2020 looks like it will be less polarized than 2016

What’s the word for this? Dealignment? Re-realignment? Reverse polarization?

Joe Biden’s campaign has had two primary messages: fire Donald Trump, and unite to heal the country. It looks like he is about to be successful on both fronts. Here’s a quick post on trying to learn something the latest polls.

As of Saturday night, two full days before the election, Biden is up by roughly 8 points nationally in the polling averages and election forecasts — a high but not completely foolproof margin — and up by similarly optimistic amounts in the key swing states. He will very probably be our next president. It is time to think about what that result will mean for our country.

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I’ll cut to the chase: The more interesting finding from the polls that show Biden ahead is that they suggest he’s winning as a result of a slightly less polarized electorate than in 2016. Along racial, educational and generational lines, Biden is doing better among voters that Hillary Clinton lost by a bigger margin in 2016.

The most striking shift is by race. White voters, who voted for Trump by about 20 percentage points in 2016, give him a roughly 11-point smaller margin this time around. Meanwhile Hispanic and black votes have shifted a bit to the right or held steady. Based on the data I’ve seen from YouGov and some live-caller polls, that shift among white voters has come more from non-college educated whites than educated ones. That represents a bit of de-polarization along educational lines too.

This is not all that surprising. In contrast to Hillary Clinton’s diverse and future-oriented campaign, Joe Biden has run as a unifying moderate, a man that older and whiter folks can feel comfortable voting for to bring sense back to the nation. The first evidence we saw that this might be successful was in the Democratic primary, when Biden outperformed Clinton the most in the rural areas of the Midwest that have higher concentrations of working-class white voters. Now we’re seeing it in the general too.

But while this is not surprising, it is still important — maybe even an optimistic sign for our democracy. The chance that many white voters could revolt against the incumbent GOP president that they voted for is a point toward a functioning electoral connection. Of course, there are many things to be down about, but I’d happily trade less racial polarization for… whatever we have now. If Biden is right that we can unite for a better America, that’s something we should celebrate.