Democratic coalition in shambles as Harris bleeding support from key voter blocs

Vice President Kamala Harris is struggling to maintain support among the key voting blocs of the Democratic coalition as polling data suggests that former President Donald Trump’s efforts to win over minority voters are succeeding to some degree.

Throughout his political career, Trump has made concerted attempts to flip Hispanic and black voters, traditionally Democratic constituencies, though his 2020 results with those groups only slightly improved upon his 2016 tallies. Now, polling data suggests that he may be poised to gain significant ground in the November contest with both groups, as well as the traditionally Democratic Jewish voters.

While Trump’s pitch with the latter group has emphasized the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the abundance of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, his economic pitches appear to be resonating with other minority groups, just in time for election season.

Hispanic voters

Republicans have, for years, hyped the prospect of winning over the Hispanic vote, only to see them fall short of expectations. Such was the case notably in the 2022 midterm elections, when Republican hopes were bolstered by the special election win of Myra Flores in a Texas House district along the Rio Grande. The GOP substantially underperformed polls that November. The outlier in that calculus has for many years been the Cuban-American community in Florida, many of whom are dedicated anti-communists having fled Fidel Castro's Cuba.

Recent polling data, however, has shown Trump poised to gain considerable ground over his last election totals with the increasingly influential and numerous voting bloc in key swing states such as Arizona. 

A NBC News/Telemundo survey released late last month showed Harris earning 54% of the vote among registered Latino voters. Trump, meanwhile earned 40% support, which would mark an eight point increase over his 2020 performance with that bloc. The survey had a margin of error of 3.1%, meaning Trump’s support could range from 36.9% to 43.1%.

The survey does not appear to be a one-off outlier either. An Opiniones Latinas survey conducted for TelevisaUnivision, released Tuesday, found comparable results. In that poll, Trump earned 39% with likely Hispanic voters across seven key battleground states. Harris led with 55%.

“We found that Donald Trump's position among Hispanic voters has gone up compared to compared to 2020 where he lost 65 to 32 among Hispanic voters nationally,” Opiniones Latinas pollster John McLaughlin said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “In the seven battleground states, he's really close. He's closed the gap of a net of 17 points, where he's getting 39% of the vote.”

"Cut the margin"

“So he's up seven but Kamala Harris has fallen from Biden 65% to 55%. So there's more votes available to them, and there's other polls that have matched up with this,” he added, before recounting his success in accurately predicting that President George W. Bush would carry 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004.

“And what's interesting is when you look at the states where he's really cut the margin. In Arizona, in 2020 Trump lost, according to the exit polls among Hispanic voters, 61-37 it's now 53 to 42,” he added, before highlighting that “in the three most contested battleground states, where, in Arizona, you'll have 1/5 of the electorate will be Latino voters, Trump's cut it by double digits.”

“So the Trump campaign is making progress adding Latino voters to their coalition, but if they want to break the record that George W. Bush had in 2004 they could do even better, because [in] a lot of these states, they're not committed Democrats,” he concluded.

Jewish voters

Trump further has managed to gain ground with Jewish voters, even in deep-blue states. The shift has largely come amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and a surge in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses that have forced Democratic leaders to wrestle with the internal divisions of their coalition. Muslim voters, for instance, appear dissatisfied with the administration’s support for Israel, while Jews appear to want a firmer commitment.

Trump, for his part, has taken a firm line in support of Israel and promised a “bright new day” for Jewish Americans.

"No longer will you be threatened on your college campuses,” Trump vowed at a “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America” event. “No longer will you be discriminated against in college admissions, and no longer will your own government import jihadists from places that we don't even want to talk about, and they want you haters.”

Polling data seems to suggest that Trump’s message has moved the needle with that demographic. An August Siena Research Institute survey found Trump earning 50% support among Jews in deep-blue New York, compared to 49% who backed Harris. In June, Biden led Trump by 6% in that constituency.

Black voters

The Trump campaign has further made inroads with black voters, though it is far from consolidating the bloc as a Republican constituency.

A recent survey from the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation found Trump earning 17% support among black voters in the Lone Star State, nearly three times his 2020 support of 6%. Notably, Trump appears to be outperforming the GOP in the state with that bloc as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, only earned 11% support with black voters. His Democratic opponent took 61% support.

Recent CNN data, moreover, found Harris winning 79% support with likely black voters, while Trump carried 16%.

The Trump campaign in June launched its “Black Americans for Trump” coalition, when Biden was still the presumed party nominee. Trump earned 8% support with black voters nationally in the 2020 election, so a figure of 17%, even in a single state, would represent a considerable shift. At the time, however, the campaign estimated that Trump was earning 23% support with black voters.

Trump has largely tailored his message to minority voters, especially black Americans, around his economic pitches, hoping to harness discontent with inflation and the overall state of the economy under Biden and Harris. In 2020, he hoped to win over black voters with appeals to his record of criminal justice reform, though he has largely eschewed that messaging in the current cycle.

In any case, while his support with black voters stands at 16% or the 23% high the campaign claimed in June, he appears to have at least doubled his support with that group since 2020.