This subject came up again in the discussion of a recent paper by Hakeem Jefferson about the “Black conservative paradox.” In surveys, around 30 percent of Black voters identify themselves as conservatives, but their rates of voting for the party of the right are obviously a lot lower than that. Jefferson argues that traditional conservative-liberal ideology scales aren’t a valid construct; many simply don’t see the connection to partisan politics. But an ideological scale built on the positions voters take on issues lets us see this through a different lens. Here, there are a microscopic number of Black ideological conservatives—2 percent. That’s far less than the 10 percent or so Republicans get in elections. But Black voters aren’t that ideological on the left either: just 15 percent qualify as consistently liberal. The vast majority are in the center. And among these less ideological Black voters, Joe Biden won 91 percent.

Nonwhite voters in the middle are the future battleground of American politics. There are a dwindling number of white swing voters, but a large number of nonwhite voters with policy views in the middle or even leaning to the right, and these are groups where Republicans currently underperform. Among Black voters, they underperform for specific historical reasons. But Trump’s gains with nonwhites in 2020 showed that a day of more ideologically polarized nonwhite politics might be coming, with shifts of about 40 percent towards him among self-identified conservatives in every nonwhite group.

(via Memeorandum)