If you haven’t noticed, Joe Biden is in trouble come 2024. Why else are they going after his biggest opponent like they are? But even more damaging than Trump could be is the fact that voter turnout among the usually loyal Democratic demographic is wavering.
As the Washington Post recently reported, the Census Bureau’s 2022 voter turnout survey came out in May. And what it says is that all those Biden and his party counted on in previous years aren’t voting like they used to.
The biggest change comes from black voters, whose participation in the 2022 midterm elections dropped a rather whopping 10 percent since the midterms of 2018.
As the survey says, about 51.7 percent of black voters turned in a ballot in 2018. But in 2022, that dropped to about 42 percent. Meanwhile, white voter turnout only dropped about 1.5 percent from 54.9 percent to 53.4 percent.
The Post noted, “The 11-point turnout gap between white and black voters is the largest in any presidential or midterm election since at least 2000.”
But that’s not all.
Voter turnout among Hispanics, another typically Democratic voting base, also dropped considerably in 2022 – falling from 36.5 percent to 31.3 percent. And support among Asian and Pacific Islanders also dropped from 38.7 to 33.2 percent.
What all of this means is that the Democrats could be in for a very rough ride come 2024.
In fact, the effects are already being felt.
Thanks to such voter turnout in Milwaukee, usually a Democratic stronghold, Dems lost a US Senate seat to a Republican last year.
And given Biden’s already narrow wins over Trump in 2020, those margins are even slimmer come 2024.
Take Arizona, for example.
There, Biden supposedly won by a measly 0.3 percent or roughly 10,457 votes. Without considering the drop in Biden’s popularity nationwide, the reductions in voter turnout could have significant effects in the state.
The state’s population is made up of just 5.5 percent blacks. But Hispanics make up a whopping 32.5 percent. Suffice it to say that, should voter turnout remain similar to what it was in 2022, Biden won’t do very well.
And as I said, that doesn’t even begin to consider that Biden isn’t very popular among any demographic. As FiveThirtyEight recently reported, since he took office, support among black voters has dropped over 10 percent, and among Hispanics, about 20 percent.
Now, let’s look at another swing state: Georgia.
In 2020, Biden beat Trump by 11,779 votes. Just a one percent drop in black voter turnout in the state would wipe out that winning margin.
But as political consultant Karl Rove told Fox News on Tuesday, we’re not talking about just a one percent drop. We are talking about 10 percent “between midterm to midterm, so that could be really problematic” for Democrats.
Similar findings would also occur in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Besides, as Rove pointed out, it’s not just black and Hispanic votes the Dems need to worry about. Similarly, turnout for younger voters (ages 18 to 29) has also dropped. In 2018, approximately 32.4 of voters under 30 showed up. In 2022, that dropped to 25.9 percent – a drop of 6.5 percent.
Again, it’s noted that “younger” voters are usually Democratic. Then again, according to a recent study on high school seniors, twice as many high school males identified as conservative than liberal.
So yeah, I think Biden and his cohorts have good reason to be worried about 2024, no matter who the GOP nominee is.
