How We Expect The Electorate To Look In 2020
One of the biggest takeaways from the 2016 election was the educational divide in political preferences among white voters. Those without a college degree swung toward Trump, while those with a degree swung toward Clinton, both to a historic degree. There was also a record gender gap, with men preferring Trump and women preferring Clinton.
After today, we will get a lot of new data about Americans’ political preferences according to demographics. On the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast last week, we tried to foreshadow what some of those trends might look like. According to voter surveys, Biden has improved over Clinton’s performance among white voters writ large, a group that makes up nearly 70 percent of the electorate. It appears that more of those gains have come from non-college-educated white voters -- a group that Biden will still almost certainly lose overall, but by a smaller margin than Clinton did. Like Clinton, he is expected to win white voters with a college degree overall, a group that has historically voted Republican. Meanwhile, Trump has held steady or even improved his standing with Black and Hispanic voters, particularly men.
For more insight into what the electorate could look like this year, check out the podcast.