Election night is over. President Trump outperformed expectations and poll numbers and may yet win a second term. It is still also possible that former Vice President Joe Biden might win. No one can say for sure.
Still, there was one clear loser in last night’s election: identity politics.
Recall that the summer of 2020 was the summer of wokeness. Everyone was supposedly now consumed with the nation’s systemic racism. Everyone was a rioter. The only cause was anti-colonialism. Nothing else mattered. Right?
Perhaps that is untrue, however. Maybe this was relevant for college professors and liberal media anchors, but most people ignored this narrative about American life.
And, in fact, it turns out that the very voters being targeted most heavily by this scare campaign about pervasive, ubiquitous white supremacism, specifically nonwhite voters, were not persuaded to support Democrats in larger numbers. Instead, those voters increased their support for Trump over 2016 levels. In fact, if he wins, he almost certainly owes his victory to gains among black and Hispanic voters.
According to exit polls, Trump improved his national performance among black voters from 8% of the total to 12%. Among Hispanic voters, he increased his share from 28% to 32%. Among Asian American voters, he increased his share from 27% to 31%.
Overall, on a net basis, the gap between Biden and Trump among nonwhite voters was 7 points narrower than in 2016.
To be sure, viewed in isolation, these are not impressive numbers, as black and Hispanic voters still overwhelmingly went for Biden. But consider the expectations.
For five years, Trump has been subjected to a daily barrage of attacks branding him as a racist. Democrats ran heavily against his immigration stances, and the media tried to tie him to white supremacists. And yet, instead of seeing his share of the nonwhite vote dwindle, it increased.
Politics occurs at the margins. Trump’s improved performance with key Democratic constituencies has surely kept him competitive. In several of the key swing states, Democratic chances hinge on their ability to pile on votes from nonwhites, and they did not get the margins they wanted. And this all happened in spite of this summer’s wokeness marathon, which, in hindsight, appears to be mostly a media creation and not something sincerely felt by members of racial minorities.
Biden went out of his way to announce that he would pick a black female to be his running mate. Yet not only did Trump increase his performance among black males (from 13% to 18%) but also among black women (from 4% to 8%).
This also did not happen by accident. To his credit, Trump made a concerted effort to peel off black voters. He touted his record on criminal justice reform and funding of historically black colleges and universities.
The media in the United States made an enormous investment in racial fearmongering, and it came to naught. This is no surprise at all. It should serve as a lesson. Most people in the U.S. do not view America as a racist country. Most of them do not leap to characterize its foreign policy, its regulatory regime, or its tax policy as inherently racist, even if all of them have flaws. The important thing is to recognize that the U.S. is the most generous and most prosperous large nation in the history of the world.
People of all colors reject racial fearmongering. Thank goodness. That is just as things should be.
