Democratic Data Geeks’ Troubling Delusion
Three questions for the data analysts who believe the party is too aligned with issues that matter to people of color
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Democratic data analysts worried about “Negro on the brain”
Do Democrats really have “Negro on the brain?” We are noticing a consistent series of arguments from high-profile Democratic data geeks — most of whom are white and male — that the Democratic Party imperils its prospects by being too closely aligned with people of color, in general, and the cause of racial justice in particular.
Notably, these arguments have the historical echo of those Northerners who were concerned during the Civil War era that excessive attention to equality for newly-freed African Americans would endanger their party’s political prospects (at the time, that party was the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln). Critics — mostly moderate and conservative members of the party — had accused the party of having “Negro on the brain.” In fact, here’s a photo of a 19th century woodcut caricature of Lincoln, circa 1863, depicting the anti-slavery president with “a Negro” shaped like a stovepipe hat on his “brain.”
More recently, several Democratic data geeks have proffered modern-day versions of this argument.
In 2016, leading data analyst at New York Times Nate Cohn wrote a widely circulated piece titled “There Are More White People Than You Think. That’s Good for Trump” in which he argued that the Obama coalition that won in 2008 and 2012 was older and whiter than exit polls at the time conveyed. Therefore, Cohn argued, Democrats should pay greater attention to this demographic and not less. In March of this year, following the 2020 election, Democratic data consultant David Shor said in an interview with New York Magazine’s Intelligencer that, based on survey data, “defund the police” and other “ideologically polarizing” issues pushed Latino voters away from Democrats and into the arms of the Republican Party. And former Vox co-founder and writer, Matt Yglesias doubled down on both of these arguments last week in the latest issue of his Substack newsletter, “Slow Boring.”
Democratic data geeks are not alone in this flawed line of thinking
The core argument coming from the data geek squad is that Democrats are too closely aligned with people of color and are alienating a critical base by being “too progressive.” If Democrats want to perform better, they argue, they need to pay more attention to white working class voters (and have less Negro on the brain).
Disconcertingly, it’s not just this geek squad that thinks this way. Other major players in the progressive firmament have regularly chimed in with a variation of this message. In 2018, the group Third Way warned Democrats to “pivot to other issues like taxes and health care” instead of talking about immigration. Just weeks after the 2016 election, the liberal magazine American Prospect devoted an entire issue with 13 different articles all focused on “White Working Class.”
Given the time and attention paid to these arguments, we consulted with some data geeks we know and we developed some follow-up questions for Cohn, Shor, and Yglesias. Below, we ask three major questions that remain unanswered in the spate of attention afforded to their arguments and we provide data we’ve gathered as evidence of the flaws in their claims. Here’s what we’d like the data geeks to answer:
1 - How do your analyses and prescriptions factor in the declining number of white working class voters, on the one hand, and the rapidly changing composition of the electorate as 4 million young people — the majority of whom are people of color — turn 18 every year?
In 1974, members of the white working class made up 73% of all eligible voters. Today, that population’s share of the electorate is down to 41% of eligible voters, and falling. At the same time, the 2020 Census results showed that the majority of youth — people under 18 — are now people of color. Biden won the 18–24 year-old voting group by 34 percentage points. In battleground states Texas and Arizona, 67.2% and 57.1% of the youth respectively in those two states are people of color. Polls show this population is much more enthusiastic about racial justice policies than their older counterparts and than members of the white working class.
2 — How do you square the circle of pronouncements that, “Hispanic support for Democrats in 2020 dropped by 8 to 9 percent,” as David Schor was quoted saying in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, with the fact that Biden actually received 3.6 million more Latino votes than Hilary Clinton did in 2016?
And, as a follow-up and in anticipation of the answer being that the Democratic margin shrunk among Latinos (which it did, from 38 points in 2016 to 33 points in 2020 according to the exit polls), what significance do you attach to the data showing Biden’s Latino support declined just 1% in 2020 compared to Hillary Clinton’s Latino support in 2016? Our interpretation is that Trump mobilized more of the conservative infrequent voters than Democrats did of progressive infrequent voters, but we’d love to hear other takes.
3 — Can you point to specific data that shows that the way to increase white support is by distancing from people of color and the issues that matter to them?
During his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign, former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke rocketed to national prominence and fame after articulating, in response to a question from an attendee at a town hall, support for athletes’ rights to kneel during the national anthem as a way to protest anti-Black racism. Beto then went on to make history by winning the most votes won by any Democrat in Texas in 40 years, including winning a higher share of the white vote (36%) than Hillary Clinton did in Texas in 2016 (25%) and Joe Biden in Texas in 2020 (33%). Related, have you considered other strategies outside of simply increasing support for Democratic candidates by downplaying racial equality? How familiar are you with the data from Wellesley professor Jennifer Chudy exploring the concept of “racial sympathy” and how to increase support for racial justice issues?
Aligning with people of color is smart politics
This debate on whether it’s beneficial for the Democratic Party to align with progressives and people of color is no mere intellectual exercise. In next year’s midterms and beyond, billions of dollars will be allocated according to the analyses and interpretations of what happened in 2020. (In the 2020 election cycle, Democrats and progressives spent about $6.9 billion, according to Open Secrets.) Unfortunately much of the “smart money” always follows the lead of the data geeks. Most of that money in 2020 was not so smart, however, and missed out on both understanding and funding the game-changing role of Georgia in flipping the U.S. Senate and winning the White House.
That’s because those in decision-making roles behind the smart money failed to appreciate the multi-year work of Stacey Abrams and her allies in building the capacity to dramatically increase the number of people of color casting ballots to historic levels. As I told Politico’s Ian Ward this weekend, “I don’t understand why every Democratic consultant or leader or any member of the party who has any kind of influence is not simply sitting in a folding chair outside of Stacey Abrams’s house, asking her every single day what we should do.”
Too much is at stake to not engage this debate head on. It’s imperative for all of us to ask these tough questions. These three questions are our starting point. We encourage you to pose these questions to Democratic and progressive leaders and to add your own questions as well.
A version of this article was published in the Democracy in Color newsletter. Sign up to receive weekly letters like this in your inbox here.
