President Donald Trump managed to win a narrow electoral victory in 2016 despite displays of virulent racism, from saying a Hispanic judge can't be fair to calling Mexicans rapists to doubling down on his belief that the Central Park Five were guilty.
With the 2020 election around the corner, Trump seems to be betting on the idea that he won because of these racist episodes, and so is continuing to lob them, telling Democratic congresswomen of color to "go back" where they came from and whipping up his base with talk of immigrants as an "invasion."
But as GQ noted on Tuesday, a new poll shows that Trump's strategy may be a big mistake.
The poll, conducted by Reuters/Ipsos, tests respondents on racial liberalism by asking them things like whether they believe Black, Hispanic, and Asian people are treated fairly, or whether they subscribe to racial stereotypes — and then asked them how likely to vote they are.
The result was that voters who had fewer biases against people of color said they were more likely to vote in 2020 than voters who had more. In particular, 82 percent of voters without anti-Black biases said they were likely to vote, compared to 70 percent who said this in 2016.
Such a result would be consistent with the outcome of the 2018 election, where Trump tried to tip the public sentiment back to Republicans by frantically highlighting the approach of Central American migrant caravans, only to suffer the biggest House wipeout his party has seen since Watergate.
The upshot is that if Trump leans into his racism, he may struggle to win a second term.
