Why Trump's improvement among minority voters doesn't yet signal 'a sea change' for conservatives

Exit polls are heavily suggesting President Trump performed better among minority voters in 2020 against Joe Biden than he did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.

That has raised the question of whether the Republican Party or the conservative movement at large in the United States could be in for a significant demographic shift. But The New York Times' Ross Douthat thinks that idea may be premature, since the exit polls — which he and others have noted aren't particularly trustworthy anyway — don't actually show a major swing among minority voters.

Exit poll data compiled by Edison Research, for example, shows that Clinton garnered support from 88 percent of Black voters, with Biden only dropping a tick to 87 percent. Based on those data sets, Trump did cut into the margins among minority voters four years later thanks to an increase in support, but that didn't necessarily come at the expense of the Democratic Party, overall (regionally, there were clear shifts).

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Ultimately, one common takeaway has been that supposed voting blocs are not monolithic, making it difficult to predict how the political landscape will shape up going forward.