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Democratic strategist David Axelrod said Sunday he doesn’t think President Biden understands he is “not winning this race” against former President Trump.

“There are certain immutable facts of life, and those were painfully obvious on that debate stage, and the president just doesn’t seem to come to — he hasn’t come to grips with it. He’s not winning this race,” Axelrod, a senior adviser in the Obama administration, said on CNN’s “Inside Politics.”

On Wednesday, the New York Times and Siena College released a national poll, conducted after last week’s Presidential debate, that showed former President Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden by nine percentage points among registered voters, and by six percentage points among likely voters. This is not only Trump’s widest lead over Biden in any NYT/Siena poll this election cycle, but in fact is his biggest lead over any Democrat since his first Presidential campaign, in 2016. Nearly three out of four people surveyed described Biden as too old to handle the job of President; indeed, doubts about his age, exacerbated by his halting debate performance, are currently roiling the Democratic Party, with many Democrats hoping that Biden declines to run for reëlection.

To talk about the data and Biden’s future, I spoke by phone with Nate Cohn, the Times’ chief political analyst, who also oversees its polling, and who agreed to talk despite being on paternity leave. (Full disclosure: Cohn and I previously worked together at The New Republic, and are friends.) During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Democrats should think about potential Biden replacements, what makes Biden’s political problems so unique, and whether any Presidential candidate has ever recovered from a deficit like the one Biden is currently facing.

Since the creation of televised presidential debates, they’ve always mattered, sometimes dramatically but it takes some time for the debate effects to surface in the public. Since 1976, the first debate of a presidential year has shifted voters’ preferences by an average of 2.4 percentage points during the two weeks following the debate, almost always against the incumbent president (or the incumbent’s party when the president is not running for reelection). Today, although it has only been one week since the Biden-Trump debate, we can already see the effect of the debate on voter preferences and the news for Biden is not good. 

In today’s polarized politics, more than nine in 10 Democrats and Republicans automatically support their party’s candidate. In the past three presidential elections, the first debate has moved voters’ preferences by an average of 2.8 percentage points. And because we are closely as well as deeply divided, with elections decided by small margins, changes of this size can be decisive.

The year of America's next presidential election is here, which can only mean one thing: speculation will continue to ramp up about who will be the next person to occupy the White House. While the campaign season started with a long list of competitors, the field has now narrowed to just two. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have locked up the required delegates to be the Democratic and Republican nominees, respectively. While several independent candidates remain in the race as long shots, this means that the United States is on track to have its have its first presidential election rematch since 1956, an unprecedented battle between the oldest president to take office in Biden, and the first-ever former president convicted of a felony in Trump. With the election now just 4 months away, pollsters and political scientists are heating up the debate about who will win the 270 electoral votes needed to earn a seat in the Oval Office. Who do the experts believe will be the next president of the United States? Who do the polls say will win the election? Biden and Trump traded slight polling leads throughout the primary season. When it comes to actual figures, though, Trump has carried most of the weight in the majority of polls taken during the early portion of the year — a New York Times poll from May 13 of 1,000 Americans showed the former president leading Biden in five of six key battleground states. Biden led Trump only in Wisconsin with a margin of 47% to 45%. While the accuracy of this poll has been questioned, the Trump lead appears to be in line with a May 14 YouGov/Economist poll of 1,586 voters that had Trump leading 42% to 41% and a May 12 Morning Consult poll of 10,243 voters that had him leading 44% to 43%. But while Trump has had the edge in the polls through most of the election season, a new element was added to the race at the end of May that could cause an unprecedented shift: the former president was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Early polling data appears to show that the GOP nominee now being a convicted felon is moderately changing public opinion. A May 31 Reuters/Ipsos poll of 2,256 Americans found that 1 in 10 Republicans and 25% of independents are less likely to vote for Trump following his conviction. This is in line with a June 2 ABC/Ipsos poll of 781 Americans that found 49% of respondents thought Trump should end his campaign as a result of his conviction. It remains to be seen whether or not this will be enough to make a difference in November. Notably, the same Reuters poll found that the conviction made no difference to 56% of Republicans, while 35% of GOP voters said they were more likely to vote for Trump as a result of the conviction. However, the "potential loss of a tenth of his party's voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans," said Reuters, given that many of the 35% of Republicans would likely vote for him anyway. But while Trump is dealing with legal blowback, Biden is trying to mend a slew of his own problems, most notably his debate against Trump on June 27. Biden's performance was nearly universally described as one of the worst in presidential debate history, and "created a crisis moment for Biden's campaign and his presidency," said The Associated Press. Biden has acknowledged his poor performance, but this has not seemed to quell concern among those in his own party, some of whom began calling for the president to step aside and not be the Democratic nominee. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) became the first to do so, which could open the floodgates for others to follow suit. Post-debate polling showed that it wasn't just politicians who expressed concerns over Biden's ability to be reelected. A July 2 USA Today/Suffolk University poll of 1,000 voters, released days after the debate, had Trump extending his lead 41% to 38%. This is in line with a CNN/SSRS poll of 1,274 respondents released the same day which had Trump beating Biden by a six-point margin of 49% to 43%, with only 23% thinking that Biden performed better than Trump in the debate. The Biden campaign itself doesn't seem to be as worried about the dip as everyone else. Other internal polls "found the president tied or ahead of Trump after the debate," the campaign said, per Politico, also noting that former President Barack Obama saw a "large, but temporary, drop in his polling" after a lackluster performance in his first 2012 debate. Despite Trump's conviction, Biden's debate problems seem to have further swung the pendulum toward the former president poll-wise. In the 10 most recent head-to-head matchups in FiveThirtyEight's polling aggregate, Trump is leading in all except for one with anywhere from a two to four-point gap. The lone exception is a July 2 Reuters/Ipsos poll that had the men tied at 40%, suggesting that "Biden has not lost ground since the debate," said Reuters. Who do the pundits say will win the election? While the polls may tell one story, political analysts, pundits and experts can tell another. At the beginning of the race, many who study politics seemed to believe that Biden would ultimately secure a second term in office despite Trump leading in the polls. But with four months to go until ballots are cast, opinions are now becoming more mixed. It has "become clear that Biden staying in the race is making it more likely that Donald Trump will be the next president," Eric Levitz said for Vox. Biden's "conspicuous cognitive and rhetorical decline has rendered him an exceptionally weak candidate, whose odds of victory look much slimmer than any of the Democratic Party’s plausible alternatives." Some have said that Biden's debate performance is being overblown by the media, but "even ignoring the fact that Biden has lost support in the polls, the argument that 'our candidate's debate performance only generated a media consensus against his candidacy' is not reassuring," said Levitz. This is because the media "is a very powerful actor in American politics! Voters do not derive their impressions of candidates and parties from the ether; their understanding of the world is shaped by the editorial decisions of editors, reporters, and newscast producers." Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris, should be the Democratic nominee, former Democratic Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan said for Newsweek. Harris is a "polished, confident leader communicating clearly in the throes of a political meltdown of epic proportions." Trump is also catching up to Biden in fundraising, an area that he has previously been lagging behind. The former president's campaign reported that it raised $141 million in May, bolstered by a $51 million surge immediately after he was found guilty. This represents a marked shift away from the fundraising dominance that Biden has seen in recent months, though the president still maintains a large advantage in his campaign coffers. If Trump were to carry the White House, he "would not win because America is in love with the former president, his policies or the idea of having a strongman run the country," but unease toward Biden could allow him to "be elected president while winning even less than the 46% of the national popular vote he earned in 2016," said Perry Bacon Jr. for The Washington Post. Though like everything that has occurred so far this campaign, it is hard to make a truly accurate guess on how the public will lean. After all, polls have been wrong — sometimes considerably — in the past; on Election Day 2016, The New York Times predicted that Hillary Clinton had an 85% chance of beating Trump.

Former President Trump’s support has ticked up nationally and in battleground states, according to postdebate polling released Wednesday.

The CBS News/YouGov survey found Trump is leading President Biden nationally with 50 percent of support among likely voters, compared to the incumbent’s 48 percent. It also found the former president narrowly edges out Biden in battleground states, garnering 51 percent of support compared to the president’s 48 percent.

Democratic strategist David Axelrod said Sunday he doesn’t think President Biden understands he is “not winning this race” against former President Trump.

“There are certain immutable facts of life, and those were painfully obvious on that debate stage, and the president just doesn’t seem to come to — he hasn’t come to grips with it. He’s not winning this race,” Axelrod, a senior adviser in the Obama administration, said on CNN’s “Inside Politics.”

Despite the increased role of Latino voters in determining elections and vast evidence showing the crucial role of long-term and sustained contact for their turnout, the mobilization of Latino voters has frequently lagged behind other major demographic groups.1 This, coupled with other systemic barriers has kept many Latinos away from exercising their right to vote. Even though Latinos’ share of the electorate has rapidly grown in the past decade, a large turnout gap between Latino voters and those of other racial groups remains. In this data brief, we quantify the size of the turnout gap between Latinos and other groups in the 2020 election. Comparing the number of eligible, registered, and actual voters we illuminate whether the turnout gap between Latino voters and others is due to lower registration rates or to lower mobilization of registered voters. Our main findings are: At the national level: Latinos had the lowest registration rate among racial and ethnic groups during the 2020 general election at 61.1 percent. This was more than 10 percentage points lower than the 72.7% registration rate for all voters regardless of race. However, once registered, 88 percent of Latino voters cast a ballot, which is only 4 percentage points lower than the 92 percent of registered voters who cast a ballot regardless of race. In California: Similar to national-level trends, Latino voters also had the lowest registration rate of all voters in California. Only slightly more than 60 percent of eligible Latino voters registered statewide which is lower than the overall 69.4 percent registration rate. However, just as the trend at the national level, once they are registered, the vast majority of Latino voters cast a ballot, and the gap in turnout between them and the rest of other voters decreases. Close to 91 percent of registered Latinos voted in the 2020 election, just three percentage points lower than the overall rate. Latinos were the only racial or ethnic group whose share of the electorate decreased from eligibility to the ballot box. Latino voter representation dropped from 32% of eligible voters to 28% of registered voters and to 27% of those who voted. At the county level: Turnout rates as a percent of those who registered varied considerably across the 10 counties with the largest Latino populations in California. For Latino voters, turnout rates were highest in Sacramento, Santa Clara, Orange, and Alameda counties (where over 75 percent of registered Latinos voted) and lowest in Kern County (where only 60.2 percent of registered Latinos voted). The gap between county-wide and Latino turnout rates was highest in San Diego County with a 9.5 percentage point difference and lowest in Los Angeles County, with a 4.6 point difference between Latino turnout and overall turnout. San Diego and Alameda counties had overall turnout rates above 80 percent; however, these counties had the largest gaps between the county-wide rate and Latino turnout rates, respectively. Counties should not only aim for high overall voter turnout but also implement targeted mobilization strategies that close the racial and ethnic group turnout gaps (particularly for Latino, Black, and Asian voters). If overall turnout is the only measure of effective voter mobilization, racial and ethnic disparities in voter turnout will likely persist. At the national, state, and county levels, the largest gaps between Latino voters and others lie in registration. Once Latino voters are registered, a turnout gap between them and others exists, but it is much smaller than the registration gap. This shows that further efforts into registration are key to increasing the overall participation rate of Latino voters at all levels. The data in this brief shows that Latinos have the lowest registration and voter turnout rates of all major racial or ethnic groups. Even though other research has shown that the sheer increase in the number of Latinos in the country has led to an increase in their share of the electorate, our data showcases a persistent turnout gap relative to others. In other words, when it comes to electoral power, demography is not destiny. Persistent turnout gaps between Latinos—one of the fastest-growing demographic groups—and the rest will lead to election results that are increasingly unrepresentative of the wishes of many voters. Even though the data presented here does not speak to why Latino voters have lower registration and turnout rates, a large body of research has shown that having sustained and direct face-to-face voter engagement with Latino voters is imperative to get them to the polls. It is up to political parties, election administrators at the state and local level, and community-based organizations to mobilize the untapped opportunity to grow the electorate through deeper engagement with Latino voters.

If we look at the Hispanic population, a growing part of Georgia's population diversifying, only 43 percent of Latinos who are citizens, adults of voting age, turned out to vote. For Asian Americans, turnout was up quite a bit relative to 2016. About 62 percent of Asian Americans, again a growing but still relatively small share of Georgia's population, turned out to vote. So, if we look over all the Georgia trends in terms of race and ethnicity, it might not tell us so much about national trends because of the tremendous voter mobilization we see in this state. You know, speaking to you from Georgia, from Atlanta, right, where we're all gearing up for the runoff, we see disproportionate increases in turnout for some groups and a continuation of some dramatic disparities in voter turnout by race and ethnicity. So, I think this also tells us that there might be a limit to the extent to which mobilization and interest can remedy these disparities in voter turnout. Now, in Georgia, because again they have excellent data on race in the voter file, campaigns can micro target much more effectively than in most other states. So, I know that right now as people are doing their canvasing work for the runoff, some organizations are contacting every single Latino voter or every single potential Asian American voter in the state of Georgia. But, we still don't see every single person turning out to vote. Some people are going to be resistant to those mobilization tactics, even when they're micro targeted. So, it says there might be kind of a ceiling in voter turnout and I think when we consider the fact that even this historic election, even with the ease of voting by mail and the fact that as Charles Stewart reported, voters indicated that they had a very good experience voting, they knew what they needed to vote, right, massive shifts in vote method, still, one-third of Americans did not turn out to vote despite the fact that they could have.

In a pivotal election year, U.S. democracy continues to face a persistent challenge among the country's electorate — gaps in voter registration rates between white eligible voters and eligible voters of color. For years, the shares of Black, Asian and Latino citizens age 18 or older signed up to cast ballots have trailed behind that of white adult citizens, according to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. And while the estimated registration rate for Black eligible voters has stayed closer to (and, in 2012, even surpassed) the rate for white eligible voters, the rates for Asian Americans and Latinos — who make up the country's top two fast-growing electorates by race or ethnicity — have remained among the lowest of the racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Based on national estimates from the last two federal election years, the disparity in registration rates between white and Asian eligible voters is around nine percentage points. Between white and Latino eligible voters, the gap is about 13 percentage points. Long-standing barriers to voter registration have made it difficult to close these gaps, and dedicated investment is needed to ensure fuller participation in elections and a healthier democracy, many researchers and advocates say. "This is something that needs to be paid attention to sustainably all the time," says Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, director of research at the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute. "It is not something that should be paid attention to only when we are getting close to a presidential election." An election worker directs voters to a ballot drop-off location in 2020 in Portland, Ore. Oregon is among the states waiting for the Biden administration to greenlight plans to automatically register eligible voters when they apply to enroll in Medicaid. ELECTIONS Biden officials keep states waiting on expanding Medicaid voter registration For some, economic needs overshadow political participation Many Latino and Asian American eligible voters are naturalized U.S. citizens, and that, Dominguez-Villegas says, can make it more difficult to figure out how to get registered to vote, especially in states that don't offer automatic voter registration or same-day registration. "They need to learn the ropes of the political system at the same time as they are learning everything else about living in a different country," says Dominguez-Villegas. Dominguez-Villegas, who co-wrote a report about the lower voter registration rate for Latinos in the 2020 elections, points out that while more states started allowing early in-person and mail voting after the COVID-19 pandemic began, it can be hard for some eligible voters to "prioritize political participation over their day-to-day economic needs" when they're working lower-wage jobs. "There are some types of jobs that might be preventing people from being able to even take time off work to vote. And so when people know that they're not going to be able to exercise the right to vote, they are a lot less inclined to even register for it," Dominguez-Villegas says. It's a kind of barrier that Vivian Chang, executive director of the Philadelphia-based advocacy group Asian Americans United, says community organizers have encountered when trying to promote voter registration in and around the city's Chinatown neighborhood. "A lot of folks are just struggling to survive," Chang says. "Voting is a very separate thing. And honestly, it's a part of an institution that for them is not one that necessarily values them." Asian Americans and Latinos are less likely to be contacted by campaigns. Still, low registration rates among Asian Americans and Latinos should not be seen as a sign of low interest in U.S. politics, warns Taeku Lee, a professor of government at Harvard University. "An old narrative has been, because these groups are predominantly first- and second-generation Americans, that they're more interested in the politics of their home country than they are in the politics of the United States, or they're groups that like to keep their head down and stay out of politics," says Lee, whose research focuses on racial and ethnic politics. "I think they are every bit as invested in what politics can do to them or do for them." The shortcoming lies in large part with the country's major political parties, Lee argues. "There's a long-standing view that you don't target precious campaign resources towards groups that you consider to be low-propensity voters. And if a group like Asian Americans are predominantly naturalized citizens and a large group of them are potentially first-time voters, then you're likely to be seen as a low-propensity voter," Lee says. According to a Pew Research Center survey, Asian Americans and Latinos were among the least likely to say that a political candidate's campaign or a group supporting a candidate contacted them in the run-up to the 2020 general election. The growing racial gap in U.S. census results is raising an expert panel's concerns POLITICS The growing racial gap in U.S. census results is raising an expert panel's concerns A federal law requires translated voting ballots, but not in Arabic or Haitian Creole ELECTIONS A federal law requires translated voting ballots, but not in Arabic or Haitian Creole Voting restrictions can disproportionately affect people of color In some states, restrictive voter ID requirements that disproportionately affect many eligible voters of color have also put in place systemic barriers to voter registration, Lee points out. In 2020, Latinos and Asian Americans who were eligible to vote, for example, were more likely than white eligible voters not to have a current driver's license, and Latinos were more than twice as likely as people who identify as white and not Latino not to have any government-issued photo ID that was not expired, according to a report by the University of Maryland's Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement and the voter advocacy group VoteRiders. "Some of the state-led election reform initiatives, like voter identification laws, are really critical in understanding whether or not the hard-won gains of the Selma, Ala., march in 1965 really continues to be part of our long-standing history of wins and losses in terms of political rights and political freedom," says Lee, referring to the historic civil rights demonstration that galvanized Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That landmark law led to significant increases in the registration rates for Black eligible voters in the South, while also sparking a surge in voter registration among white eligible voters in some areas, which some researchers interpret as signs of white opponents of the Voting Rights Act counter-mobilizing in response.

MM: When you talk about the diversity within the Latino community, the most significant political diversity is generational, not country of origin. Very typically, immigrants vote overwhelmingly with the Democratic Party, more than 70 percent. This was the foundation for the demographics-as-destiny argument that Democrats have pursued. They saw the change in California in the 1980s and early 1990s, and The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira came out in 2002 and made the argument that Latinos will always be ethnically focused voters. There was some reason to believe that. Latinos were behaving that way because they were under attack. But that was a long time ago. Put it this way: 45 percent of Latinos weren’t even alive when Prop. 187 [which banned most state services for non-citizens] was passed. Latino voters of the next 30 years are going to look entirely different than Latino voters of the last thirty years. The fastest growing group is now third-generation Latino voters, and they are much more economically pocketbook-driven than focused on an ethnic lens. Overwhelmingly, they identify as “typical American,” according to Pew Research. They’re emerging as a fast assimilating group, becoming more and more economic and class voters and less racially and ethnically oriented. Fifty percent of all new U.S. voters since 2020 are Latino, and 80 percent of them are U.S.-born.

The polling was jarring, and the political narrative too juicy to resist. Stoked by surveys showing him getting as much as 23 percent of the Black vote, Donald Trump, with characteristic hubris, claimed he was capturing the Democrats’ most reliable base voters, trotting out supporters in “Blacks for Trump” T-shirts and holding what is typically an exclusively Democratic event—a rally in a Black Detroit church. The headline of one Wall Street Journal column gleefully touted it as “Biden’s Worst Nightmare.” A gobsmacked CNN political data reporter concluded that Black voters were leaving the Democratic Party “in droves,” with the country headed toward a “historic” political shift. Other polling showed a dramatic shift among Hispanic voters from Biden to Trump, with the sitting president losing ground among—or outright losing—Latinos to the man who separated immigrant families at the border, called Mexicans rapists, and promises mass deportations. The polling bomb set off a moral panic on the left that lingers, fueling fears that shifting minority votes could send back to the White House the man who called for the death penalty for the later-exonerated Central Park Five—and never apologized for it—who demonizes cities run by Black leaders, who cozies up to white supremacists, and has castigated immigrants as “bad hombres” who are “poisoning the blood” of American lineage. A closer examination of the polling indicates Biden is not in as much trouble with minority voters as the Trump campaign believes (or at least would have the public believe). The president indeed suffers from a dearth of enthusiasm from a cranky electorate, but that’s an across-the-board problem. It’s not particular to Black and Hispanic voters. And if historical trends hold, Biden has a solid chance of bringing those traditional Democratic voters back home come November. First, it’s fair to question whether the polling itself—while useful—is dispositive. Democrats have weathered similar scares in recent cycles. In 2022, a preelection poll by the nonpartisan National Association of Latino Elected Officials found that 57 percent of Latinos favored Democratic candidates for Congress. Exit polls determined that 64 percent voted for a Democratic House candidate. A projected drop in female Hispanic support never materialized: While 56 percent said before the election they’d vote for the Democrat in the midterms, 68 percent actually did so. That’s largely because the “undecideds” in that poll went for the Democrats, coming home in November as the party counted on them doing. And it’s in tune with elections from 2022 on, where Democrats have consistently overperformed in contests ranging from mayor to congressman. Surveys of Black voters too seem inconsistent with the sky-is-falling reporting from the horse-race polling data. A Pew Research poll of Black voters in May found them consistently identifying with the Democratic Party in high numbers (83 percent to 88 percent since 1994). There’s very little party crossover in presidential races, making it unlikely that Trump picks up a significant part of that vote. And as with Latinos in the midterms, there is historical evidence that disaffected Democratic base voters may withhold support for the party in interviews with pollsters but pull the Democratic lever in November. Fox News, reporting this week that Biden is ahead of Trump for the first time since October 2023, noted that the Democrat had 79 percent Black support in one of its 2020 surveys—but then went on to win 91 percent of the Black vote in Fox’s own exit poll that year. This isn’t to suggest that Biden hasn’t lost some ground among these voters. A recent Suffolk University poll of Black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania—more credible than broader surveys because the sample was limited to African Americans—showed committed Black support for Biden slipping (54 percent in Michigan and 58 percent in Pennsylvania, in a six-candidate field, after Biden took 92 percent of the Black vote in 2020) and a not-insignificant uptick for Trump (15 percent in Michigan and 16 percent in Pennsylvania, up from 7 percent in those states four years ago). If those numbers hold—and polls like the 2020 Fox survey suggest they won’t—Biden would indeed have to make up a lot of votes in states where he needs it. But there’s little reason to believe that Biden’s deterioration leads to increased Trump support. Black voters in the Pew survey had a dismal view of the Former Guy’s character, mental acuity, and physical fitness for the job. A YouGov national poll shows similar trends. In fact, 51 percent of Michigan Blacks—and 61 percent of African American voters in Pennsylvania—believe Trump should be jailed when he is sentenced on his hush-money convictions, the Suffolk poll found. Hardly an indication Black voters are moving in “droves” to Trump. His much-touted new group, “Black Americans for Trump,” includes several paid Trump family staffers—not exactly a grassroots movement. Democratic activists don’t see it on the ground either and are skeptical of what Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock calls the data “pollercoaster.” The New Georgia Project Action Fund has knocked on 150,000 doors, talking to 120,000 people this cycle, and is not picking up any shift toward Trump. “I have not talked to a single voter who has said, Trump is the man,” Keron Blair, the project’s chief field and organizing officer, told me. “That does not mean Black voters do not have serious and sustained concerns” about a wide range of issues. But the choice is “Biden versus the couch”—not Biden versus Trump, he said. There was also little evidence of a Trump groundswell among Blacks in the presidential primary season. In Georgia, 95 percent of Black voters requested a Democratic ballot—despite the fact that the Democratic presidential primary was not competitive—and 200,000 Blacks voted. Nor was there a surge in Black participation in GOP primaries elsewhere: Exit polls show that Black voters made up just 3 percent of Republican primary voters in South Carolina and 4 percent in Virginia. Both are open primaries, meaning Black voters could choose to vote in the GOP primary even if they had voted Democratic for years. What diminishment in Black support does exist appears to be coming from younger voters and Black men, reframing the campaign’s challenge. Is Biden in trouble with Black voters, or young voters—some of whom happen to be Black? Or is the yawning gender gap between Biden and Trump (Fox’s new poll had Trump ahead by 15 percentage points among men and Biden ahead by 17 among women) merely being reflected across the racial and ethnic spectrum? There is a tendency, among those reading polls (while wringing hands) to cast white, middle-aged men as the control group, segmenting others as identity politics voters. That makes the narrative of Blacks and Hispanics fleeing Biden particularly tantalizing. But Biden is leading among suburban voters—a group he narrowly lost in 2020—in current polls, a troubling sign for Trump. The same is true for senior voters, whom Trump won by five percentage points in 2020 but who now favor Biden by a stunning 15 percentage points, according to this week’s Fox poll. Parsing by race and ethnicity alone, then, does not show the complete picture. Among Hispanics, the picture is more complicated and riper for misinterpretation. Latinos are not a homogenous group; Cuban Americans, concentrated in Florida, tend to be more Republican, of course, but differences exist among and within other segments of the Hispanic population as well. True, national polling has shown Biden losing Latino support and Trump gaining it. (A Voto Latino poll last month found Biden with 59 percent support, compared to 39 percent for Trump—a slight narrowing from the 2020 exit poll results.) But when Hispanics are viewed state by state, the picture is more varied. In populous Florida and Texas, Hispanics—being Floridians and Texans—tend to be more conservative, distorting the national numbers. Democrats have fared better among Hispanics in the Southwest, taking Colorado and New Mexico out of contention and making Arizona a genuine battleground for the first time in decades. Both Nevada and Arizona are expected to be close this fall.

Pollster aligned with President Joe Biden's administration claimed victory for the president among a key demographic following the presidential debate on Thursday. Matt A. Barreto, the co-founder of BSP Research, a Latino polling firm, and a senior adviser for the Building Back Together organization, shared a video on X, formerly Twitter, from Univision following the debate between Biden and former president Donald Trump. "Of undecided Latino voters, nearly every single undecided voter said they now support Biden, not Trump! Latinos were watching and listening and Trump sounded like a crazy liar. Watch this video clip from @uninot," Barreto wrote. Barreto explained to Newsweek via email that the Univision news segment was focused on voters in Phoenix, Arizona. "It was clear that Biden won over a majority of undecided Latinos in Arizona. These undecided Latino voters who watched the debate thought Biden addressed the issues with clear answers and they thought Trump just spouted mentiras, mentiras, mentiras, lies, lies, lies," Barreto told Newsweek.

The potential impact of eligible Hispanic voters on determining government representation keeps growing. Approximately 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, up from 32.3 million in the last Presidential Election. According to the Pew Research Center, 14.7% of all eligible voters nationwide will be Hispanic by November of this year. This increment will be mostly felt in states with crucial toss-up races like California, Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona, where Latino eligible voters already make up over 20% of the electorate. However, according to the same study, Latinos “are less likely than Americans overall to be eligible to vote (53% v. 72%).” This is partly because the Hispanic population includes people who are too young to vote or who are not U.S. citizens: 29% of Latinos are under 18, compared to 22% of the U.S. overall. While many Latino organizations and elected officials are highly involved in voter mobilization and have advocated for higher engagement from political parties, more often than not the investment and outreach from the parties fall short and leave voters with the feeling that they are an afterthought, or that their votes are taken for granted. This lack of sustained investment is highly damaging to our democracy. Even though voter mobilization falls heavily on c4 organizations and political parties and campaigns, elected officials, and organizations like NHCSL can do to increase Hispanic civic and voting participation, especially from those who are disconnected from politics. The 2023 National Survey of Latino Voters, conducted by UnidosUS, identified the economy as the top issue for Hispanics. Economic disparities, such as lack of access to affordable housing, higher unemployment rates, and the Latina wage gap, to name a few, could remain unaddressed if Latino voter turnout is low. New research from the Urban Institute shows that the average wealth gap between white and Hispanic families exceeded $1 million in household wealth in 2022. Without the political pressure generated by active Latino participation, policymakers may not prioritize initiatives aimed at reducing these economic inequalities. Access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, was also one of the top three concerns for Hispanics, regardless of their personal beliefs around birth control and abortion. As we have seen since the Dobbs decision, state legislatures have a pivotal role in protecting – or restricting – access to comprehensive reproductive care. In states like Florida and Arizona, where abortion bans have gone into effect in the past few weeks, the Latino vote this November could decide whether or not reproductive rights get restored. You, the members of our Caucus, can be the catalyst that unleashes our collective power. You are living testament of what Hispanic communities can achieve when Latino voters stand behind elected officials that put our interests front and center. For example, Colorado has seen a 21% increase in voter participation (56% to 68%), thanks in part to a substantial increase in Latino voter engagement. At the same time, the number of Hispanic state legislators has doubled, which made policies such as the “for cause” eviction law, spearheaded this year by Rep. Javier Mabrey, Sen. Julie Gonzales, and the Colorado Latino Caucus, a reality and an effective way to guarantee that families will keep a roof above their heads. If the sleeping giant of the Latino vote awakens, we’re going to keep seeing better policies materialize nationwide for our communities in a sustainable and consistent way and see our representation increase and achieve its full potential. We are excited to keep working towards this goal and further represent Latino interests at all levels of government.

While the U.S. has become more racially and ethnically diverse over the last decade, the pace of voter turnout among Latinos, Asian Americans and Blacks continues to lag behind that of white non-Latinos, creating a substantial voter participation gap. That’s according to a new study released today by the Center for Inclusive Democracy (CID) at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. The findings were announced at a conference focused on democracy and held at the USC Capital Campus in Washington, D.C. The new research found that despite significant population gains between 2010 and 2020 of 35% for Asian Americans, 23% for Latinos and 6% for Blacks—percentages that outpaced white, non-Latinos, whose numbers fell by 2%—voters of color in the U.S. continue to be underrepresented in the electorate, casting a smaller share of votes proportional to their share of the eligible voter population. The report – called The New Electorate: The Strength of the Latino, Black and Asian-American Vote – revealed that in the 2020 presidential election, Asian-American, Black and Latino eligible voters comprised nearly 30% of those eligible to vote, but represented just over 22% of all votes cast, significantly lower than their share of eligible voters. The report found this entrenched voter representation gap evident across nearly all U.S. elections. Headshot of Mindy Romero (Photo Courtesy: Mindy Romero) “Eligible voters of color have substantial potential to hold greater influence over the outcomes of local and national elections,” said CID Director Mindy Romero, the study’s lead author. “There are millions of eligible non-voters of color who, if mobilized, could have a transformative and immediate impact in the 2024 elections.” “We need to do more to reach and engage these voters, and help narrow the voter representation gap if we are to achieve a truly inclusive electorate,” Romero said. In the 2020 elections, voter turnout—those who actually cast a vote in an election—for Asian Americans, Blacks and Latinos was below that of white, non-Latino voters and the general population across the board. While Asian Americans saw a slight narrowing of their turnout gap with whites, from 29 percentage points (ppts) to 25 ppts, the gap between Latino turnout and white, non-Latino turnout slightly widened from 25 ppts in 2016 to 27 ppts in 2020, while the Black turnout gap widened from 17 ppts to 20 ppts. “What the data tells us is that despite attempts at voting and election reforms, we are not making significant progress toward closing the voter representation

A record 32 million Latinos across the country were eligible to vote in 2020. That growing electorate was expected to be decisive in a supposed “blue wave” this year, and predictions especially focused on possible swing states with large Latinx populations, like Florida, Nevada, Arizona, and even Texas. Former Bernie Sanders campaign adviser Chuck Rocha notably called Latino voters “the single most important factor in the 2020 election.” As results rolled in on and after Election Day, the so-called “Latino vote” made headlines, but the story was largely about how the vote didn’t necessarily go as predicted. It turned into a major lesson from the 2020 election, but it’s one that Latinos have known for years: the idea of a single “Latino vote” is a myth. Latinos and Latinas across the United States draw from different histories that have shaped their different policy interests, ideologies, and personal experiences. At the polls, that often translates into casting a ballot for candidates that have reached out to communities directly, engaged with their concerns, and earned their votes. The Democratic Party’s efforts to appeal to Latino communities in Florida fell short this year. The state went red again, with nearly half of all Latinx-identifying voters casting their ballots for President Donald Trump—an increase since 2016. Meanwhile, across the country in Arizona, a wave of younger Latinx voters made it to the polls to flip the state blue for President-elect Joe Biden. It’s the first time since 1996 that Arizona’s 11 electoral votes have gone to a Democratic presidential candidate, and the change comes thanks to years-long grassroots efforts by Latinx groups in coalition with Black and Native American organizers on the ground.

When Trump won 46 percent of the vote nationwide, 2 points behind Hillary Clinton’s 48 percent, he did it in part by winning the 31 percent of the vote that exit polls showed was cast by independents, 46 to 42 percent. Staying within 2 points of Clinton nationally kept him within range to squeak out his two-tenths-of-a-point win in Michigan and seven-tenths-of-a-point margins in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

What many don’t appreciate is that voters who consider themselves independent have a tendency to vote for change in every presidential election. 2016 marked the fifth consecutive election in which independents have voted in favor of the party not holding the White House, by an average of 4 percentage points. In 2000, when Al Gore was trying to hold onto the White House for Democrats after Bill Clinton’s eight-year presidency, independents voted for George W. Bush from the opposition Republican Party by 2 points, 48 to 46 percent. Four years later, independents again sided with the opposition party, but just by a point, going for John Kerry over Bush by 49 to 48 percent. In 2012, Mitt Romney won independents by 5 points, 50 to 45 percent. So independents’ move against Hillary Clinton should not have been surprising.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Joe Biden’s latest 38% job approval rating remains largely unchanged from recent months and continues to put him well below the 48%+ threshold all reelected incumbents in the modern era have had at the time of the election. His ratings among the three major party groups are also steady, with 83% of Democrats, 33% of independents and 5% of Republicans expressing approval.

Given the extent of political polarization in the U.S. today, there is little chance of Republicans changing their minds about the job Biden is doing. The question hovering over Biden’s reelection chances, then, is whether he can make sufficient gains in approval among his fellow Democrats, and especially independents, during the final four months of the campaign to give him a reasonable chance of winning.

Former president Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden among independent voters some five months ahead of the presidential election, according to a new poll. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is set to face the incumbent president in November, and polls have so far shown that the results of the 2020 White House rematch will be tight, with the pair statistically tied or holding only marginal leads in a number of surveys. However, a new poll has shown Trump is edging ahead of Biden among one important group of voters: independents. According to the ActiVote poll of 2,029 likely voters, the Republican is 22 points ahead of Biden among independent voters in a two-way matchup, holding 61 percent of the vote share to Biden's 39 percent. In a three-way poll, which includes independent candidate Robert D. Kennedy Jr., Trump would still win 47 percent of independent votes, while Biden would win 28 percent of the vote share, the survey showed. The poll was conducted June 5-21 and has a mean average error of 2.2 percent. Newsweek contacted representatives for Trump and Biden by email outside of normal business hours to comment on this story. The poll follows a separate May survey that also showed Trump leading among this voting demographic. In this NPR/PBS/ NewsHour/Marist National survey, 54 percent of independent voters said they supported Trump and 42 percent said they would opt for Biden. But a June survey by the same pollsters found that Biden was in the lead among independents by 50 percent to Trump's 48 percent, with another 2 percent undecided. While national polls are indicative of the nation's mood, they may not be crucial in determining the result of the election. Instead, the election will likely be determined by a handful of key swing states, as the Electoral College system awards each state a certain number of votes based on population. A presidential candidate must secure 270 electoral votes for victory, and winning the national popular vote does not guarantee success. Nevertheless, independents are a key demographic and small shifts among these voters could determine whether swing states are won by either candidate. On June 27, Biden and Trump are set to square off in Atlanta, Georgia, for the first of two scheduled debates ahead of the general election. After Thursday's debate in the key swing state, a second debate between the two candidates is scheduled for September 10. Then, on November 5, voters are set to cast their ballots for the next president.

In their research, Klar and her co-author, Yanna Krupnikov of Stony Brook University, found that exposing people who identified with a party to news coverage of partisan battles in Washington did make them more likely to identify as independent. But that didn’t mean they lost their previous partisan identity; they just became more inclined to hide it. “They’re not actually changing their views on politics,” said Klar. “[Independents] are simply recusing themselves from publicly identifying themselves as a partisan.”

In other words, many Americans are so dissatisfied with politics and turned off by how ugly and partisan it has become that they now refuse to openly identify with either party — even though most still consistently back one party. This is troubling because it suggests that Americans not only are less willing to share their political beliefs but also no longer engage in politics in ways that go beyond just voting — developments that have negative ramifications for the health of our democracy.

Independents stand out from partisans in several important ways. They are less politically engaged than Republicans or Democrats – and this is especially the case among independents who do not lean to a party.

In a survey conducted last fall, shortly after the midterm elections, partisan leaners were less likely than partisans to say they registered to vote and voted in the congressional elections. About half of Democratic-leaning independents (48%) said they voted, compared with 59% of Democrats. The differences were comparable between GOP leaners (54% said they voted) and Republicans (61%).