Is the GOP Becoming a Racially Diverse Party?

Newsletter July 21, 2022

No. At least, not yet.

Photo of a President Trump rally for 2020

A growing number of pundits and analysts are arguing that the Republican Party has expanded its coalition, drawing from a much more racially diverse group of voters. David French, for instance, recently suggested that the 2020 election signaled a coming demographic realignment for the two political parties.

“The Democrats got whiter, the Republicans got more diverse, and now all the assumptions are scrambled. Donald Trump lost the popular vote by a far wider margin than he did in 2016, but he did materially better with Hispanic, Asian, and black voters. In fact, Trump did better than Romney with nonwhite voters in 2016 (an improvement then mainly attributed to Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses), and he improved on that showing in 2020. What was once seen as an aberration now looks like a trend.”

It’s an intriguing notion, but the evidence that the GOP is growing more diverse is actually pretty limited.

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