It's Still the Economy, Stupid

LEADING UP TO the 2024 election, pundits, pollsters, and political operatives discussed the electorate as a bundle of distinct race and gender categories, sometimes with even narrower subcategorizations attached. How would black women vote? What about Latino men? Suburban, college-educated women?

- Peter Suderman

Some of this was useful for analyzing electoral subgroups. But the assump- tion, especially in left-friendly outlets, was that the best way to win over specific demographic categories was to target them with direct race- and gender-based appeals. Democrats seemed to engage in this practice reflexively, dividing them- selves into semi-ironic groups such as White Dudes for Harris.

The Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, a woman with black and Indian ancestry, rarely emphasized her own race or gender. But she didn't distance herself from this approach either. When she seemed to be losing potential votes from black men, her campaign rolled out a series of initiatives billed as targeting black male voters specif- ically: loans for business creation, a plan to protect cryptocurrency assets, and federal legalization of marijuana. But these were just general initiatives the campaign's mes- saging arm reframed as providing benefits specifically for black men.

She might have been better off pitching her agenda more broadly. Even as Demo- crats worked on targeted outreach to nar- rowly defined groups based on race and gender, the race's top issues for voters were economic. Inflation, particularly the cost of groceries and gas, defined the election.