Sunita Sohrabji and Pilar Marrero Ethnic Media Services
In a country that is polarized and wounded by the COVID-19 and divisive leadership, massive voter turnout resulted in a close election where Democrat Joe Biden was pushed toward the finish line by large majorities of African-American voters.
On Saturday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were projected winners in the 2020 election, relegating Donald Trump to a single term, which he refused to relinquish; subsequently, their lawyers sought to legally maneuver to argue election fraud.
The Democratic presidential candidacy achieved its goal primarily because communities of African descent rejected the Trump Administration by wide margins, explained experts who discussed the numbers, history and motivations of elections in U.S. communities of African descent at an Ethnic Media Services media briefing.
Election-eve and exit polls confirmed that most white voters voted for President Donald Trump, but Asian-American, Latino and African-American voters turned out in record numbers to oust the president and promote the first African-American woman to reach the White House.
According to the Latino Decisions poll on the eve of the U.S. election, 56% of white people voted for Trump. A CNN exit poll found a similar number: 57% of white people voted for the current president.
However, voters of African descent told a different story. According to the LD poll, 70% Latinos, 89% African Americans, 68% Asians and 60% Native Americans voted for Biden.
"I want to thank people of African descent and their communities for saving our democracy," Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, said at a November 6 briefing organized by Ethnic Media Services.
"As a white man, I come from a community that voted mostly for Donald Trump. And, if it weren't for the African American, Latino and Asian American community in the Pacific Islands, we wouldn't be celebrating the victory we are today," said Sharry.
It was a close election, a stumbling block that lasted from Tuesday 3 November until Saturday morning, 7 November, when the official numbers made it clear that Biden-Harris had won the necessary 270 electoral votes.
The polarisation and the states in which Biden's lead was taken made it clear that democratic votes by the Afro-descendant community played an important role in the results.
Stephen Nuño-Perez, senior analyst at Latino Decisions, whose company conducted a pre-election survey of ethnic voters in key states, said that "it is extremely difficult to win an election when minorities and Latinos have been mobilized in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Albuquerque.
"Voters in the Latino community were critical in turning Arizona around," said Nuno Perez of Latino Decisions, pointing to counties like Maricopa, Pima and Yuma, which have significant Latino populations.
Latino voters also excelled in Florida, handing Biden victories in Miami-Dade, Tampa Bay, Orlando and Broward County. In Miami, Cuban Americans gave their support to Trump.
Nuño warned about taking some outliers, like the Cuban vote in Miami-Dade and a couple of counties near the border in Texas where Trump did much better with Latinos, to project that into a larger narrative.
"Yes, Latinos are not a monolith, and yes, they are a monolith, they respond to certain kinds of messages, and nationally, seventy percent of Latinos voted for Biden. That's a clear pattern," he said.
Theodore Johnson, senior researcher at the Brennan Center for Justice, said a summer of racial justice protests, coupled with disproportionate numbers of COVID-19s and record levels of unemployment in African-American communities, drove black voter turnout in record numbers to remove Donald Trump from office.
"That explains why we're seeing Atlanta change to Michigan, Philadelphia change to Pennsylvania, Milwaukee change to Wisconsin, and Detroit change to Michigan," he said. "That's the enthusiasm and power of the African-American vote.
"In general, voters of African descent were pragmatic," Johnson said, "pointing to South Carolina where they chose Joe Biden over Kamala Harris or Corey Booker. "They chose the candidate they thought had the best chance of winning over white voters.
Johnson attributed the small increase in African-American men who voted for Trump to African-American Republicans who had chosen to vote for the first African-American president in 2008 and 2012 and were now returning to the Republican Party.
Asian Americans turned out in significant numbers for the 2020 election, said John Yang, president and chief executive officer of Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Some 300,000 voted for the first time.
"Exit and pre-election polls showed that there was much more enthusiasm for voting," Yang said. Between 65 percent and 70 percent of AAPI voters supported Biden, and 30 percent voted for Trump, which is consistent with the 2012 and 2016 voting patterns.
While one-third of Asian Americans live in the 10 most contested states, it would be easy to attribute the margin of victory in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania to the AAPI vote. But Yang said it was the common good that brought African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans together that gave Biden the margin of victory in those states.
Yang recalled June 16, 2015, when Trump descended an escalator in the Trump Towers to announce his candidacy for the White House: "That was a turning point for me and changed the trajectory of my career. When he talked about illegals being rapists, gangsters and criminals, he was talking about me because, at one point, I was an undocumented immigrant.
Mark Trahant, editor of Indian Country Today, spoke of the impact of the Native American vote, noting that a large number of Native Americans are running for office and that next year's Congress will hold a caucus with three Republicans and three Democrats. "This will put a bipartisan spin on Native affairs," he said.
Native Americans were also elected to state legislatures, including Arizona and Kansas.
Sharry of the America's Voice said the massive minority vote was also a rejection of the issue of Trump's cornerstone: xenophobia and racism.
"The American people were forced by Donald Trump and his extremism to decide, and they decided to side with the refugees and immigrants. This is a statement of what a multiracial majority in the United States said through this election. They said, "We want to be a welcoming country. We don't like the separation of families from Trump.
