Calibrated to Reality
Last year at WelcomeFest, Milan Singh debunked several myths about young voters and voters of color. Join us at WelcomeFest on June 4!
Last year at WelcomeFest,
presented some controversial ideas that today are widely accepted:Young voters are not progressive
Black Democrats are moderate, and Trump is gaining ground with Black voters overall
Latino voters favored a conservative approach to immigration
While these ideas are no longer controversial, the path forward concerning them is still up for debate.
Progressives consistently claimed young voters were far more liberal than they actually are. As Milan showed, most young voters identify as moderate or conservative.
In his recent interview with Ezra Klein, pollster David Shor described what they found in their post-election study:
It is a real shift. This is the thing I am the most shocked by in the last four years — that young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the baby boomers, and maybe even in some ways more so, to becoming potentially the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 to 60 years.
Young people are “the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 to 60 years.” That’s not what progressives have been and are selling.
Progressives claimed they were speaking for Black voters with slogans like “Defund the Police,” even though data showed limited support among Black voters for these types of radical slogans. As Milan shows, most Black Democrats identify as moderate, don’t prioritize climate, want to spend more on police, and believe that gender is determined at birth.
As Ezra Klein notes, “Democrats were winning 85 percent of Black conservatives in 2016, but only 77 percent in 2024.”
After Obama’s 2012 victory, the consensus among political elites was that Latinos wanted to see amnesty, even though that wasn’t the real lesson of the election (Yglesias has a good read on this). The Republican establishment’s autopsy argued the party needed to move to the center on immigration, and they did, pursuing immigration reform.
Meanwhile, Democrats supported decriminalizing the border, expanding asylum, and other radical ideas on immigration. But the reality, as Milan showed, is that Latinos are skeptical of the idea that the U.S. should take in more immigrants.
And sure enough, Democratic support among Latinos has cratered, with Democrats losing border districts in Texas that they’ve won for generations and deeply Hispanic districts in Florida.
Milan’s analysis at last year’s WelcomeFest proved prescient. If you want to learn more about the electorate and how Democrats can take Responsibility to Win, plan to join us on June 4th!
Check out a recap of last year’s WelcomeFest and see Milan’s full presentation here.
There seem to be some odd findings here. For Latinos, they are less likely to want stricter laws re refugees and asylum seekers yet more likely to want less people. That is contradictory in that if you don't want stricter laws you will have more entrants. Also it was odd that there was a zero number among Latinos who wanted more refugees and asylum seekers when every other group was 15-25%.
On how the youth identify I dont see any figure for all people so there is no comparison available to other age groups and I think it should be noted that as a group young people are still more liberal and voted for Harris more than the older age groups though clearly less so than in the recent past though unclear how it compares with the pre Trump years.
As a scientist, I know that assuming these polls are valid requires some "faith". But the lesson they teach is not old. We cannot hope to build a civilized society, with some basis in evidence from sociobiology, until we stop obeying our "paleolithic"(see E.O. Wilson) genes, by stereotyping. Racism, ethnocentrism and ideologies/religions depend on the certainties of stereotyping. I am a gringo who grew up with a Mexican-american stepmother and siblings. I currently have a black mulatto family. Within both there were/are members who I value as friends, and others, who I love only because they are family, but otherwise, while respecting their opinions, avoid. Intermarriage, AI-aided personalized medicine and de-politicizing of our public schools, seem to be valid paths to recognizing that each person is worthy of respect as an individual, not just stereotyped as a number in a group to be manipulated.