Both academics and journalists often talk about elections in terms of "coalitions." A coalition is when two groups agree to work together. In a multiparty system, you often have coalitions, where the representatives from two parties agree to vote the same way. A party can withdraw from the coalition and switch to voting with someone else. So the language of coalitions suggests discrete groups that can suddenly switch sides. That leads to several tendencies that are usually mistakes:
1. The idea that only certain groups shift from one election to the next, or at least that they move a lot more than all the others. Usually most groups move in the same direction: e. g., if the Democrats do 5% better than last election among men, they will also do about 5% better among women. There are cases when two groups move differently, like people with and without college degrees in the 2016 election, but they are unusual.
2. A focus on groups defined by a combination of characteristics. For example, the New York Times had a story entitled "As suburban women turn to Democrats, many suburban men stand with Trump." It started talking about suburban men and women, but then turned to talking about college-educated men and women. But either way the idea was that that it wasn't just men and women, but something more complex.
3, The idea that there is a "winning coalition"--e. g., some of Trump's supporters say that because he won with a "working-class coalition," they don't have to worry about suburban college graduates who used to vote Republican. You can win or lose with any kind of "coalition"--what matters is how many votes you get, not which groups your votes come from. There may be a germ of truth in the idea that some "coalitions" are better than others--people often tend to think of politics in group terms and may support or oppose a party because they associate it with particular groups--but that's a more subtle point.
This is an introduction to a comparison that is not all that interesting: how Democrats did among different groups in the 2016 and 2018 vote for House of Representatives, according to CNN exit polls.
2016 2018 Change
Men 43% 49% +6%
Women 54% 59% +5%
White 38% 44% +6%
Black 88% 90% +2%
Latino/a 67% 69% +2%
Asian-Am. 65% 77% +12%
Other 56% 54% -2%
White Men 33% 39% +6%
White Women 43% 49% +6%
W College Women 49% 59% +10%
W non-C Women 35% 42% +7%
W Coll Men 38% 47% +9%
W non-C Men 27% 32% +5
White Coll. 44% 53% +9%
White non-C 31% 37% +6
Non-W C 71% 77% +6%
Non-W non-C 77% 76% -1%
under $30,000 56% 63% +7%
$30-49,999 55% 57% +2%
$50-99,999 47% 52% +5%
$100-199,999 46% 47% +1%
$200,000+ 44% 47% +3%
Married Men 37% 48% +11%
Married Women 48% 54% +6%
unmarried M 49% 54% +5%
unmarried W 63% 66% +3%
Veterans 36% 41% +5%
non-Vets 51% 56% +5%
The Democrats did better among almost all groups, and the gains are usually similar (despite sampling error). Note that the gains are about the same among men and women--it's easy to think of reasons why women might have swung more strongly against the Republicans than men, but apparently it didn't happen. There was a somewhat stronger shift among college graduates than non-graduates--that is, the education gap grew. There are a few other cases where the movements were different--married and unmarried people (maybe*), Asian-Americans and Latinos. But basically, the story of the election was that the Democrats gained among all sorts of people.
*The numbers don't fit: a shift of +5 among unmarried men, +11 among married men, but +6 among men as a whole. About 60% of men were married in both years.
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