As Groups Have Shifted, Has It Become a ‘Normal’ Election?
"Unusual demographic patterns are fading, but there are still some differences from the 2020 race.
Labor Day usually marks the start of the heart of campaign season, but this year it felt like a lull — a brief respite after two tumultuous months.
At the end of it all, the presidential campaign almost feels as if it’s back to “normal.” The candidates fought over the issues and their agendas. There were no questions about whether a candidate was going to drop out. And if the polls are any indication, public opinion is finally settling into something more like normal as well.
Just take a look at our polling averages, which have been updated since Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s departure from the race (a return to normal in its own right). There’s no sign of the political chaos of the last few months. Instead, the results look typical: Nationwide, Kamala Harris leads Donald J. Trump by three percentage points, 49 percent to 46 percent. Across the battleground states, the race is a dead heat. In every state and nationwide, the polling average is within 1.5 points of the result of the 2020 presidential election.
In short, the polls finally show the close election that analysts expected a year ago, before President Biden’s candidacy went off the rails. If anything, it’s even closer than expected: The polling averages today are closer than the final pre-election polling in any presidential election in the era of modern polling — closer than 2000, 2004 or 2012, let alone 2016 or 2020.
The uncommon demographic patterns of the last year — the erosion of support for Mr. Biden among traditionally Democratic groups — have been fading as well. But here there are a few more vestiges of what we saw in the unusual Biden-Trump polling. In some cases, it’s a bit of a surprise. Here’s how the race is — or isn’t — returning to normal.
The return of the generational divide
The Democratic lead among young voters is back. In high-quality polls over the last month, Vice President Harris leads Mr. Trump by an average of 20 points among the youngest reported demographic cohort (whether that be 18 to 29 or 18 to 34 in a given poll). The same polls showed Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump tied among young voters in July. Older voters, meanwhile, have barely edged at all toward Ms. Harris. Put it together, and the usual generational divide in American politics has returned.
That said, the polling isn’t entirely typical. Ms. Harris still leads among seniors, a group that post-election studies found had tilted slightly toward Mr. Trump in 2020. The gap between the current polling of seniors and the estimated result among them in the last election isn’t especially large. But it’s an eye-popping difference nonetheless.
It’s hard to be sure whether Ms. Harris’s strength among seniors is because the aging of the boomers is helping Democrats, or because the polls are just wrong and struggling to reach Mr. Trump’s supporters, or because Democrats and Mr. Biden had actually been faring better among seniors than previously estimated all along. Whatever the explanation, it’s not a statistical fluke due to small sample sizes: Polls have shown Democrats faring surprisingly well among seniors for a while now, including ahead of the 2020 election.
One additional data point for the thought-provoking possibility that Democrats have simply been stronger among seniors all along: the authoritative Pew NPORS study. It found Democrats either tied or ahead of Republicans among seniors in leaned party identification in each of its annual surveys over five years, which together have more than 7,000 total respondents over 65. Similarly, more seniors said they backed Mr. Biden than Mr. Trump in 2020 in each survey.
A rebound among Black and Hispanic voters
Mr. Trump’s strength among Black and Hispanic voters was one of the most surprising trends of the cycle. With Ms. Harris as the Democratic nominee, it’s no surprise that Mr. Trump has come back to earth.
In the past month of high-quality polls, Ms. Harris has a 78-14 lead among Black voters and a 52-41 lead among Hispanic voters. Our New York Times/Siena College battleground state surveys showed similar results, with Ms. Harris ahead 80-15 among Black voters and 52-42 among Hispanic ones. In each case, Ms. Harris is about halfway between Mr. Biden’s weakened standing before he dropped out of the race and his stronger estimated finish in the 2020 election.
While this is certainly closer to typical, “normal” is not quite the right term for the current numbers. Mr. Trump’s tallies today — 14 percent support among Black voters and 41 percent among Hispanic voters — would still represent the highest level of backing a Republican presidential candidate has received in pre-election polls since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Ms. Harris may still make additional gains among these groups over the last two months. It’s also possible that the polls are overestimating Mr. Trump’s strength or that many of Mr. Trump’s Black and Hispanic supporters simply won’t turn out to vote.
But it’s also starting to become conceivable that Mr. Trump will post some of the best results on record for a Republican among voters of color — and that he will do so against a Black Democratic candidate who also has South Asian heritage. It would not amount to a “racial realignment,” but it would be a development with important consequences for the future of American politics.
The engagement gap is fading
One of the most unusual features of the polling over the last year was Mr. Biden’s pronounced weakness among less engaged voters, even as he held his own among the kinds of voters who propelled Democratic success in midterm and special elections.
This pattern has faded a bit since Ms. Harris’s entry into the race, though it’s not gone altogether. In the last Times/Siena battleground state polls, Ms. Harris trailed by six points among voters who didn’t vote in the 2022 midterms, compared with Mr. Biden’s 15-point deficit in May. The latest Cook Political Report surveys show a similar pattern, using slightly different definitions of political engagement.
Less engaged voters, of course, are probably those who are least tuned in to all the drama of the last two months. We’ll see how they shift over the final stretch.
Nate Cohn is The Times’s chief political analyst. He covers elections, public opinion, demographics and polling. More about Nate Cohn"
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