Black voters (Wapo/Ipsos): Biden +60

[Dan the Roman]

It's not like black voters suddenly are going to vote for Trump more, it's just that more black Biden voters relative to black Trump voters will not turn out, reducing the margin. By how much, we don't know, that we will only know by november. Polls centering around specific demographics are unreliable and useless, esp since a lot of those demographic groups aren't homogenic.

2020 Biden Black voters can definitely vote for Trump more. A lot of the gradual weakening of Dem numbers with Black voters is turnover from 98% Dem seniors to 85% Dem youths, and some of it is differential turnout, but there is also persuasion going on. If Trump gains more than a few percent among Black voters, it will be from persuasion.

I can't claim to understand the mechanics of persuasion for every Clinton-Trump or Biden-Trump voter, but they have their reasons. It is extremely Atlas-brained to act like Trump's gains with non-Whites are due to extreme turnout changes and not persuasion. Even when persuasion is acknowledged it's dismissed as solely from incumbency a lot of the time.

A lot of it is reversion to the mean. Blacks should be a heavily Democratic constituency, but they should not be as heavily Democratic as they are. Currently, we have African Americans who agree with Republicans on every major issue and dislike Democrats, but still voting for them. When we are talking about going from 8% to 13%-17% we are still discussing the most conservative sixth of the African American electorate.

The GOP is almost guaranteed to substantially increase its African American support into the mid-teens over the next decade, and fail utterly to expand much beyond it.

I think this poll is fairly accurate. The absolute ceiling for the GOP is probably around 24% of the African American vote. A realistic target for a "good result" would be 16%.

I also think the focus on nonwhite voters is misplaced. It will matter on the margins, but more interesting is whether 2022 represented a high-water mark of high-income white support for Democrats.

[Dan the Roman]

I have Biden winning the black vote 81%-15% (4% third parties) so this is about right (considering Biden will win most undecideds). That would still represent a right-wing shift for black voters (as has been happening since 2012).

In fact there's a distinct possibility that black voters will swing right for the fourth consecutive election (2012, 2016, 2020 and now 2024). That could be enough to flip Georgia if white suburbanites don't trend further left.

That conclusion ignores the fact that tens of thousands of african-americans have moved to GA since 2020, while the amount of white residents has largely remained static.

True but my prediction (81-15 or Biden +66) represents a big enough change from 2020 (87-12 or Biden +75) that it could still offset an increased black electorate.

what if white suburbanites in GA also swing left again?

That, I feel is the question of the election. If they swing left, Biden wins, probably by a 2020 margin or slightly larger.

Contra polls and speculation, the most probable pathway to a Trump victory is that they, not nonwhites, swing right, and 2022 turns out to have been a high-water mark. I don't feel that is impossible. The Haley polling indicates deep discomfort within the Democratic coalition among many of them, and while Trump appears to be an insurmountable obstacle, it is possible that their innate preferences for a Republican administration, even a pre-2020 Trump one will converge with their voter choice.

I am sure African American voters swinging another 3-4% Republican this cycle will be important to academic studies of a longer-term process, but I am less certain it will be relevant to the outcome of this election.