When the Election Actually Gets Interesting

From the Center

For the last three presidential elections, Democrats and Republicans alike focused an immense amount of their attention and resources on a small number of undecided voters in three key swing states. These blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had swung the 2016 election for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton and then switched to Joe Biden four years later. For the last several months, the Biden and Trump campaigns had been preparing to wage all-out war over these working class voters, knowing that the candidate who secured their support would almost certainly win the election. 

The lack of enthusiasm for Biden among young people, non-white voters and other traditionally loyal Democratic voter groups had put the incumbent president in a perilous position in the race, as Sun Belt states such as Arizona, Georgia and Nevada that he had won in 2020 were slipping out of his reach. It had become clear that Biden’s only path to victory was through the upper Midwest, meaning that those working-class voters would be even more important to the outcome this year than in the past two elections.

After Biden stepped aside last week, the dynamics of a Kamala Harris candidacy have fundamentally remade the political map, scrambling the targeting strategies on which both parties have relied since the dawn of the Trump era of American politics. Harris is much more progressive than avowed centrist Biden, and both demographically and ideologically, she represents a marked turn away from the establishment-oriented approach for which the current president has been known. And the reality is that many older white voters will be reluctant to vote for a woman of color.

But Harris has already been much more successful at motivating the Democratic constituencies with whom Biden has struggled. Young people, voters from minority communities, and single women are all demonstrating a markedly higher level of enthusiasm for their party’s new standard-bearer than they ever had for Biden. And while maintaining that level of excitement for the next fourteen weeks is by no means guaranteed, Harris has the potential to win these votes in a way that would have been almost impossible for her predecessor. In turn, that puts the three southern and western states that had been lost to Biden back in play. Latino voters are often determinative in Arizona and Nevada elections, and a large turnout among Black voters would likely help Harris in Georgia (and possibly North Carolina, which supported Barack Obama in 2008).

Harris’ strength with these voters lessens the Democrats’ singular reliance on those blue-collar Midwesterners who decided the last two elections. The candidates this fall will attempt to speak to a much larger portion of the electorate than has been the case for many years, which means that no voter group will be as determinative in November as us old white people were in the two previous presidential elections.

At first glance, this would appear to benefit Harris. Barring a tremendous gaffe or other ongoing demonstrations of poor candidate skills (which would lead to a massive amount of second-guessing toward Democratic leaders who decided to forego a competitive nominating process), there’s no question that her chances for victory are significantly greater than Biden’s. But it’s far too early to tell whether her gains with party loyalists will outweigh what she might lose among white working-class swing voters: the same qualities that motivate Democratic base voters will put off some of those Rust Belt workers who voted for the winner in both 2016 and 2020.

New polling shows markedly higher levels of enthusiasm for both Harris and Trump than had been the case at any time earlier in the year and that the number of so-called “double haters”—the record number of voters who were unhappy with both alternatives before Biden’s announcement—had dramatically decreased. Many of those on the left who were dismissive of Biden are more enthused about his vice president. But Harris’ candidacy will also drive a good number of previously ambivalent centrists into Trump’s camp. 

This bodes poorly for Robert Kennedy Jr, whose candidacy was based on the antipathy that so many unhappy Americans displayed for a deflating rematch between the two oldest and two most unpopular nominees in American history. But the rest of us can and should appreciate a newly-energized and less narrowly focused campaign that includes a much larger number of voters in what is supposed to be a national conversation.

Want to talk about this topic more? Join Dan for his webinar, “The Dan Schnur Political Report." And read more of Dan’s writing at www.danschnurpolitics.com.

Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley, Pepperdine University, and the University of Southern California, where he teaches courses in politics, communications and leadership. Dan is a No Party Preference voter, but previously worked on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns, serving as the national Director of Communications for the 2000 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator John McCain and the chief media spokesman for California Governor Pete Wilson. He has a Center bias.

This piece was reviewed and edited by Clare Ashcraft, Bridging & Bias Specialist (Center bias).