Joe Biden accepted his party's Presidential nomination for November’s election at last week’s Democratic National Convention. This week, it's time for the Republican Convention, with all eyes on President Trump as he seeks a second term. The Presidential campaigns begin in earnest after the conventions, and for the next two and a half months the election will be front and centre of our news.
Biden is currently the heavy favourite but, as we learned last time, Trump should not be ruled out. This seems an opportune moment to look back at the shock 2016 election, and some of the lessons that the Democrats should learn from four years ago.
The circumstances in 2016 were extraordinary. The Democrats had selected a candidate in Hillary Clinton who was an experienced campaigner, and had held some of the highest offices in government. Yet, she lost to a political novice, who many felt had engaged in dangerous rhetoric, and bullied his way to first the Republican nomination, and then the Presidency.
1. The same electorate that voted for Trump, voted for Obama twice
In the weeks leading up to the election much of the media had already decided that Clinton was all but President. Following the election, this same media then tried to explain how, and why, Trump had beaten Clinton. One recurring explanation was that Trump’s election was partly down to a ‘white-lash’ after eight years of a black man as President.
While Trump’s rhetoric may have emboldened America’s racists, turnout among white voters barely increased between 2012 and 2016. Fundamentally the electorate was the same as when Obama was re-elected. Nevertheless, Trump flipped 6 states which Obama had won in 2012, and post election studies found one particularly interesting voting group: Obama-Trump voters (voters who supported Obama in previous elections, yet voted for Trump in 2016). The Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group found that over 9% of Obama voters had voted for Trump, and roughly 13% of Trump voters had voted for Obama in one, or both, of the previous two elections.
This should have been a wake-up call to the Democrats. If Biden is to win in November, he needs to win these voters back, while also getting his own voters to turnout.
2. Turnout could be the crucial factor
One demographic Clinton struggled with compared to Obama was unsurprisingly black voters, as turnout in 2016 decreased by 7% from 2012. It was the first time since 1996 that turnout among black voters had declined. This could have been the difference between Clinton winning and losing those states that she narrowly lost to Trump.
Despite this, ethnic minorities accounted for roughly the same proportion of voters in 2016 as four years earlier as, while the black vote decreased, the number of Hispanic and Asian-American voters increased. Yet these voters are more likely to vote for Trump than black voters, so the Democrats still suffered from the decline in black turnout.
Turnout among the younger generations increased from 2012, and coupled with the decrease in among older people, this helped Clinton. Despite this, a substantial margin in turnout remained between old and young, with only 50% of Millennials voting, compared to 70% of Boomers. Clinton also did comparatively worse than Obama among younger voters, as support from the 18-29 year olds decreased from 60% to 55% between 2012 and 2016 according to Pew. It is crucial for Biden that he inspires his supporters to get out and vote for him. If Biden can regain some of the black vote which Clinton lost, and increase turnout among younger voters, the White House should be his.
3. Identity politics is a losing game
Mark Lilla, an American political scientist at Colombia University, wrote a piece in The New York Times two weeks after the election titled ‘The End of Identity Liberalism’. In it, he said:
“…she [Hillary Clinton] tended on the campaign trail to… slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, LGBT and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded.”
Clinton pandered to various identity groups, using the newfound language of wokeness. She infamously placed half of Trump's supporters in a “basket of deplorables” labelling them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, you name it”. If it isn’t already, it should be general rule that calling approximately a quarter of the country’s voters racist is not going to increase your chances of being elected! This rhetoric from Clinton may have driven disaffected liberals and independents into Trump’s arms. It also helped mobilise Trump’s base, igniting a dangerous level of white identity politics among Trump's more extreme supporters.
Biden himself is not immune to playing identity politics. In May, he told the black co-host of a radio show that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”. These kinds of games will not be a successful tactic in winning back the Obama-Trump voters, or getting black voters to turn out for him. As Mark Lilla emphasised in his 2016 article, identity politics “never wins election - but can lose them”. Something for Joe Biden to remember.
4. Winning the electoral college is what matters
The 2016 election was strange for a number of reasons. One of these was that despite losing the electoral college, Clinton won nationally by nearly 3 million votes. In the years that have followed some Democrat’s have called the electoral college unfair. They argue Trump’s election was, in some sense, undemocratic, as it went against he wishes of most Americans. But they need to play by the rules of the game if they want to win. The point of this particular game is to win a majority in the electoral college, not to win the popular vote. There are advantages and disadvantages to the electoral college system, which can be explored another time, but there are valid reasons for its existence. Whether you win the ECVs of a state by one vote or one million vote is largely irrelevant.
If Biden wants to win in November, he must focus on states which Trump flipped in 2016, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Overall in these three states, Trump received only 100,000 more votes than Clinton, but they won him the election. Florida will also play a huge role, as always. If Biden wins Florida, he will likely win the Presidency. But pandering to liberals in the North East and on the West coast will not win him this election - he needs a more comprehensive strategy.
It’s easy to become complacent that President Trump has no chance come November. It’s easy to look at the polls and say it’s all wrapped up for Biden. But the same could have been said in 2016. And Clinton lost… The Democrat's can't make the same mistakes again.
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