U.S. President-elect Donald Trump gives a thumbs up during a Hispanic roundtable at Beauty Society on Oct. 12, in Las Vegas.Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Politics in the United States is deeply divided and profoundly polarized. But the divisions, deep as they are, are more than ever about human choices, and less about immutable human characteristics. Today’s political fissure is primarily ideological, not racial.
For example, exit polls show that almost half of Hispanic Americans – 46 per cent – voted for Donald Trump. Among Latino men, Mr. Trump led Kamala Harris by 12 percentage points. These are huge shifts. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won with Hispanic men by 31 points.
Hispanic and Black Americans have historically voted in favour of the Democratic Party by vast margins. Ms. Clinton and Joe Biden won the Hispanic vote in landslides. Many Democrats had long assumed that, as the country changed through immigration, they would inevitably become the permanent majority party.
But a funny thing happened on the way to that destination: As the racial makeup of America changed, Americans started seeing their political choices less and less through the lens of race.
You can’t understand American history and politics, from Independence to the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, without talking about race. But neither can you understand America in 2024 if you fail to recognize it’s no longer 1954.
It turns out that the racial gap in American politics isn’t a constant. Over the last eight years, it has shrunk.
Let’s start with white voters. This year, Mr. Trump was preferred by white men over Ms. Harris by 23 percentage points. That’s eight points fewer than in 2016. White women favoured Mr. Trump by just eight percentage points, which is also lower than in 2016 and 2020.
Black Americans, who voted almost exclusively for Democrats for two generations, are also shifting. In 2016, Ms. Clinton’s margin of victory among Black women was 90 percentage points. This year, Ms. Harris’s margin was 84 per cent. Among Black men, the gap between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump was 56 percentage points in her favour – but that’s 13 points less than in 2016.
White American voters have become a bit more Democratic. Non-white voters, though still majority Democratic, have become considerably more Republican. And the Republican Party’s voters have never been more of a rainbow coalition.
Race is still a thing, but the race of voters and candidates is less politically relevant than ever.
Age and gender gaps have also narrowed. Ms. Harris won voters aged 18 to 29 by 11 percentage points; that’s almost half the 2016 gap. Among those age 30 to 44, Ms. Clinton’s 10-point lead of eight years ago was reduced to a one-point lead this year.
At the same time, Mr. Trump lost support among seniors. In 2016, he had a seven-point margin of victory; this year, he and Ms. Harris were tied.
And with 45 per cent of American women voting for Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris’s margin of victory with them was just 8 per cent. That’s a smaller gender gap than in 2016 and 2020.
The U.S. electorate may be deeply divided. But the deep fault line is class.
Democrats used to be the party of the working class, while Republicans were the party of the educated and upper-income. That’s been changing since the late 1960s, and this year it changed some more.
As recently as 2016, Republicans won a majority of whites with college degrees. Ms. Harris won with them by seven percentage points.
But she lost among voters without higher education. As for Mr. Trump, his growing share of the blue-collar vote is powered by his success with non-white blue collars. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won non-white, non-college-educated voters by a whopping 56 percentage points. Ms. Harris won the group by only 30 points.
A multiracial society is a lot more difficult to sustain if politics is fought over immutable characteristics, with skin colour or ethnicity dictating how I vote, and which party courts or targets me. Democrats have long accused the MAGA movement of being white supremacy on steroids, but more and more blue-collar voters of all races, particularly Hispanics, don’t see it that way. They see MAGA as a working-class movement.
It’s not a great thing for a society to have deep class divisions – but it’s a heck of a lot better than a deep racial divide. Class, in the U.S. and Canada, is not a fixed thing. It’s mutable, evolving and debatable. It’s about everything from lifestyle to mindset to culture, all which can and do change – unlike skin colour.
It’s notable that, while Ms. Harris and Democrats ran against the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that ruled against a constitutional right to abortion, they never mentioned the monumental 2023 Supreme Court decision that declared affirmative action in college admission unconstitutional. Race-blind admission is a popular policy, even in Democratic-controlled California, where whites are a minority.
In the years to come, Democrats and Republicans alike will continue to appeal to voters on the basis of tribal identities – small town versus city, college versus blue collar, conservative versus progressive. But electoral appeals based on race have become a lot less salient in American politics. That’s progress.