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Most of the speculation about political factors that could hurt Joe Biden turned out to be wrong this fall. Neither the anti-racist protests, the television debates, nor Trump’s temporary stay in the hospital have helped the president’s opinion figures. Biden’s management remains stable. Still, there are plenty of warning signs for Biden’s campaign ahead of the final sprint of the election.
In the New York Times, journalism professor Thomas Edsall has examined statistics from the four states that report party affiliation among those who registered to vote in elections. In three of these important states, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Republicans have registered significantly more new voters. In Arizona alone, Democrats have registered more new voters than Republicans.
Recent polls if the electorate also shows two other warning signs for Biden.
New research from political scientists at Princeton University shows that young black voters are not as loyal to Democrats as previous generations of black Americans. Surprisingly, it is young, secular, and black men who are now expressing the most skepticism towards Democrats.
Political scientists at Princeton believe this may be due to the black church’s weakened role as an organizing political force. In particularly important southern states like Florida and North Carolina, black churches have often organized joint bus trips to polling stations and acted as a unifying force for the party. When young black men stop going to church, that factor disappears.
Donald trump has made it clear that he regards young black voters as Biden’s Achilles heel. In the last debate, he attacked Biden for betraying black Americans during his long career. Despite Trump calling the Black Lives Matter movement “national terrorists,” he hopes to sow uncertainty about Biden’s political history and weaken his hold among black voters. Biden still has the support of about 90 percent of black voters, but for Trump, it may be enough to increase his own support by a few percentage points to win in key states like Michigan and Georgia.
Finally, Trump has increased his leadership among Latin Americans in Florida, where especially young people from Cuba and Venezuela seem receptive to Trump’s attacks on Biden as a “socialist,” despite the fact that Biden does not belong to the left flank of the Democrats. The Trump campaign has also made historic investments in Spanish-language media in Florida and the South.
An additional factor of uncertainty is that the United States has never before held a national election during the worst possible period in a national pandemic. The week before the election, the United States reported more than 80,000 new cases a day. In 35 states, there is now a sharp increase in infections, including in the states expected to decide the election: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas and Florida.
That explains why Biden’s campaign is warning voters not to take any victories in advance.
Read more: That’s why the world’s scientific journals support Joe Biden
