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Over the past few days, my colleagues have put different voting populations under their microscopes and asked some important questions heading into the midterm elections — and toward the presidential race in 2024.
- How much did the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on abortion change the landscape?
- Will Democrats reverse losses in support among Hispanic voters?
- Will young people — “Generation Z” — defy historical trends and actually turn out?
Let’s start with that last question, which Mariana Alfaro took up in a piece out this morning.
“They call themselves the ‘mass shootings generation,’ their perspective shaped by deadly rampages at Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla. They sound the alarm about the devastation caused by climate change. They fear the threats to LGBTQ rights and now the ramifications of the loss of a constitutional right to abortion.”
But when it comes to Americans born between 1997 and 2012, Mariana notes, the big question is this: “Will they vote in numbers to make a difference?”
History offers reasons to be skeptical.
“Only 44 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 participated in the 2016 election, an unenthusiastic turnout compared with the 72 percent of voters 65 and older who showed up to vote that year. The trend has picked up since — 53 percent of young voters participated in the 2020 election, the most-recent presidential election year,” Mariana writes.
“Per a Washington Post-ABC News poll published Sept. 25, only 49 percent of young Americans — those between the ages of 19 and 29 — said they are ‘absolutely certain to vote’ in the November midterms, compared with 63 percent of those 30-64 and 84 percent of those 65 and older. And an NPR/Marist poll published on Oct. 6 found that those aged 18-29 are the least likely to vote in November.”
My colleagues Marianna Sotomayor and Silvia Foster-Frau looked at Florida as a microcosm of Democratic struggles with a population that some in the party thought, until recently, would all but ensure the party’s success over the coming years and decades: Hispanic voters.
Marianna and Silvia paint the picture of historic Democratic attempts to connect with Hispanic voters, Democratic pessimism about rolling back GOP gains in Florida, and the ways in which a profoundly diverse group of Americans make demography-is-destiny a foolish forecast.
“Although a majority of Latinos voted Democratic in 2020, the erosion of their support for the party in Florida and South Texas shook the long-standing notion that demographic change in the United States would automatically benefit Democrats,” they reported.
And this caught me by surprise: “In 2020, Latinos had the lowest voter turnout among all race groups, at roughly 54 percent, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. That’s roughly 17 percentage points behind the White voter turnout and roughly eight and six percentage points behind Black and Asian turnout, respectively.”
What about women voters? It seems like pundits try every cycle to pin the outcome on an idiosyncratic sub-group of women voters. Remember soccer moms? Security moms? My colleague Dan Balz cut through some of the noise for his inaugural installment of “The Deciders,” which will look at several different populations and the way they’ll shape 2022 and beyond.
Dan’s main question — and it won’t be answered until we have the election results — is how much the Supreme Court’s ruling that ended decades of a constitutional right to access to abortion has changed a midterm election landscape still dominated by concerns about the economy.
Or, as Dan put it: “In the final weeks, with concerns about the economy still dominant, elections could turn on how much sustaining energy the Dobbs decision provides for Democrats or whether it fades in the face of bread-and-butter concerns,” like inflation.
Women are more likely to vote than men. “This pattern cuts across all races, whether White, Latino, Asian American or Black,” Dan noted.
But while women broadly vote more Democratic than Republican, former president Donald Trump won 52 percent and 55 percent of White women in 2016 and 2020, respectively, Dan underlined.
And here’s a critical “stay tuned” paragraph from Dan:
“Republicans hope to move some White suburban women who supported Democrats in 2018 and 2020 back to their column. Democrats hope to prevent that from happening. But Democrats also need sizable participation by the women who powered them to victory in 2018, a year when turnout for a midterm election was the highest in a century.”
The Post will have many more of these careful looks at specific populations in the month or so before the midterms. The Daily 202 will flag them for you.
Putin boasts of ‘massive strike’ across Ukraine
“Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday boasted of a “massive strike” across Ukraine at a meeting of his Security Council, describing a series of attacks on Kyiv and other regions as retaliation for an explosion that damaged the strategic Crimean Bridge over the weekend. Ukrainian officials reported drone and missile strikes in at least 10 different areas of Ukraine on Monday, including in central Kyiv in the first major attacks in the capital in months,” Missy Ryan, Jennifer Hassan, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Rachel Pannett and Nick Parker report.
Steele dossier source heads to trial, in possible last stand for Durham
“Igor Danchenko — a researcher who fed information to former British spy Christopher Steele, and whose contributions ended up in the now-infamous ‘Steele dossier’ of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016 — goes on trial Tuesday. The trial is expected to last one week,” Salvador Rizzo and Devlin Barrett report.
Bernanke, two other Americans win Nobel Prize in economics
“Former Federal Reserve chair Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond of the University of Chicago and Philip H. Dybvig of Washington University in St. Louis were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their work on banks and financial crises,” David J. Lynch reports.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
Howard Schultz’s fight to stop a Starbucks barista uprising
“On picket lines outside the stores, pro-union workers were slamming Schultz as a greedy, out-of-touch billionaire with a $130 million yacht. The National Labor Relations Board was accusing Starbucks in court filings of carrying out a ‘virulent, widespread and well-orchestrated’ anti-union campaign that relied on firings, threat and surveillance. Democratic senators who once praised Schultz as a ‘pathbreaking’ and humane leader were now castigating him for undermining his workers’ rights,” Greg Jaffe reports.
“To Schultz, the unionization drive felt like an attack on his life’s work. In previous speeches to his employees, he had cast the union as ‘a group trying to take our people,’ an ‘outside force that’s trying desperately to disrupt our company’ and ‘an adversary that’s threatening the very essence of what [we] believe to be true.’”
Spread of Catholic hospitals limits reproductive care across the U.S.
“Catholic systems now control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds, requiring religious doctrine to guide treatment, often to the surprise of patients. Their ascendancy has broad implications for the evolving national battle over reproductive rights beyond abortion, as bans against it take hold in more than a dozen Republican-led states,” Frances Stead Sellers and Meena Venkataramanan report.
“The Catholic health-care facilities follow directives from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that prohibit treatment it deems ‘immoral’: sterilization including vasectomies, postpartum tubal ligations and contraception, as well as abortion. Those policies can limit treatment options for obstetric care during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, particularly in the presence of a fetal heartbeat.”
“A failure on all our parts.” Thousands of immigrant children wait in government shelters.
“The public has largely stopped paying attention to what’s happening inside shelters and other facilities that house immigrant children since President Donald Trump left office, and particularly since the end of his administration’s zero tolerance policy, which separated families at the southern border,” ProPublica‘s Melissa Sanchez reports.
“But the shelter system remains in place under President Joe Biden. The numbers can fluctuate but, as of earlier this week, more than 9,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were in custody, according to data from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the privately run shelters.”
Indigenous Peoples’ Day, explained
“Supporters of the day say it may help bring attention to some of the ways Indigenous peoples are discriminated against and are disproportionately affected by climate change, gender violence and health issues, as well as to the Indigenous lands affected by mining, drilling and both public and private projects,” the New York Times‘ Melina Delkic reports.
Biden’s pardons for marijuana possession inject issue into midterms final stretch
“Biden’s action — the fulfillment of a 2020 campaign promise — comes weeks before voters head to the polls, with some casting early ballots in a matter of days. Midterm elections traditionally are base contests, with the enthusiasm of the party’s core voters crucial to the outcome. The stakes couldn’t be higher this November, with Democrats clinging to razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate that could be reversed based on a handful of seats,” Azi Paybarah reports.
‘Armageddon’ warning reflects Biden’s instincts about Putin
“Biden’s comments were reflective of the long-held distrust he has harbored against Putin and his understanding of what Putin is willing to do to carry out his goals, U.S. officials and outside experts said. His skepticism about Putin began long before he became president — and long before Putin became one of the United States’ biggest adversaries,” Yasmeen Abutaleb, Karen DeYoung and Paul Sonne report.
Analysis: Biden turns to lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis to deal with Putin’s nuclear threat.
“For weeks now, Mr. Biden’s aides have been debating whether there might be an analogous understanding, a way for the wounded Russian leader to find an out. They have offered no details, knowing that secrecy may be the key to seeking any successful exit and avoiding the conditions in which a cornered Mr. Putin reaches for his battlefield nuclear weapons,” the NYT‘s David E. Sanger reports.
Women’s voting rates, visualized
“In the coming weeks, The Washington Post will be looking at some of the voters who will decide the fate of the next Congress, and assessing whether Democrats can maintain the coalition that propelled them to victories in 2018 and 2020. This ‘Deciders’ series begins with a look from Colorado and how some women in Denver and its suburbs view the country, the issues, their families and themselves,” Dan Balz reports.
Arizona GOP raised record money with misleading pitches on election audit
“Arizona’s Republican Party raised record sums in 2021 with repeated appeals to supporters for money to help audit the 2020 presidential election. ‘Pitch in to Help Us Finish America’s Audit!’ and ‘Help America’s Audit’ were among the dozens of pitches from the party,” Josh Dawsey and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez report.
“But Kelli Ward, the state party chairwoman, was sending a very different message to top Republicans in Washington at the time.”
“’We have not been raising money to pay for the audit,’ Ward wrote in one June 25, 2021, text message, according to a person with knowledge of the message, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details. ‘We were expressly told that we could/should not raise money for the audit and auditors before the audit began.’”
Rick Scott, Tom Cotton to rally in Georgia for embattled Herschel Walker
“National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (Fla.) will travel to Georgia on Tuesday to demonstrate support for Herschel Walker, days after news reports in which a former girlfriend accused the Senate candidate of paying for one abortion and urging a second,” Michael Scherer and Annie Linskey report.
“Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is also making the trip, as the party continues to treat the Georgia contest as a marquee race that could help determine control of the Senate in 2023.”
Biden will leave Delaware for the White House at 1:55 p.m.. He will arrive at 2:50 p.m.
The first Columbus Day was born of violence — and political calculation
“The first national Columbus Day was proclaimed in 1892 by Republican President Benjamin Harrison to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus’s supposed discovery of America,” Ronald G. Shafer reports.
“But for Harrison, it served another purpose: to help resolve a diplomatic crisis with Italy — and gain support among Italian American voters — after rioters in New Orleans lynched 11 Italian immigrants the year before.”
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
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