FDU Poll Finds Race and Gender Push Harris Above Trump Nationally
https://www.fdu.edu/news/fdu-poll-fi...mp-nationally/
Race and Gender Push Harris Above Trump Nationally
Race considerations crater Trump support among non-white voters
Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, August 23, 2024 – Voters nationally give Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris an edge over former President Donald Trump in November’s election by a seven-point margin (50 to 43), but race and gender remains central to the vote. When voters are made to think about the race or gender of the candidates, Harris’ lead grows substantially; when they’re not, support is essentially tied. Harris is also helped by strong support among the slightly less than half of men who reject traditionally masculine identities. Trump’s strongest support is among men who hold traditionally masculine identities, while women and other men strongly favor Harris.
“Trump has built his political career around a very specific performance of whiteness and masculinity,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson, and the Executive Director of the poll. “In the past, that’s been seen as a strength, but it’s no longer clear that it’s working.”
In the overall sample, Harris leads Trump 50 to 43 among likely voters, with 7 percent saying that they will support someone else in November’s election (with undecided voters included, that lead is 47 to 40). Both Trump and Harris have the support of 95 percent of their partisans, and Harris leads Trump 38 to 33 among independents who do not lean towards either party. Similarly, Harris has a strong lead among self-identified liberals (87 to 10), progressives (93 to 5) and moderates (62 to 30). Trump leads among conservatives (76 to 19), and MAGA voters (95 to 4).
To examine the effect of race and gender on vote choice, an experiment was embedded in the survey.
In the survey, before being asked who they were supporting in the Presidential race, respondents were given a list of five issues, and asked which ones were important to their vote. The issues included Tax Policy, Immigration Policy, Climate Change, Abortion and Foreign Policy. But not all respondents got the same list. In addition to randomizing the order of the issues, one-third of respondents were given “The Race or Ethnicity of the Candidate” as the last issue before the vote choice question, and one-third were given “Whether the Candidate is a Man or a Woman” as their last issue. The remaining one-third got all five of the issues, in no particular order.
This survey experiment means that we can compare the voters who were primed to think about race or sex with those who were not, and because the assignment to these conditions is done at random, we can be confident that any differences between the groups are a result of the priming, and not other factors. The effects are enormous.
Among voters who were not primed to think about the race or sex of the candidates, Harris and Trump are tied (47 to 48). When the list of issues mentions the sex of the candidates, Harris pulls ahead, 52 to 42. And when the race of the candidates is mentioned, Harris holds a 14-point lead, 53 to 39, a 15-point shift from the baseline condition.
“When voters are thinking about race or sex, Trump’s support just plummets,” said Cassino. “All the time, we hear strategists and pundits saying that Democratic candidates shouldn’t talk about identity, but these results show that making race and sex salient to voters is bad for Trump and boosts Harris.”
The movement in the race priming condition is largely due to changes in support among non-white voters. Fifty-five percent of non-white voters in the unprimed condition say that they’ll support Harris, with 39 percent supporting Trump. But in the race primed condition, Trump’s support among non-white voters drops by 10 points to 29 percent, while Harris’s support rises by 10, from 55 to 65 percent. All told, mentioning the race of the candidates moves Harris’s lead among non-white voters from 16 points (55 to 39) to 36 points (65 to 29).
This size of the effect is supplemented by a shift away from Trump among white voters in the race primed condition. In the unprimed condition, Trump leads Harris among white voters by 11 points, 53 to 42. In the race primed condition, the two are tied, with Harris marginally ahead among white voters, 47 to 44.
The largest shifts due to this priming condition appear to be among Black voters, but analysis of these effects is limited by the sample size of the survey.
“Race matters in elections, but it’s not inevitable that voters are thinking about it,” said Cassino. “Trump does reasonably well among non-white voters so long as they’re not thinking about race: once they are, we see a huge shift to Harris.”
Mentioning the sex of the candidates also impacts vote choice, with the gender prime moving women’s support away from Trump. Mentioning the sex of the candidates has no real effect on men’s votes: it increases support for Harris by 5 points and reduces support for Trump by 2. But among women, mentioning the sex of the candidates drops Trump’s support by 7, from 40 percent in the unprimed condition to 33 percent in the gender primed condition. The net effect is a change from women favoring Harris by 16 (56 to 40) in the unprimed condition, to favoring her by 26 (59 to 33) in the gender primed condition.
The gender dynamics of the race are also clear from a question asking respondents about how masculine or feminine they consider themselves to be. On this question, a little more than half of men say that they’re “completely masculine,” and a little less than half describe themselves some other way (as “mostly masculine,” “slightly masculine” or in one of the feminine categories). The men who put themselves in the “completely masculine” category favor Trump over Harris by a wide margin, 64 to 30. All other men favor Harris by a 20-point margin, 55 to 35. Among women, “completely feminine” women are little different than other women: both favor Harris by about a 20-point margin. While there is a big difference between men and women overall, that difference is driven entirely by the men who say that they are “completely masculine.” Those men favor Trump; all other sex and gender groups favor Harris by about the same 20-point margin.
“We talk about the gender gap in voting as being between men and women,” said Cassino. “But it’s not. The real gender gap is between men who are holding to traditionally masculine identities, and everybody else. Identity isn’t just about race and sex: Trump’s appeal to a traditional form of masculine identity is the only thing keeping this race close.”
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by ClaytonB
Site Information
About Us
- RonPaulForums.com is an independent grassroots outfit not officially connected to Ron Paul but dedicated to his mission. For more information see our Mission Statement.
Connect With Us