FDU Poll Finds Race and Gender Push Harris Above Trump Nationally
Race and Gender Push Harris Above Trump Nationally
Race considerations crater Trump support among non-white voters
Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, August 23, 2024 – Voters nationally give Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris an edge over former President Donald Trump in November’s election by a seven-point margin (50 to 43), but race and gender remains central to the vote. When voters are made to think about the race or gender of the candidates, Harris’ lead grows substantially; when they’re not, support is essentially tied. Harris is also helped by strong support among the slightly less than half of men who reject traditionally masculine identities. Trump’s strongest support is among men who hold traditionally masculine identities, while women and other men strongly favor Harris.
“Trump has built his political career around a very specific performance of whiteness and masculinity,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson, and the Executive Director of the poll. “In the past, that’s been seen as a strength, but it’s no longer clear that it’s working.”
In the overall sample, Harris leads Trump 50 to 43 among likely voters, with 7 percent saying that they will support someone else in November’s election (with undecided voters included, that lead is 47 to 40). Both Trump and Harris have the support of 95 percent of their partisans, and Harris leads Trump 38 to 33 among independents who do not lean towards either party. Similarly, Harris has a strong lead among self-identified liberals (87 to 10), progressives (93 to 5) and moderates (62 to 30). Trump leads among conservatives (76 to 19), and MAGA voters (95 to 4).
To examine the effect of race and gender on vote choice, an experiment was embedded in the survey.
In the survey, before being asked who they were supporting in the Presidential race, respondents were given a list of five issues, and asked which ones were important to their vote. The issues included Tax Policy, Immigration Policy, Climate Change, Abortion and Foreign Policy. But not all respondents got the same list. In addition to randomizing the order of the issues, one-third of respondents were given “The Race or Ethnicity of the Candidate” as the last issue before the vote choice question, and one-third were given “Whether the Candidate is a Man or a Woman” as their last issue. The remaining one-third got all five of the issues, in no particular order.
This survey experiment means that we can compare the voters who were primed to think about race or sex with those who were not, and because the assignment to these conditions is done at random, we can be confident that any differences between the groups are a result of the priming, and not other factors. The effects are enormous.
Among voters who were not primed to think about the race or sex of the candidates, Harris and Trump are tied (47 to 48). When the list of issues mentions the sex of the candidates, Harris pulls ahead, 52 to 42. And when the race of the candidates is mentioned, Harris holds a 14-point lead, 53 to 39, a 15-point shift from the baseline condition.
“When voters are thinking about race or sex, Trump’s support just plummets,” said Cassino. “All the time, we hear strategists and pundits saying that Democratic candidates shouldn’t talk about identity, but these results show that making race and sex salient to voters is bad for Trump and boosts Harris.”
The movement in the race priming condition is largely due to changes in support among non-white voters. Fifty-five percent of non-white voters in the unprimed condition say that they’ll support Harris, with 39 percent supporting Trump. But in the race primed condition, Trump’s support among non-white voters drops by 10 points to 29 percent, while Harris’s support rises by 10, from 55 to 65 percent. All told, mentioning the race of the candidates moves Harris’s lead among non-white voters from 16 points (55 to 39) to 36 points (65 to 29).
MORE:
https://www.fdu.edu/news/fdu-poll-finds-race-and-gender-push-harris-above-trump-nationally/