Next month’s presidential election is shaping up to be an extremely close one that could come down to the wire.
As such, both GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris have been honing in on important battleground states that could swing the election one way or the other.
While many of the larger voting blocs often get much of the attention in these states, a new report from Newsweek suggests that three often overlooked voting blocs could ultimately decide the fate of the presidential election.
The news outlet says that Latino evangelicals, African Americans who live in rural areas and Polish Americans could tip the results of the election one way or the other in these battleground states.
The reason for this is that these groups often have distinct voting patterns and concerns, so winning appealing to those concerns could end up winning a candidate that entire voting bloc. That could be especially important in this upcoming election, seeing as President Joe Biden won some states in 2020 by less than 15,000 votes.
Polish Americans total roughly 3% of the population in the U.S. That being said, they have significant concentrations in some of the key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
For instance, in Wisconsin, they represent a little more than 8% of the population. Biden only won that state by a little less than 21,000 votes in the last presidential election.
Historically, Polish Ameircans swap between voting for one party or the other based on their specific concerns in that particular election, though in recent years, the bloc has traditionally supported Democrats.
Rural African Americans create a large voting bloc in some southern states such as South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia. In 20202, Black voters played a huge role in handing Georgia to Biden.
A recent poll from ActiVote showed that Trump is ahead of Harris among rural voters, 92% of Black voters sided with Biden in the 2020 election.
The Pew Research Center reports that 19% of the U.S. population is Latino, and 15% identify as being evangelical. The group as a whole tends to side with conservatives on social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
According to the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference’s president, Samuel Rodriguez, Latino evangelicals are “not beholden to any political party’s agenda.”
That being said, he added that the group’s key issues are economic growth, reducing “unnecessary regulation,” a “comprehensive and compassionate approach” to immigration “that prioritizes both security and humanity,” freedom of expression, religious liberty and parental rights.
Katie Gaddini, who works at University College London, U.K. as an associate professor in sociology, also told Newsweek:
“Latino evangelicals have become an increasingly important voting bloc, especially as their numbers are growing across the country, and more and more Latin Americans are leaving Catholicism and converting to evangelicalism.
“Research shows that they tend to vote Republican, as their views on immigration line up with the current party platform.”