Iowa perfectly represents the white face of the 2024 GOP voter.
The state is 89 percent white according to the 2020 Census. That fits with the Pew Research Center’s finding that as of 2022, 85 percent of GOP voters are white.
And that tracks with the fact that Donald Trump won 57 percent of the white vote in the 2020 presidential election. President Joe Biden won the election but got only 42 percent of the white vote.
Biden overcame his deficit with white voters by winning 87 percent of the black vote and 66 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Those big margins among minorities allowed Biden to win the nationwide popular vote and the electoral college to claim the White House. Trump later suggested the election was stolen and still claims there was voter fraud in areas where minorities voted.
Most Republicans — mostly white people — tell pollsters they buy Trump’s lie, based on the idea that minority voters cheated.
One week from today, the Iowa caucuses will be held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at a time when the nation looks less and less like Iowa.
According to the Census Bureau, America today is 19 percent Latino, 14 percent Black, and 6 percent Asian. Iowa’s nearly 90 percent white population is distinctly larger than the 59 percent of all Americans who identify as solely white.
That’s why GOP candidates campaigning in Iowa speak carefully to the white voters there.
But even when they are doing their best to navigate the politics........