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POLL: White Liberals Most Bothered by Joe Biden's Whiteness

Most black, Hispanic Democrats do not care

April 21, 2020

The only Democratic voters significantly bothered by Joe Biden's race and gender are white liberals with graduate degrees, according to a Pew survey published this week.

According to the poll, a majority of Democratic voters are not concerned that their party's presumptive nominee for president is an elderly white man. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said Biden's age and race do not bother them. Among black voters, 72 percent said they weren't bothered by Biden's race and gender, while 70 percent of Hispanic voters said the same.

Concern over Biden's whiteness was considerably higher among white Democrats, nearly half of whom said they were bothered that their party's nominee was not a minority. A majority of liberal Democrats reported being bothered by Biden's whiteness, as did 58 percent of Democrats with a postgraduate education. Among Democrats with a high school education or less, 76 percent said they didn't care about Biden's race or gender, the highest result among any of the demographics measured.

Pew even broke down the numbers by which candidate each voter supported in the early stages of the Democratic primary. The results were not surprising. Early Biden supporters were the least likely to care about the former vice president's race and gender, while 73 percent of Elizabeth Warren supporters were bothered by the fact that the likely Democratic nominee was not at least going to be an elderly white woman.

Warren was one of the first Democratic primary candidates to use the term "Latinx" on the campaign trail. The non-gendered alternative to "Latino" and "Latina" is most popular among white liberals with graduate degrees and left-wing activists. A 2019 poll of Hispanic voters found that just 2 percent prefer the politically correct "Latinx," while 68 percent said they preferred "Latino/Latina" or "Hispanic."

Biden will be the Democratic Party's first white male nominee since John Kerry in 2004 and the first Democratic nominee without an Ivy League degree since Walter Mondale in 1984.