Trump should know his demographic well before he starts speaking

People are always astounded when I say that Americans are a lot more polite than Brits. It’s one of the first things I bring up when I’m asked about differences between the two countries (which I am at surprisingly regular intervals, most recently by a group of NYU students who had me as a Zoom-based visiting lecturer for a quick half hour). For some reason, we scheming Brits have managed to spread a rumour round the globe that we are all closely related to the royals and graduates of strict schools of etiquette. As far as many Americans are concerned, we’re refined and perhaps even a little stuck-up. In other words, they see us in the same light we often see the French.

Of course, as any woman who’s been yelled at by a man in a white van on a summer evening can tell you, the streets of London are not teeming with people just desperate to invite you round for a cup of tea and a crumpet. The truth is that Americans are much more careful with their words (“damn”, “hell” and “ass” are all legitimate swearwords over here that would often be starred out in American newspapers and certainly never uttered by Republican politicians or on Fox News) and much more concerned with general niceties than your average person living under the flag of St George. Much of them are descended from the most puritanical Europeans, after all, who came in search of a more religious and righteous brave new world.

Such puritanism also factors into their views on abortion (even the most progressive liberals get uncomfortable when you talk about the issue, and the fact that most reproductive health clinics have security guards on the door and blacked-out windows speaks for itself) and the presumed beliefs of their fellow citizens (“atheist” is a bad word here, and most people will assume you are a Christian unless explicitly told otherwise. Certainly they will assume you have a shared sense that there “is a God”.) But there are also a lot of unexpected instances of opinion in America, ones that many British people are surprised to be told about.

One of those unexpected instances concerns Latin American voters in Florida. Florida is a swing state and thus endures a lot of campaigning during any election cycle, never mind one as divisive and close in the polls as this one. At the moment, the Sunshine State is showing a modest lead for Biden – when I say modest, I mean single digits which could swing at any moment. Voters who live in Florida, many of whom are Cuban or refugees from other Central American countries, have fled regimes which call themselves communist or socialist. Fearmongering around the Democratic Party (which, for the record, is about as communist as the UK’s Conservatives) being “socialist” is a favourite campaign tactic of Republicans in the state. Many Latinx voters in the region would rather vote Republican – even if they have to grit their teeth and do it, in the case of Donald Trump – than potentially leave the door open for a system which destroyed their own home country and from which they had to flee.

It seems something unexpected has happened this year, though: Trump may have taken his rhetoric too far. When asked at a press conference last week about protocol if he lost the election, he flimflammed about “getting rid of ballots” and couldn’t promise a “peaceful transition”. His dictator-style speech alarmed a lot of those Latin American voters, and now it seems they may be turning to Joe Biden instead.

Trump, in turn, has been doubling down on the evangelical vote and trying to convince Christians to vote for him “for the good of Christian values”. He has reached out to black Americans, who are more likely to be religious than their white counterparts, in particular and flirted with fringe figures who call abortion a “hidden holocaust” of “black babies”. However, Trump’s view of black Americans doesn’t gel with the numbers and seems to be based more on old stereotypes than anything else. The latest Gallup polls showed black Americans are just as likely as non-black Americans to support legal access to abortion; it wasn’t this way 15 or 20 years ago, but it is now. Indeed, black Americans are now more likely to support access to abortion “in all circumstances” than non-black voters.

It just goes to show that you should know the demographic you’re talking about before you start building a campaign around them, especially if many of your opinions seem to have their basis in prejudice and hearsay.