Why Did Trump Gain More Minority Votes in 2020?

 

Katie Vojvodic

Mr. Roddy

IHSS 

24 January 2021    

Why Did Trump Gain More Minority Votes in 2020?

            Though the topic was intriguing, the article I read on why Donald Trump picked up more minority votes in the 2020 election than he did in the previous presidential election left many questions unanswered. The author does a very good job going into detail about the percentages of the 2016 election votes versus those of the 2020 election and touches on every group of people considered a minority and how their votes compared to the last election (for example, Trump gained 4 percentage points with African Americans while Biden gained 8 percentage points from white men). However, the author failed to answer the question that was plastered right at the top of the article: why? The text does not name any ideas or speculations as to why these percentages shifted and what that could mean for Trump's campaign. 

        Since the article did not provide theories as to why Trump picked up more minority votes, I came up with a theory of my own based on the information that I gathered from the news during the early stages of the election process. I think that Trump's surprising support from minorities may be attributed to the efforts of state governments to suppress votes in liberal areas. For example, the government of Texas attempted to reduce the number of mail-in ballots in Harris County, which is known to be a liberal area. Governer Abbot planned to have only one ballot box for the entire 1,777 square mile county, which would have reduced the access. The ballot box was also supposed to be stationed in a predominantly white neighborhood. If this had happened, votes of liberal minority groups would have been suppressed. Therefore, had Abbot's plan succeeded, we could have expected there to be a noticeable change in the proportion of votes from the Harris County population. Though this plan to suppress votes did not take hold in Harris County, the intimidation it produced among other obstacles facing voters most likely made a difference in how many minority votes were counted.

        I was overall disappointed that the article failed to provide answers to its core question, but it was still interesting to learn about these changes and come up with my own theories as to why the results of the election turned out the way they did.

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