The NY Times, in a run up to the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, is publishing a series of opinion pieces looking back at the death and aftermath.
One of those opinion pieces has some very interesting polling data, Support for Black Lives Matter Surged Last Year. Did It Last? The opinion part of the opinion piece is pretty much what you would expect from the NY Times, numerous malicious side-swipes at Republicans, such as casually describing it as “a party often characterized by its racial insensitivity and antagonism toward racial minorities.” So the opinion part is pretty worthless, but the data part is important.
The point of the article is that the nation has failed to follow through on a “racial reckoning,” and whites and Republicans are to blame, with BLM support plummeting.
“Like other racial groups, white Americans were more supportive of B.L.M. following Mr. Floyd’s murder. This sentiment, however, did not last long and, as with Republicans, support eventually plunged. This movement among Republicans and white Americans helps us understand why aggregate support for Black Lives Matter has waned since last summer.
In both cases, the deterioration in support is noteworthy because we do not merely observe a return to pre-Floyd opinion levels. Rather, since last summer, Republicans and white people have actually become less supportive of Black Lives Matter than they were before the death of George Floyd — a trend that seems unlikely to reverse anytime soon.”
But the other charts and data shed light that perhaps this is not just whites and Republicans. After Floyd’s death, support for BLM surged among whites and Hispanics to the extent that net favorability was higher for a period before falling precipitously in the following months. Here’s the chart:
The article does not even try to explore the precipitous drop in support among Hispanics, or “other” (which presumably includes Asians). Or the drop even among blacks, though not as pronounced as among other groups.
The answer might lie in another chart, which shows the peak of net support being in early June, when “protests” spread widely:
Of course, those “protests” included hundreds of riots and billions of dollars in property and business damage, in addition to over a dozen deaths and countless injuries. This sustained surge in violence, not just from the riots themselves but from the decline of law and order in cities under Democrat control, could “tip” upcoming elections towards “law and order” Republicans, argues liberal Ezra Klein.
Violence is the second most important issue to Democrats in the NYC mayoral primary. — behind coronavirus but ahead of housing affordability and racial inequality.The politics of this could really tip, and not just in cities — if these numbers keep getting worse, then as with Nixon and Reagan in the 70s and 80s, it could bring “law and order” conservatives (including Trump) back to power in 2024.
Perhaps — and I think likely — the reality of the BLM movement in action did not meet expectations. That’s particularly true since the riots coincided with and were followed by a wave of racist actions under the umbrella of Critical Race Theory’s offshoot “antiracism.”
While the Black Lives Matter movement remains an incredibly powerful force, fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars, it is losing popularity across demographic groups.
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