One significant piece of conventional wisdom that got turned on its head in 2020 was that higher turnout — especially among voters of color in states like Texas, Floria and Nevada — would solely benefit Democrats. Instead, many of these new voters, often younger and not typically engaged in politics, voted for Donald Trump and/or the GOP in down-ballot races.
A prime example of this phenomenon took place in Nevada. A new deep-dive demographic analysis of the 2020 results in the state by the Democratic political data firm Catalist, found that the Silver State “stands out as having the highest portion of first-time voters (21%) and new presidential voters (17%) of any battleground state.” In this state that has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 2008, turnout increased 30 percent from 2016. … In fact, Biden carried the state by a similar margin as Clinton, even as his margin of victory among Latino voters was nine points lower than that of Clinton four years earlier (60 percent compared to Clinton’s 69 percent).
But was this just a one-off kind of thing, or is it the start of a trend? Catalist found a much bigger drop in support for Democrats from Latinos between 2016 and 2020 (69 percent to 60 percent) than during any other time in the last eight years. CONTINUED
Amy Walter, Cook Political Report with Amy Walter
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