With vote counting and certification for the 2020 presidential election behind us, national and local news outlets have largely framed public understanding of what the electorate looked like this year.
Media organizations kept track of key facts like the proportion of votes cast by mail versus in-person, the rejection rate of absentee ballots, turnout rates in given counties and states, as well as the gender, education, and age of people who voted in the election. And one of the most critical categories for voter self-identification was race.
Research shows that race and ethnicity play a big role in political attitudes. In the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, there was overwhelming support for each candidate along racial and ethnic lines. According to exit polls, 92% of Black people in Pennsylvania voted for President-elect Joe Biden. And 69% of Latino voters supported Biden in the state.
Racial breakdowns of the vote reflect a shift from 2016. Biden got 89% of the Black male vote in the state, compared to the 83% who voted for Hillary Clinton. Nationally, Hispanic/Latino women voters produced an uptick in support for Biden: 69% compared with 65% for Clinton in 2016, according to data from the National Election Pool.
But strategies for accurately estimating voter turnout by race vary by state and by media organizations. In Pennsylvania, voter registration records do not include any individual-level data on race. That means individual counties in the state can not provide exact race-specific breakdowns about turnout.