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      Conundrum of Covering Trump Lands at Univision’s Doorstep

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      The howls of protest against Univision began as soon as its interview with Donald J. Trump aired. A month later, they still haven’t stopped.To critics of Univision, the Nov. 9 interview — with its gentle questioning and limited follow-ups from the interviewer, Enrique Acevedo — has confirmed their fears since the traditionally left-leaning network merged with the Mexican broadcaster Televisa early last year in a $4.8 billion deal. The network, they said, was taking a troubling turn to the right under its new owners, who have a reputation for cultivating relationships with leading politicians in Mexico, where Televisa has been a feared kingmaker for more than 50 years.Last-minute maneuvering at Univision raised further suspicions. Just hours before the interview aired, the network reversed its invitation to the Biden campaign to run ads during the hourlong special with Mr. Trump, citing what appeared to be a new company policy. Scarcely an hour later, Univision abruptly canceled an interview with the Biden campaign’s director of Hispanic media.But the reason for changes at the network can’t be explained by political considerations alone, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Univision journalists and executives, including Mr. Acevedo and Daniel Coronell, the network’s president of news.Hispanic media is proving susceptible to the same upheaval straining other American newsrooms. Spanish-language television news audiences are in decline, compounding pressure from an uneven economy. And the dilemma over how to report on Mr. Trump — should he get exhaustive, minimal or even no coverage? — is vexing Univision just as it is its English-language counterparts.Univision executives have said they are making a pivot toward the center — a strategy that reflects the split political preferences of the Hispanic electorate and the need to broaden their audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Latino Business Advocate Stung by Misconduct Claims Resurfaces With ‘No Labels’

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      Javier Palomarez, who stepped down as chief of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce after he was accused of financial misconduct and sexual harassment, is working with the centrist group.No Labels, the centrist organization that is vying to gain ballot access for the 2024 presidential election, has joined forces with Javier Palomarez, an advocate of Hispanic-owned businesses with a history of allegations of workplace financial misconduct and sexual harassment.In 2018, Mr. Palomarez stepped down from his job as chief executive of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce while facing accusations that he had padded his pay and had made an unwanted pass at his female chief of staff. He denied those allegations and later sued the chamber. He also sued one of the group’s former directors, saying that he had been sexually harassed. Both matters were ultimately settled out of court in 2019.In an interview on Tuesday evening, Mr. Palomarez said his departure from the Hispanic Chamber was a result of a witch hunt against him because he elected to work with instead of against the Trump administration. He said he “won the lawsuits” against his accusers, though he said the terms of the settlements remained confidential. He declined to reveal them. “All I can do is tell you I maintained my innocence then and I maintain it now,” he said.Mr. Palomarez is a self-described Democrat who resigned from a diversity coalition convened by the Trump administration over its efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He appears on cable news occasionally to criticize President Biden on issues like immigration and domestic energy production. He is also the founder and chief executive of an advocacy organization with a mission similar to that of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, his former employer, and is now a volunteer leader at No Labels.During a video meeting with No Labels followers on Tuesday evening, Mr. Palomarez spoke of the importance of engaging Hispanic voters as part of any presidential ticket.“Our nation is at a transit point. Never before have we been so disillusioned by our elected officials and our leaders,” he said to the roughly 300 participants on the call. “One thing is clear: The Hispanic electorate will play a decisive role in the elections of 2024.”Mr. Palomarez, who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, said his role at No Labels would be as a conduit to the Hispanic community, which he said had been harmed by the Biden administration’s energy policies.Feedback from No Labels supporters, he said, is that it would be better to replace Mr. Biden with a Republican.“There’s a sense that this White House has lost touch,” he said. “From an economic perspective, a Republican would be better suited to run the country.”But before the meeting with Mr. Palomarez, some invitees were privately fuming about his involvement.“It was alarming to see his role in a big organization like No Labels, though clearly, No Labels lacks a lot of credibility when it comes to national politics,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist who was on the board of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce when Mr. Palomarez came under fire. “I hope he has changed.”Nancy Jacobson, the No Labels chief executive, said Tuesday that she wasn’t aware of the 2018 allegations against Mr. Palomarez.No Labels, which is exploring the possibility of running a so-called presidential unity ticket that could include both a Republican and a Democrat, has qualified for the presidential ballot in 12 states. But its effort has stalled in others — a result of rules in some states that require new third-party organizations to have a candidate to secure ballot access.Mr. Biden’s allies view No Labels as an existential threat because of the competition it could create for both votes and dollars. As a result, Democrats have broadly shunned No Labels, a result in part of a campaign from the group Third Way to keep top party members and donors from participating with the organization.They may have reason for concern. On the call Tuesday, Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said a survey he recently conducted for the Spanish-language news network Univision showed that the independent presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West were pulling more support from Mr. Biden than they were from former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Newhouse showed a slide that had Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump tied in a two-way race, but Mr. Trump ahead in a race with several other candidates on the ballot.Ms. Jacobson has in recent weeks told potential donors that the group will name a Republican to lead its presidential ticket at a planned convention in April. In 2021, three years after departing the commerce organization, Mr. Palomarez founded the United States Hispanic Business Council, whose stated mission is to “empower Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States by advocating for people and policies that support their advancement.” Ms. Jacobson said that Mr. Palomarez was recommended highly to No Labels.“Several people referred him to our organization as an extremely competent leader who could add value and perspective as a volunteer,” she said. Ms Jacobson said Mr. Palomarez would not be paid. She added that he would be working with the No Labels co-chairs but did not say what his responsibilities would be. More

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      Why Biden Is Behind, and How He Could Come Back

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      A polling deficit against Trump across six key states is mainly about younger, nonwhite and less engaged voters. Kamala Harris performs slightly better.Four years ago, Joe Biden was the electability candidate — the broadly appealing, moderate Democrat from Scranton who promised to win the white working-class voters who elected Donald J. Trump.There are few signs of that electoral strength today. More

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      ‘We Still Don’t Have Answers’: A Uvalde Mother Is Running for Mayor

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      After her daughter was killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Kimberly Mata-Rubio figured it was time to get answers and help her city heal.On a recent Saturday morning, a day after what would have been Lexi Rubio’s 12th birthday, dozens gathered in the Texas city of Uvalde for a run in her honor. Blasting Lexi’s playlist, Kimberly Mata-Rubio, her mother, took off from under a towering mural of Lexi, one of 19 children and two teachers killed in a shooting at her school last year.This was more than a fund-raising run for charity — it was also a campaign event of sorts, as Ms. Mata-Rubio and the other competitors made their way past a series of signs in yellow (Lexi’s favorite color) announcing her candidacy for mayor.Ms. Mata-Rubio, a former news reporter, would be the first woman and only the third Latino to lead the Hispanic majority city, one that has been bitterly divided in the aftermath of one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.Her campaign, in which she is vying with a veteran local politician and an elementary school art teacher, often prominently features her daughter’s favorite color and reminders of a tragedy that many would prefer to leave in the past.Ms. Mata-Rubio said she understood immediately that everybody in the small town of 15,000 people had lost something, if not a loved one, then certainly a sense of security. Like other parents, she complained that the authorities had released confusing and often conflicting information that made it hard to understand why they took more than an hour to confront and kill the gunman.Ms. Mata-Rubio, second from right, said she understood immediately that everybody in the small town of 15,000 people had lost something, if not a loved one, then a sense of security.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesUvalde has been bitterly divided in the aftermath of one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesThe Uvalde parents also pushed for a ban on assault weapons like the one used in the attack on Robb Elementary School. The issue prompted deep divisions in a rural town renowned for white-tailed deer hunting, where many households have guns and rifles are a regular prize at school raffles.But as president of Lives Robbed, an organization made up of mothers and grandmothers of the Uvalde victims, Ms. Mata-Rubio has organized rallies, flown to Washington and sat through legislative hearings in Austin. And it did not feel like she was doing enough.When she saw an opening to run for mayor, she texted her husband, Felix, asking for advice.“You’re Lexi’s mom,” he replied. “You can do it.”For her, the mission is clear.“We still don’t have answers. We still don’t know what role everyone played then and what role everyone is playing now,” she said of the many ongoing investigations into the delayed police response by the local district attorney and others.She said she also wants to bring the town together over the still-contentious issues of assault weapons, and whether police officers who failed to confront the Uvalde gunman should be fired or face criminal charges.“I want to have the difficult conversations so that everybody feels heard,” Ms. Mata-Rubio said. “I’m going to be raising my children in this community. I want to bring the community back together again.”Felix Rubio, Ms. Rubio’s husband, and their daughter, Jahleela.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesIf Ms. Mata-Rubio were to win, she would become the first woman to lead the city.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesShe is running against a veteran local politician who hopes to return to office, Cody Smith, and an elementary school art teacher, Veronica Martinez, who have said during their campaigns that they not only want to bring Uvalde back from the nightmare of the shooting, but also to focus on other issues.In the most recent election in Uvalde County, which includes the county seat and six other small towns, voters largely failed to support politicians who backed more control on guns, delivering a political blow to the families of the victims who campaigned on their behalf. But a much narrower pool of voters will decide the mayor’s race, those who live within in Uvalde itself.Ms. Mata-Rubio’s campaign raised the most money in the 30-day period that ended in September, $80,000 to Mr. Smith’s $50,000, according to the most recent campaign finance report filings, with many of her donations coming from out of town. Ms. Martinez has not sought contributions.The Nov. 7 election, with early voting this week, was called after the current mayor, Don McLaughlin, announced he was leaving City Hall to run for a Texas House seat. The winner will need to run for a full four-year term in 2024.Veronica Martinez, an art teacher at Dalton Elementary School, said she hopes to create an open-door culture in a City Hall that often does not feel inviting to residents.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesCody Smith, a former mayor and a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde, was first elected to the City Council in 1994 and also served as mayor in 2008 and 2010.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesIf Ms. Mata-Rubio or Ms. Martinez were to win, they would become the third mayor of Hispanic ancestry and the first woman to lead the city.George Garza, 85, who in the 1990s became the second Hispanic mayor, said the city’s Hispanic majority has often gone unrecognized in city politics. “Representation is important,” he said.Mr. Smith, a former mayor and a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde, was first elected to the City Council in 1994 and also served as mayor in 2008 and 2010. He declined to be interviewed, but has called for supporting better communication between law enforcement agencies.Ms. Martinez, said she supports in principle some form of an assault rifle ban, but said the city must also focus on local issues that affect everyone, like lowering what people pay in property taxes on their homes.She said she hopes to change the culture in a City Hall that often does not feel inviting to residents.“Maybe I can effect some change, and do some good by having an open-door policy,” she said.Some voters like Amanda Juarez, 42, a teacher’s assistant, want to see a fresh face in city government, but she said that she worries that Ms. Mata-Rubio may focus too much on the tragedy and gun control issues. She said she appreciates Ms. Martinez’s calls for lowering taxes on property like her mobile home, whose assessed value recently went up by several thousand dollars for no apparent reason. “We need people who are going to solve our issues at the local level,” she said.Ms. Mata-Rubio, right, and her campaign manager, Laura Barberena, preparing for the Labor Day weekend parade in Uvalde in September.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesSome voters want to see a fresh face in city government. “We need people who are going to solve our issues at the local level,” said voter, Amanda Juarez.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesTo help win over voters interested in such grass-roots issues, Ms. Mata-Rubio has been knocking on doors and handing over yellow campaign signs and cards with her key campaign issues: Bring People Together, Protect Our History and Boost Our Economy.Moments after taking part in Lexi’s Legacy Run, as it was called, Ms. Mata-Rubio canvassed the streets and she ran into Antonia Rios, 80, a potential voter who was excited to see her. “No te conocía. I didn’t know you. You are very young,” Ms. Rios said, combining English and Spanish as many do in this town 60 miles east of the border with Mexico. “Yo voto por ti. I’ll vote for you.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      Latino Republicans Call Debate a Missed Opportunity to Reach Voters

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      Republicans have sought to make inroads with the fast-growing slice of the electorate. But voters saw a swing and a miss on debate night.The Republican Party has been on a quest to make inroads with Hispanic voters, and the second presidential debate was tailored to delivering that message: The setting was California, where Latinos now make up the largest racial or ethnic demographic. The Spanish-language network Univision broadcast the event in Spanish, and Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a weekday prime-time newscast on a major network in the United States, was a moderator.But questions directly on Latino and immigrant communities tended to be overtaken by bickering and candidates taking swipes at one another on unrelated subjects. Only three candidates — former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — referred directly to Latinos or Hispanics at all. And only Mr. Pence pitched his economic message specifically toward Hispanic voters.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state has the third-largest Latino population, appeared to suggest there was no need for specific overtures to Hispanics or independents when he had won by such large margins in his home state, including in Miami-Dade County, a former Democratic stronghold.“I’m the only one up here who’s gotten in the big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And that’s what it’s all about.”In interviews, Latino voters and strategists called the debate a missed opportunity for Republicans: Few of the candidates spoke directly to or about Latinos or claimed any cultural affiliation or familiarity with them. The Republican field offered little in the way of economic plans to help workers or solutions to improve legal channels to immigration. The candidates doubled down on depictions of the nation’s southern border as chaotic and lawless.Mike Madrid, a longtime Latino Republican consultant in California, said the tough talk could draw in the support of blue-collar Latino Republicans who did not hold a college degree and in recent years have tended to vote more in line with white voters. But the debate was only further evidence that the party had abandoned attempts to broaden its reach beyond Latino Republicans already in its fold. Republicans are “getting more Latino voters not because of their best efforts, but in spite of them,” he said.Latinos are now projected to number about 34.5 million eligible voters, or an estimated 14.3 percent of the American electorate, according to a 2022 analysis by the Pew Research Center.Although Latino voters still overall lean Democratic, former President Donald J. Trump improved his performance with the demographic in 2020 nationwide, and in some areas like South Florida and South Texas even made sizable gains. Debate over what exactly drove his appeal continues.Some post-mortem analyses have found his opposition to city-led Covid pandemic restrictions that shut down workplaces and his administration’s promotion of low Latino unemployment rates and support for Latino businesses helped persuade Latino voters to his side, even when they disagreed with his violent and divisive approach to immigration.Historically, about a third of Latino voters have tended to vote for Republican presidential candidates. But Latino Republicans differ from non-Hispanic Republicans on guns and immigration: Fewer Hispanic Republicans believe protecting the right to own guns is more important than regulating who can own guns, and Hispanic Republicans are less likely to clamor for more border security measures, according to the Pew Research Center.At the debate on Wednesday, Ms. Calderón, who is Colombian and has gained prominence in Latin America for her incisive reporting on race and immigration, and the other moderators often turned to issues central to Latinos in the United States, including income inequality, gun violence and Black and Latino students’ low scores in math and reading.But on the stage, the candidates’ attention quickly turned elsewhere. Mr. DeSantis — the only candidate to provide a Spanish translation of his website — accused Washington of “shutting down the American dream,” an idea popular with Latino workers, but mostly pitched himself as a culture warrior.Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a major national news desk in the United States, was a moderator.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIn response to a question on whether he would support a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people in the United States, Mr. Christie talked of the need for immigrant workers to fill vacant jobs. But in his central point, he pledged to increase the presence of troops and agents at the border with Mexico, calling for the issue to be treated as “the law enforcement problem it is.”Mr. Pence dodged Ms. Calderón when she pressed him on whether he would work with Congress to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The initiative, which remains in limbo in the courts, is temporarily protecting from deportation roughly 580,000 undocumented immigrants who have been able to show they were brought into the country as children, have no serious criminal history and work or go to school, among other criteria. About 91 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 54 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners favor a law that would provide DACA recipients permanent legal status. Although Mr. Pence described himself as the only candidate onstage who had tackled congressional reform before, he did not directly answer the question on DACA. Mostly, he used his responses to attack Vivek Ramaswamy and Mr. DeSantis before launching into a lengthy accounting of his track record on hard-line Trump policies.“The truth is, we need to fix a broken immigration system, and I will do that as well,” Mr. Pence said. “But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation.”When asked how he would reach out to Latino voters, Mr. Scott highlighted his chief of staff, who he said was the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate and someone he had hired “because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.” But he, too, quickly turned to attacking his home-state rival, former Gov. Nikki Haley.The exchanges were a marked difference from the 2016 presidential debate when Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, defended speaking Spanish and personalized their experiences with immigration and the Latino community.Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who helped run Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign last election cycle, said they also were different — and less effective — from those of Mr. Trump. Missing were the pledges “to bring jobs back to America, buy American and drain the swamp,” he added, messages that he said tended to resonate with Latinos and Latino men in particular.“Their campaigns have become such grievance politics that there is not a positive message that is radiating from anyone,” Mr. Rocha said. The shift could also hurt Republicans with a Latino community that skews young and tends to be aspirational, he argued.In South Texas, Sergio Sanchez, the former chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, said he listened to the debate with dismay. He wanted to hear the candidates talk about pocketbook issues and energy policies. And he wanted them to stay on message and connect the dots for voters on why their economic policies were better than those under the Biden administration. Instead, he said, they spent more time swinging at one another.That was not good for Latinos or anyone else, he said. “They swung and missed,” he added. More

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      Why Are Democrats Losing Ground Among Nonwhite Voters? 5 Theories.

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      There’s no shortage of solid hypotheses, and the best explanation may be a combination of them.Why is President Biden losing ground among Black, Hispanic, Asian American and other nonwhite voters?There’s no easy answer for this relative weakness that shows up in polling, and there might never be one. After all, we still don’t have a definitive explanation for why Donald J. Trump made big gains among white working-class voters in 2016 or Hispanic voters in 2020, despite the benefit of years of poll questions, final election results and post-election studies.While the question may be hard, getting the best possible answer matters. Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman and co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, recently asked me on social media whether the Democratic challenge is the absence of a “compelling economic vision.”If Democrats believe that’s the answer, Mr. Khanna and his colleagues might approach the election differently than if they believe the answer is crime, the migrant crisis or perceptions of a “woke” left. The choice of approach might not only affect who wins, but also the policies and messages promoted on the campaign trail and perhaps ultimately enacted in government.A definitive answer to our question may be beyond reach, but there’s no shortage of solid hypotheses. The various theories are not mutually exclusive — the best explanation may synthesize all of them.Theory 1: It’s about the moment — Biden, his age, the economy and abortionWhy do surveys show President Biden struggling among all voters nowadays, regardless of race? The biggest reasons typically cited are inflation, the economy and his age.In each case, there’s an argument these issues ought to hurt Mr. Biden more among nonwhite voters, who tend to be younger and poorer than white voters.Of all the explanations, these would probably be the most promising for Democrats in the long term. In the short term, Mr. Biden could hope to gain ground if inflation continued to lose steam and the economy avoided recession.For now, he and the Democrats are counting on issues like abortion to compensate for their weaknesses. That might help Democrats among white voters, but it might not help much among nonwhite voters. In New York Times/Siena College polling over the last year, just 64 percent of nonwhite voters say they believe abortion should be mostly or always legal, a tally that falls beneath usual Democratic benchmarks.On the other hand, 63 percent of white voters say abortion should be at least mostly legal, a tally greatly exceeding the usual Democratic support among white voters.The economy and abortion are plainly important in making sense of recent shifts, but they’re not the whole story. Mr. Biden was relatively weak among nonwhite voters in 2020, as Hispanic voters swung to the right (by about seven points of major party vote share) and the rise in Black turnout didn’t match those of other groups. Democrats showed similar — if less acute — weaknesses with these voters in 2018 and during most Trump-era special elections.Mr. Biden’s weaknesses may exacerbate the problem, but this isn’t a new issue.Theory 2: Democrats are too far to the leftThis theory is brought to you by Democratic centrists, and it’s grounded in an important fact: There are many nonwhite Democrats who self-identify as moderate or even conservative. Many hold conservative views on issues, like opposition to same-sex marriage.These moderate or conservative nonwhite voters consider themselves Democrats because they see the party as representing them and their interests, not because they have party-line views on every issue. If so, Republican gains among nonwhite voters might naturally result from Democrats’ leftward shift over the last few years.This story is logical, especially when it comes to Mr. Trump’s gains in the last election. But is this really what has hurt President Biden since 2020? Democrats didn’t nominate Mr. Sanders, after all. Democratic socialism; calls to defund the police; and Black Lives Matter seem to be in the rearview mirror in 2023. The backlash against “woke” has faded so much that Republicans barely even brought it up in the first presidential debate.Even in 2020, the evidence that the progressive left was responsible for Democratic losses among Hispanic voters was more based on correlation than clear causal evidence. Today, the connection seems even less clear. Perhaps the best evidence is Democratic struggles among nonwhite voters in California and New York, where progressive excesses might weigh most heavily.Theory 3: Democrats aren’t delivering a progressive agendaThis theory is brought to you by the progressive left. You might be skeptical after walking through the centrist position, but there’s a credible story here.To understand it, it’s worth untangling two sentiments that we usually assume go together: a desire for big change and progressivism. They’ve gone hand-in-hand in recent Democratic primaries, with progressive candidates offering fundamental or revolutionary change, while liberal, establishment-backed candidates offer relative moderation, bipartisanship or a return to normalcy.But being a moderate on a left-right ideological scale is not the same thing as being content with the status quo. Many moderates are deeply dissatisfied and want politicians who promise big changes to American life. They may think politics, the economy and the “system” are all broken, even if they’re not animated by progressive slogans like Democratic socialism, a Green New Deal, Medicare for all, and so on.Many nonwhite voters fall into this category. In Times/Siena polling of the key battleground states in 2019, persuadable nonwhite voters said they wanted a relatively moderate Democrat over a liberal, 69 percent to 29 percent. But they also preferred a Democratic nominee who would bring systemic change to American society over one who would return politics back to normal in Washington, 52-32. This might seem contradictory, but it’s not.Mr. Biden is not exactly a great fit for these ideologically moderate “change” voters. He does not channel their dissatisfaction with the country, the establishment, politics or the economy. His accomplishments, like the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS Act, do not register on the “fundamental change” spectrum. Perhaps it’s not surprising that voters — including nonwhite voters — don’t seem to think Mr. Biden has accomplished very much.It seems doubtful that a more ambitious, progressive legislative agenda would have left Mr. Biden in a very different place. He didn’t seem to earn too much support for student debt forgiveness, for instance. But it’s still possible that the mainstream Democratic Party’s relatively conservative, even Whig-like, form of moderation leaves disaffected, nonwhite working-class voters feeling cold.Theory 4: It’s TrumpIt’s easy for Democrats to blame themselves for weakness among nonwhite voters. But what if it’s not really Democratic weakness, but Republican strength?It’s Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, who defines American politics nowadays. Voters say they’re voting based on their feelings toward the former president, not the current one. With numbers like these, perhaps the default assumption ought to be that Mr. Trump, not Mr. Biden, is the driving force behind recent electoral trends.If it’s Mr. Trump, it’s not hard to see how or why. He has a distinct brand with demonstrated appeal to white working-class voters who previously backed Barack Obama and other Democrats. Many elements of his message might have appeal to nonwhite working-class voters as well. As we’ve established, many persuadable nonwhite voters care about the economy; aren’t liberal; are dissatisfied with the country and mainstream politics; and desire fundamental change. Mr. Trump’s combination of populist economics and anti-establishment outsider politics is potentially a very good match.What about Mr. Trump’s penchant to alienate Black and Hispanic voters with remarks like “very fine people on both sides” or “they’re rapists.” Today, some of these fights may be distant memories. And while Mr. Trump’s remarks may have hurt him at the time, it is striking that they didn’t do more to provoke a more obvious backlash among nonwhite voters, whether in terms of stronger turnout or greater Democratic support.Perhaps other elements of his message might have broken through. His views on crime and immigration have considerable appeal to some Black and Hispanic voters, even though these issues are often seen by liberals as nothing more than a racist dog whistle. And Democrats may bristle at the thought of Mr. Trump as a criminal justice reformer, but he spent millions on a Super Bowl ad promoting exactly that. Mr. Trump’s economic appeal may also be newly salient with continuing perceptions that the economy hasn’t recovered.Mr. Trump’s unique brand of populist conservatism isn’t the full explanation. In the midterms, Republicans overperformed in places like New York City, Florida and Southern California, even though Mr. Trump wasn’t on the ticket.But while Mr. Trump isn’t the whole explanation, he’s probably an underrated one. A recent CNN/SSRS poll found him faring much better among nonwhite voters compared with all the other Republican candidates. Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump, 58-34, among nonwhite voters in the poll, compared with a 64-28 result against Ron DeSantis.Theory 5: It’s about a new generationDemocratic strength among nonwhite voters was forged in an earlier era of politics, when the party vanquished Jim Crow and unequivocally represented the working class and the poor. Perhaps that’s still how many Black voters see it, given that they continue to back Mr. Biden and Democrats by wide margins in Times/Siena polling.Younger nonwhite voters might see it differently. At the very least, almost all of Mr. Biden’s losses come among nonwhite voters under 45 in Times/Siena polling.It’s not hard to see how younger nonwhite voters might have a different perspective. The basis for overwhelming Democratic support among nonwhite voters may have gotten weaker over the last 50 years.Second- and third-generation Asian American and Hispanic voters are more affluent and assimilated into American society than their parents.Young Black voters may not be second- or third-generation immigrants, but they are the second or third generation since Black Americans finally achieved equal citizenship. They can’t call up memories of the civil rights movement or Jim Crow. They’re less likely to attend church, which helped tie Black voters to the Democratic Party for decades. The bonds of community and sense of threat that connected voters to the Democrats might be weaker today.The Black Lives Matter movement mobilized a new generation of activists, but also put Democrats in a challenging position: There are few opportunities for Democrats to solve systemic racism. No bill will do it. The party’s claim to being the party of the working class is also quite a bit weaker than it was a half century ago, for good measure.Of all the theories, this one is hardest to tie to a short-term decline in Mr. Biden’s support. But more affluence and integration into mainstream American life might be a prerequisite for today’s Republican gains. And, if true, it would reflect largely positive changes in American society, much as Republican gains among Catholic voters in decades past required their acceptance in the mainstream.It would be hard for any party to hold 90-plus percent of a voting group forever. And if so, perhaps there’s not much Democrats can do about their decline today. It may be bad news for the Democrats in a certain sense, but if there’s any consolation it’s that perhaps Democrats don’t have to flagellate themselves over it. It’s not all their fault. More

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      How to Interpret Polling Showing Biden’s Loss of Nonwhite Support

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      Yes, there’s reason for skepticism, but also reason for concern for Democrats, particularly over turnout.Is President Biden really struggling as badly among nonwhite voters — especially Black voters — as the polls say?I’ve seen plenty of skepticism. Among nonwhite voters, a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t fared as badly as those polls suggest in a presidential election result since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In the case of Black voters, the disparity between the usual support for Democrats — around 90 percent or more — and the recent polling showing it in the 70s or even the 60s just seems too much to accept. Some skeptics believe they’ve seen results like this before, only for Republican strength to vanish on Election Day.But if we compare the polls with those from previous election cycles, Mr. Biden’s early weakness looks serious. His support among Black, Hispanic and other nonwhite voters is well beneath previous lows for Democrats in pre-election polls over the last several decades — including the polls from the last presidential election. Yet at the same time, his weakness is put in better perspective when judged against prior polls, rather than the final election results.Here’s how you should interpret what the polling really means for Mr. Biden’s eventual support among nonwhite and especially Black voters.Election results are the wrong benchmarkA major source of skepticism of Mr. Biden’s weakness among nonwhite voters is the sheer magnitude of the drop-off, based on the difference between the early poll results among registered voters and the estimated final results in post-election studies, like the exit polls.It’s an understandable comparison, but it’s a bad one. Millions of people are undecided in polling today, while all voters have made up their minds in these post-election studies. The registered voter polling also includes millions of people who won’t ultimately vote; the post-election studies typically include only actual voters.These two factors — undecided voters and low-turnout voters — help explain many seemingly weird differences between pre-election polls and the post-election studies.For illustration, consider the following from our New York Times/Siena College polling:Mr. Biden leads, 72 percent to 11 percent, among Black registered voters over the last year.Mr. Biden’s lead among Black voters jumps to 79-11 if undecided voters are assigned based on how they say they voted in 2020.He leads by 76-10 among Black voters with a record of participating in the 2020 general election.His lead among 2020 voters jumps to 84-10 if we allocate undecided voters based on their self-reported 2020 vote preference.For comparison, this same group of Black voters who turned out in 2020 reported backing Mr. Biden over Donald J. Trump, 89-7, in the last election.The upshot: The gap between post-election studies and registered voter polls narrows considerably after accounting for the inherent differences between the two measures — undecided voters and turnout.This lesson isn’t limited to Black voters. To take a different example, Mr. Biden leads by just 46-34 among young registered voters in our polling over the last year, but he leads by 57-35 among young validated 2020 voters if we assign undecided voters based on their 2020 vote preference. His lead among Hispanic voters grows from 47-35 to 56-36 with the same approach. Among Asian American, Native American, multiracial and other nonwhite voters who aren’t Black and Hispanic, it goes up to 50-39, from 40-39.Of course, we can’t assume that Black, Hispanic, young or any voters will turn out as they did in 2020. We can’t assume that undecided voters will return to their 2020 preferences, either. The point is that the differences between pre-election registered voter polls and the final post-election studies explain many of the differences between survey results by subgroup and your expectations. If you must compare the crosstabs from registered voter polls with the final election studies, here’s a tip: Focus on major party vote share. In the case of Black voters, Mr. Biden has a 71-12 lead, so that means he has 86 percent of the major party vote in our Times/Siena polling, 71/(71+12) = 86. That roughly five- or six-point shift in major party vote share is a lot likelier to reflect reality than comparing his 59-point margin among decided voters (71-12 = 59) with his 80-point margin from 2020.Why major party vote share? The logic is simple. Imagine that today 17 percent of eventual Biden voters are undecided and 17 percent of eventual Trump voters are undecided. What would that mean for a poll of voters who will eventually vote 86 to 14? They would be 71 to 12 in the polls today.Mr. Biden’s polling weakness is unusualThere’s another aspect of the skeptics case that I’m less sympathetic toward: the idea that we always see this kind of weakness among nonwhite voters, and it just never materializes.If you look back at polling from prior cycles, it becomes clear that Mr. Biden today really is quite a bit weaker than previous Democrats in registered voter polling from prior cycles. More

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      Consistent Signs of Erosion in Black and Hispanic Support for Biden

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      It’s a weakness that could manifest itself as low Democratic turnout even if Trump and Republicans don’t gain among those groups.President Biden is underperforming among nonwhite voters in New York Times/Siena College national polls over the last year, helping to keep the race close in a hypothetical rematch against Donald J. Trump.On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by just 53 percent to 28 percent among registered nonwhite voters in a compilation of Times/Siena polls from 2022 and 2023, which includes over 1,500 nonwhite respondents.The results represent a marked deterioration in Mr. Biden’s support compared with 2020, when he won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters. If he’s unable to revitalize this support by next November, it will continue a decade-long trend of declining Democratic strength among voters considered to be the foundation of the party.Democratic share of major party vote among nonwhite voters More