Chasing The Dropouts

A group of political scientists make the mathematical case in the NY Times that Democrats would be far better served winning back the more than four million Obama voters who stayed home in 2016 (rather than voting for Hillary or anyone) than the six million Obama voters who abandoned the Democrats for Trump.

Before the 2016 election, these voters were often identified as part of the “rising American electorate” by Democratic strategists who hoped that demographic shifts would be a boon to the party. But these shifts are meaningless if Democrats can’t get enough young people of color to the polls.

What do Obama-to-nonvoters prefer, policy-wise? Are they more similar to Obama-to-Clinton voters or to Obama-to-Trump voters? The answers to these questions have important implications for the future of Democratic Party politics, so we analyzed the preferences of all three groups of voters across a broad range of domestic policy areas, including support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, abortion rights, E.P.A. regulation of carbon emissions, cuts in domestic spending, an increase in the minimum wage, and an end to mandatory minimums in criminal sentencing, as well as opposition to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Two clear patterns emerged. First, it will come as no surprise that Obama-to-Trump voters adopt the most conservative positions. In fact, Obama-to-Trump voters express the most conservative views of any Obama voters in each of the seven areas examined in this analysis.

Second, the preferences of Obama-to-nonvoters are almost always closer to the preferences of Obama-to-Clinton voters than they are to Obama-to-Trump voters. For example, nearly three-quarters of Obama-to-Trump voters supported repeal of the A.C.A., while less than half of Obama-to-nonvoters did. The extremely high degree of support for repeal of the A.C.A. among Obama-to-Trump voters clearly played a role in the 2016 election and in the negative reaction to Mr. Obama among this group of voters more broadly. However, considering how strongly Obama-to-Clinton voters in particular favor the A.C.A., it is hard to imagine how Democrats could incorporate anti-A.C.A. voters into future Democratic coalitions.

Obama-to-nonvoters are most similar to Obama-to-Clinton voters on the minimum wage, though the proposal draws strong majority support from Obama-to-Trump voters as well. Obama-to-Trump voters are most out of line with the Democratic coalition on issues relating to race and gender. They are less supportive of a path to citizenship, and a supermajority (64 percent) of Obama-to-Trump voters support deporting undocumented immigrants. At 72 percent, Obama-to-nonvoters are also far more in favor of abortion rights than Obama-to-Trump voters are (55 percent). Over all, Obama-to-nonvoters are quite close to the emerging Democratic consensus on issues of class, race, gender and the environment.

Democratic strategists should recognize that Obama-to-Trump voters do not represent the future of their party. Obama-to-Trump voters diverge from the Democratic Party on many core issues, and in any case they are not particularly loyal Democrats: Less than one third of Obama-to-Trump voters supported Democrats down-ballot in 2016, and only 37 percent identify as Democrats.

In stark contrast, Obama-to-nonvoters share the progressive policy priorities of Democrats, and they strongly identify with the Democratic Party. Four out of every five Obama-to-nonvoters identify as Democrats, and 83 percent reported they would have voted for a Democrat down-ballot. A similar share of Obama-to-nonvoters said that they would have voted for Mrs. Clinton had they turned out to vote. In short, while reclaiming some Obama-to-Trump voters would be a big help to Democratic prospects, re-energizing 2012 Obama voters who stayed home is a more plausible path for the party going forward.

Whether Democrats can mobilize these voters is an open question, however. Significantly, only 43 percent of Obama-to-nonvoters reported being contacted by a candidate in 2016, compared with 66 percent of Obama-to-Clinton voters. While analysts have focused on why many conservative voters switched to the Republican Party, a better question might be why a campaign that sought to energize young voters of color failed to do so. That’s the question that will decide the future of American politics.

Getting these voters to the polls on Election Day is the most important task for progressives. And given their outlook on the important issues of the day, Obama-to-nonvoters are also likely to be easier to mobilize after two years of a Trump presidency — never mind four.

Two observations here:  First, the "Obama dropouts" here are overwhelmingly voters of color.  More than a third of them are black, that represents 1.5 million voters, another 10 percent were Latino, another 450,000.

Second: these are the voters who were pushed out of the electorate by the GOP through Republican voter suppression efforts in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, and more.  More than two dozen states enacted Republican voter ID laws between 2012 and 2016, and we now know that Russian election meddling through social media specifically targeted black voters in swing states to demoralize them.  The combination cost Clinton millions of votes and the presidency.

So yes, getting these younger voters back should be top priority rather than older, more conservative voters who left the Democrats over "identity politics" and showed their true colors by voting for Trump.  The Democrats don't need them.  They do need the younger voters who were by and large pushed out of the electorate.