No Post Tonight (10/29/2020)

No Post Tonight (10/29/2020)

Introduction: There will not be a regular post tonight. In the meantime, I am planning something big for this coming Sunday (11/1), the last scheduled post prior to Election Day 2020. 

Mormons and Cuban-Americans: Two reliably-Republican voting groups Trump could improve on relative to 2016

Mormons and Cuban-Americans: Two reliably-Republican voting groups Trump could improve on relative to 2016

Introduction: At first glance, one of the main similarities between Cuban-Americans and American Mormons is that both groups are normally Republican-supporting, as will be discussed below. Yet, these are two groups that Trump significantly underperformed with in 2016, and have the potential to give Trump's 2020 campaign higher voting margins due to each base re-consolidating behind him. Today's post will look into the 2016 voting behavior of both groups compared to 2012, and will extrapolate with recent polling and analysis to this year's election. The original idea (and thus, the credit) for this post came from a Twitter thread started by #ElectionTwitter community member @Northwest Politico. 

Cuban-Americans: Of all American subgroups, the Cuban-American population seems the most likely to consolidate around Trump in larger numbers than 2016. As discussed on two previous posts examining the importance of Miami-Dade County and the Cuban-American population generally as bellwethers, recent reports have speculated that this group may be coming back to Trump (Sesin). In 2016, Donald Trump (R) won around 54% of Florida's Cuban-American voters (Gomez et al.), a slight improvement over Mitt Romney (R)'s 52% in 2012 (Caputo). However, in the 2018 midterms, the Republican share of Florida's Cuban-American vote jumped back to 66% in the Gubernatorial election (Garcia-Navarro; Torres). While I was not able to find exact numbers, the concurrent Senate election witnessed Republican Rick Scott performing well among Cuban-American voters in Florida, and improving in majority-Cuban voting precincts (Grunwald). Recent polling has suggested that Trump is receiving support from around 60% of the Cuban-American vote, which would be a significant vote share improvement even when considering margin-of-error (Golden). These results plus recent reports suggest that the Cuban-American vote is likely to revert to the pre-Trump mean, thus making it a critical group he will likely do better amongst than in 2016. 

Mormons: One of 2016's most interesting socio-electoral trends was that of America's Mormon population, a longtime Republican-voting group. From the beginning, many Mormons (including prominent politicians and figures) expressed significant concern over Trump's policy ideas, rhetoric, and overall approach to politics and policy (Coppins; "US Election 2016"). In the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump placed third in majority-Mormon Utah's caucus (behind Ted Cruz and John Kasich), which identified his weakness among this group (Kondik et al.). Going into the general election cycle, this weakness continued to open up with the rise of Independent candidate Evan McMullin, who was popular amongst Republican Mormons (voters and figures) unhappy with Trump (Cook; Kondik et al.). This growth went so far that in mid-October 2016, one Utah poll showed McMullin ahead of both Trump and Clinton, revealing the extent to which many normally-Republican Mormons were not satisfied with Trump (Kimball, 20). On election night, Trump won 45% of Utah Mormons and a majority of the national Mormon population, while witnessing a declining vote share amongst that group compared to 2012 and 2008 (Gehrke). Similarly, exit polls showed McMullin winning around one-third of Utah's Mormon vote, including around 25% of Republican voters ("Exit Polls 2016: Utah). McMullin ended up placing third in Utah with around 22% of the vote (the largest in a state since Ross Perot in 1992), with normally-Republican Mormon voters being his primary base of support (Peppard).  A complicating factor behind the Mormon vote this year is the fact that McMullin is not running again, and that Biden's campaign is extensively reaching-out to that group to help in winning several critical western states (Barrón-López and Thompson). As part of preparing this article, I was not able to find any recent polling on Mormon opinions of Trump and Biden. Nonetheless, the fact that Trump arguably bottomed-out with this reliability-Republican group in 2016 combined with the lack of McMullin campaign this year makes it likely that Trump will improve (although by how much is another question) over his 2016 electoral showing among Mormon voters.

Works Cited:

Barrón-López, Laura, and Alex Thompson. "Mormons rejected Trump as blasphemous. Now he likely can’t win without them." Politico, 13 Sept. 2020, www.politico.com/news/2020/09/13/trump-biden-mormons-church-412234. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Caputo, Marc. "Poll: Obama got big share of Cuban American vote, won among other Hispanics in Florida." Miami Herald, 8 Nov. 2012, www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article1944391.html. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Cook, Rhodes. "AN HISTORICAL RARITY: A FOUR-PARTY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION." Sabato's Crystal Ball, 27 Oct. 2016, centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/an-historical-rarity-a-four-party-presidential-election/. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Coppins, McKay. "Donald Trump’s Mormon Problem." The New York Times, 13 Jun. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trumps-mormon-problem.html. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

"Exit Polls 2016: Utah President." CNN, last updated 15 Nov. 2016, www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/utah/president. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Garcia-Navarro, Lulu. "The Cuban Vote In Florida." National Public Radio, www.npr.org/2018/11/11/666646389/the-cuban-vote-in-florida. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Gehrke, Robert. "While Mormons nationally stuck with Trump, in Utah he lagged." The Salt Lake Tribune, 18 Nov. 2016, archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4573783&itype=CMSID. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Golden, Tim. "Will Cuba Tip Florida to Trump?" New York Times, 24 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/sunday-review/cuba-florida-trump-election.html. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Gomez, Alan, Ledyard King, and Rebecca Morin. "Biden is getting trounced with Cuban American voters in Florida, a trend that could tip the state to Trump." USA Today, 16 Sept. 2020, www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/15/joe-biden-lags-trump-cuban-american-voters-latinos-florida/5756126002/. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Grunwald, Michael. "The Democrats’ Hispanic Problem." Politico, 4 Dec. 2018, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/04/democrats-hispanic-voters-2020-222751. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Kimball, Spencer. "Emerson College Polls: Utah breaking for third-party candidate McMullin. Trump loses ground in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Missouri. Ayotte (R-NH) and Blunt (R-MO) are  tied in Senate bids, while Toomey (R-PA) is holding on." Emerson College Polling Society, 19 Oct. 2016, media.wix.com/ugd/3bebb2_98fe8b3559f64960a573ecad7dc22ec9.pdf. Accessed 24 Oct. 2020.

Kondik, Kyle, Larry Sabato, and Geoffrey Skelley. "Clinton adds to her Electoral College edge." Sabato's Crystal Ball, 10 Oct. 2016, centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/clinton-adds-to-her-electoral-college-edge/. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Peppard, Michael. "Utah & the Mormon Vote for McMullin." Commonweal Magazine, 25 Nov. 2016, www.commonwealmagazine.org/utah-mormon-vote-mcmullin. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Sesin, Carmen. "What's behind Trump's gain in Cuban American support?" NBC News, 2 Oct. 2020, www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/what-s-behind-trump-s-gain-cuban-american-support-n1241601. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

Torres, Norma Gamez. "Cuban-American vote for DeSantis might prove decisive as race moves toward recount." Miami Herald, 9 Nov. 2018, www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article221439990.html. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020. 

"US Election 2016: Donald Trump struggles to win over Mormons." British Broadcasting Corporation, 22 Mar. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-35877414. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020.