees and not that appealing to white voters without degrees.
But Biden is an older white man. So his identity likely makes it harder for Trump to run an identity-based campaign against Biden than against Clinton and, to some extent, incumbent president Obama. (The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer made this argument explicitly in a recent piece.) Biden does not visually symbolize a changing America the way President Obama did and the way a President Hillary Clinton would have.
The electorate has really shifted on racial issues
It’s possible that Trump’s identity politics are less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016 because the events of the last four years have resulted in a real leftward shift on racial issues among Americans. And that shift is fundamental and real, not just about partisanship or anti-Trump sentiment, as I suggested above. After all, in interviews with reporters, more liberal-leaning people and even some former Trump voters are suggesting that they understand racial inequality more deeply now than ever before.
Institutions are aligned with Biden on these issues
Major U.S. businesses, corporations and other elite institutions are typically wary of being perceived as partisan. But in the wake of Floyd’s death, corporate America seems to have decided, for whatever reason, that support for Black Lives Matter and comprehensive, aggressive efforts to reduce racial inequality are either not that partisan or that they’re stances worth taking even if they annoy some Republicans.
So at least right now, it’s not really Biden and Democrats versus Trump and Republicans on issues of identity and race in America; rather, it’s Biden, Democrats, Facebook, Merck, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, Nike, Stanford and lots of other major institutions versus Trump and Republicans.
This dynamic is not totally unique to the spring and summer of 2020. Major companies in America are often aligned with liberal cultural values — for example, supporting gay marriage even before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated any remaining bans on same-sex unions.
But even if corporate America’s recent posture on racial issues isn’t that surprising, it’s still important. With a lot of major institutions in America echoing his general message, it’s not surprising that Biden’s identity politics are resonating more than Trump’s.
I’m writing this article at a particular moment in time. Perhaps there will be a backlash to the Floyd protests and public opinion will shift. Maybe Trump will benefit from that. If Biden picks a female vice presidential nominee, particularly one who is also a person of color, perhaps Trump’s identity tactics will resonate more with voters because he’ll then have a foil who is more like Clinton and Obama. Alternatively, Trump could make up ground in the polls due to unrelated issues and factors.
And even if Biden wins, that won’t totally answer the question of whether identity politics is bad or good for Democrats. LIke I said, perhaps basically any Democratic candidate would beat Trump amid a viral outbreak the president mishandled.
All that said, it appears right now that the identity politics of 2020 are a net plus for Democrats — and perhaps they weren’t too big a problem for Democrats in the first place. It’s hard to prove any of this, but it’s an important discussion to have. In 2008, it seemed like Democrats won a presidential contest that was largely about race. But even though the presidential nominees were white in 2016 and 2020, those may have been more racialized campaigns. And if the current polls hold up, Democrats, after losing a very racialized campaign, may show that they can win one.
OTTAWA – The federal agency that investigates election infractions found insufficient evidence to support suggestions Beijing wielded undue influence against the Conservatives in the Vancouver area during the 2021 general election.
The Commissioner of Canada Elections’ recently completed review of the lingering issue was tabled Tuesday at a federal inquiry into foreign interference.
The review focused on the unsuccessful campaign of Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu in the riding of Steveston-Richmond East and the party’s larger efforts in the Vancouver area.
It says the evidence uncovered did not trigger the threshold to initiate a formal investigation under the Canada Elections Act.
Investigators therefore recommended that the review be concluded.
A summary of the review results was shared with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP. The review says both agencies indicated the election commissioner’s findings were consistent with their own understanding of the situation.
During the exercise, the commissioner’s investigators met with Chinese Canadian residents of Chiu’s riding and surrounding ones.
They were told of an extensive network of Chinese Canadian associations, businesses and media organizations that offers the diaspora a lifestyle that mirrors that of China in many ways.
“Further, this diaspora has continuing and extensive commercial, social and familial relations with China,” the review says.
Some interviewees reported that this “has created aspects of a parallel society involving many Chinese Canadians in the Lower Mainland area, which includes concerted support, direction and control by individuals from or involved with China’s Vancouver consulate and the United Front Work Department (UFWD) in China.”
Investigators were also made aware of members of three Chinese Canadian associations, as well as others, who were alleged to have used their positions to influence the choice of Chinese Canadian voters during the 2021 election in a direction favourable to the interests of Beijing, the review says.
These efforts were sparked by elements of the Conservative party’s election platform and by actions and statements by Chiu “that were leveraged to bolster claims that both the platform and Chiu were anti-China and were encouraging anti-Chinese discrimination and racism.”
These messages were amplified through repetition in social media, chat groups and posts, as well as in Chinese in online, print and radio media throughout the Vancouver area.
Upon examination, the messages “were found to not be in contravention” of the Canada Elections Act, says the review, citing the Supreme Court of Canada’s position that the concept of uninhibited speech permeates all truly democratic societies and institutions.
The review says the effectiveness of the anti-Conservative, anti-Chiu campaigns was enhanced by circumstances “unique to the Chinese diaspora and the assertive nature of Chinese government interests.”
It notes the election was prefaced by statements from China’s ambassador to Canada and the Vancouver consul general as well as articles published or broadcast in Beijing-controlled Chinese Canadian media entities.
“According to Chinese Canadian interview subjects, this invoked a widespread fear amongst electors, described as a fear of retributive measures from Chinese authorities should a (Conservative) government be elected.”
This included the possibility that Chinese authorities could interfere with travel to and from China, as well as measures being taken against family members or business interests in China, the review says.
“Several Chinese Canadian interview subjects were of the view that Chinese authorities could exercise such retributive measures, and that this fear was most acute with Chinese Canadian electors from mainland China. One said ‘everybody understands’ the need to only say nice things about China.”
However, no interview subject was willing to name electors who were directly affected by the anti-Tory campaign, nor community leaders who claimed to speak on a voter’s behalf.
Several weeks of public inquiry hearings will focus on the capacity of federal agencies to detect, deter and counter foreign meddling.
In other testimony Tuesday, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis told the inquiry that parliamentarians who were targeted by Chinese hackers could have taken immediate protective steps if they had been informed sooner.
It emerged earlier this year that in 2021 some MPs and senators faced cyberattacks from the hackers because of their involvement with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which pushes for accountability from Beijing.
In 2022, U.S. authorities apparently informed the Canadian government of the attacks, and it in turn advised parliamentary IT officials — but not individual MPs.
Genuis, a Canadian co-chair of the inter-parliamentary alliance, told the inquiry Tuesday that it remains mysterious to him why he wasn’t informed about the attacks sooner.
Liberal MP John McKay, also a Canadian co-chair of the alliance, said there should be a clear protocol for advising parliamentarians of cyberthreats.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.
The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.
Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.
The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.
A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.
“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.
The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.
“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”
Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.
“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.
Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.
His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.
Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.
Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.
It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.
“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.
When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”
In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.
“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.
The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.
Singh called it a “big victory.”
“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.
“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”
New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.
Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.
The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
