As polls continue to look poor for Democrats in 2022, we may finally be seeing the death of the liberal narrative of demographic destiny locking the party into a permanent majority.
A national poll from Emerson College puts Republicans in the lead on the generic congressional ballot, 47% to 41%. Moreover, the poll has Republicans leading among Latino voters (35% to 32.5%) and Asian voters (47.6% to 42.9%). While Emerson warns that the margin of error might be greater in its racial breakdowns due to smaller sample sizes, the results are a far cry from the exit polls in the 2020 presidential election in which Democrats won both groups by more than 27 points.
But another point stands out: Emerson has Democrats leading the GOP among black voters by 53 points. President Joe Biden won black voters by 75 points in 2020. Emerson’s result can’t simply be brushed off as a statistical anomaly either. CNN’s Harry Enten broke down Biden’s support among black voters, which dropped 20 points in Gallup’s polling. According to Enten, “you’d have to go all the way back to 1990” to find when Democrats were polling this poorly among black voters.
Emerson Polling:
2022 Midterm Congressional Generic Ballot
41% Democratic
47% Republican
13% Undecided
(R+6)Crosstabs ?:
Ethnicity –
Latino: 32.5% D/ 35% R (R+2.5)
White: 35.1% D/ 56.1% R (R+21)
Black: 72.4% D/ 19.3% R (D+53)
Asian: 42.9% D/ 47.6% R (R+4.5)— Arizona Politico (@azpolitico22) April 28, 2022
This matches trends stretching back to 2012. Black conservatives are shifting closer to the Republican Party, going from backing Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 58 points to supporting Biden in 2020 by 20 points. While the GOP’s gains among Hispanic voters, particularly in Florida and Texas, have been a major story, black men have been steadily moving toward the GOP over the past three presidential elections.
The Democratic Party thought demographics gave it a blank check to move drastically to the left. Yet the self-proclaimed “most progressive president in history” has failed the country on nearly every issue, driving voters away from the party regardless of their race. Democrats thought demographics would make them a permanent governing party, and instead, they are facing the possibility of a GOP trifecta in Washington just two years from now.
All those smug boasts from Democratic pundits and politicians about demographic destiny look more ridiculous and out of touch by the day. The 2020 election should have served as a wake-up call for a party that thinks it owns minority voters, but Democrats have trudged on, trying to sow more racial division to try and keep everyone in their respective silos. Their reward is a looming electoral wipeout, as voters across the country recognize how little the party cares about the real problems facing them.
