Why Did Joe Biden win the 2020 Democratic Primary?

One of the lessons for progressives after the 2016 primary is that it’s impossible to win the Democratic Primary while getting crushed with African American voters. Bernie knew this, and to his credit, spent a lot of time staffing a genuinely diverse campaign that brought racial justice issues to the forefront.

Similarly, the other campaigns in the race that were either explicitly progressive or at least quasi-progressive saw that success with voters of Color required a strong emphasis on racial justice.

In theory, this message should have drawn a sharp contrast with Biden, whose own record on race and cultural issues was much more conservative than the rest of the field. Basically all of the liberal and progressive candidates in the race supported decriminalizing border entry, which Biden opposed. Kamala Harris attacked Biden on his opposition to busing as well.

However, with the primary almost in the rear-view mirror and Biden the presumptive winner, it’s clear that his rivals’ attempts to turn to the left on issues of culture and diversity did not win enough African American voters.

To understand why the majority of African American voters powered Biden to victory while rejecting the more progressive candidates in the race, let’s go back to what we know about openness. The general rule is that high-openness people are liberals and low-openness people are conservatives.

But this rule does not apply well to African Americans. Since almost all African American voters are Democrats, there are millions of low-openness African American Democrats. This is not true of White voters — there are very few low-openness White Democrats. Low-openness Whites are just Republicans now.

Subsequently, African American Democrats are much more psychographically diverse than their White progressive peers — they’re on average much older, more skeptical of radical change, and more religious.

There is, of course, a genuine “Black Left” that is, like the Left generally, very open to new experiences and change. But as Perry Bacon Jr. writes:

What’s different for the black left — as opposed to the white left — is that its views are very deeply in tension with the broader black Democratic electorate.

Public opinion polling backs this up as well — on issues of culture, diversity, and immigration (issues classically correlated with openness) Democrats of Color, especially African American Democrats, are much more conservative than their White peers. This makes sense given what we know: Whites who are skeptical of diversity are already Trump voters, while voters of Color skeptical of cultural change still view the Democrats as their best bet.

The scale of the divide between white progressives and Democrats of Color is striking, however.

Writing for the New York Times, Eric Kaufmann points to startling examples of White Progressives holding significantly more progressive attitudes towards diversity than the average Democrat of Color.

56% of White Democrats want to increase immigration levels, but only 32% of African American Democrats do.

83% of White Democrats believe racial diversity made America better, but only 54% of African American Democrats do.

91% of White Democrats with a post-graduate degree believed it was racist to limit non-White immigration to “maintain the White share of the population.” 73% of all White Democrats agree. Only 58% of Democrats of Color do

The conventional wisdom of progressives was that the key to winning Black voters was to emphasize themes of racial justice and diversity. This makes sense because progressive activists of Color are likely high-openness themselves and probably believe that a message of diversity and pluralism is effective.

However, emphasizing diversity, especially immigration, is the wrong strategy for winning African American voters, many of whom are the most conservative voters in the Democratic electorate. In fact, polling suggests that emphasizing diversity was an actively counter-productive strategy that harmed the candidacies of progressive candidates.