“If the purges [of potential voters], challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.”
"[…] Democracy can win* despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.
And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK."
Once again, Trump said (during his first term, I believe) on Fox News Republicans would never win another election if minorities vote. They know this. They consistently make it harder and harder for people to vote, while targeting minorities.
He was wrong. A big part of the '24 GOP wave came from young male latino and black voters who were entranced by the get-rich-quick promises of Trump/Vance. Online hustler culture on social media has been a huge driving force behind conservative voter expansion.
How 5 key demographic groups voted in 2024: AP VoteCast
Trump’s share of Black voters rose slightly, driven largely by younger men
Slightly more Hispanic voters supported Trump in 2020
Narrow gains with (white) women benefitted Trump
Trump saw a modest increase with men
Republicans have been leveraging their “business friendly” credentials to win over poorer POC voters for a while. And as Democrats adopt the same strategy, we’re running into the same problem as in 2000 and 1988 - voters aren’t able to distinguish between candidates on economic issues.
For POC women voters, the divisions are more stark. But for men of any shade, Dem decay in social media (their active war on left-leaning TikTok being a huge unforced error in an environment that’s trended hard-right since the Obama admin) and their refusal to deliver on college debt relief, cheap housing, cheap mass transit, or public health care is leaving Republicans with a huge discontented block of younger voters to poach.