One of my favorite things about our series of focus groups is that our participants frequently challenge my assumptions about people, about the world and about history. In our latest installment, for example, we spoke with nine men who voted for Joe Biden in 2020. We wanted to see how they felt about the president a few years into his term and whether they'd support him again this November. In the course of working with the group and preparing the feature, I found myself thinking about how and why Biden narrowed the gender gap among male voters between himself and Donald Trump in the last presidential election. I'd thought that Trump, the picture of a kind of American masculinity that resonates with millions of men across the country, would have comfortably led among men in 2020, as he did in 2016. Similarly, I thought this group of voters might have soured on the president, whose poll numbers these days consistently trail Trump's. But most of the men in our group said they planned to vote for Biden again this year. Several praised legislative accomplishments like the CHIPS Act, the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act; others praised Biden's personality, describing him as a good person, the kind of guy who'd be at the center of a cookout. That's not to say our participants didn't offer criticism. One participant wished the president had pushed harder on student loan cancellations, and several mentioned what might be the most common criticism of the president: his age and the fumbles, gaffes and mishaps that are often associated with it. Still, the group had few, if any, nice things to say about Trump. Asked if they wished there were different Democratic and Republican nominees, all of our participants said yes. Most of these men, though, weren't letting that wish get in the way of supporting Biden again. We won't know until November whether millions of others in the country will do the same. Read more from the focus group's conversation:
Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Opinion Today: These 9 men backed Biden in 2020. How will they vote next?
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