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    • Two polls find two outcomes among Native voters
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    Two polls find two outcomes among Native voters

    Online Niel Posted on

    Native News Online released the results of a nationwide survey of likely Indigenous voters October 22 that raised eyebrows among many political observers. According to the national survey of 860 American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians, former President Donald Trump holds a 7.4% lead over Vice President Kamala Harris.

    Another poll released Oct. 28 by Northern Arizona University tells a far different tale of how Native voters in Arizona may vote. That one showed Harris with a 35% lead over Trump.

    Even though voter preferences have flip-flopped, what tribal members identified as key issues were mostly the same: the cost of living and the economy, water rights and tribal sovereignty.

    The directors of the two polls agreed that identifying Native people for these surveys can be challenging, as CNN found in 2020. That’s when the network used the term “something else” to denote the small number of Native people it had managed to reach during the 2020 election. And that was after tribal leaders asked that Indigenous voters not be identified as “Other.”

    Native News Online: Trump leads Harris

    The Native News Online poll, conducted in September with Medill’s School of Journalism at Northwestern University and survey firm Qualtrics, questioned Native voters across the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii.

    Levi Rickert, publisher and editor of the news outlet, and Stephen Hersh, professor at Medill, said the poll was supposed to be the second of a series of four. However, when President Joe Biden pulled out of the race in July, they decided not to release those results, instead focusing on Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid.

    Rickert, a citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, said he had surveyed readers of his online news site during the 2020 election cycle, but Hersh pointed out that the response was heavily skewed towards Democratic voters.

    “This time we got a roughly even split of party affiliations, which was more realistic,” he said.

    With all but three states accounted for, 860 likely voters representing 230 tribes and the Native Hawaiian community were asked for their choice in the presidential election, what issues are important, what Native issues are important, and which candidate they felt would best take care of Indian Country issues.

    Nationally, the survey found that 44.88% of likely Native voters favored Trump, while Harris trailed with 37.44%. Interestingly, 8.6% of respondents were still undecided. The rest replied none of the above or indicated they would vote for marginal candidates such as Jill Stein or Cornel West.

    Just like the general population, Native voters identified the high cost of living and inflation (16.2%) and jobs (10.8%) as their top priorities, with issues particular to Indigenous communities coming in close behind. The top three on tribes’ minds were protection of sacred sites (17.18%), while a tad over 15% are concerned about preserving tribal sovereignty. Missing and murdered Indigenous persons also came in strong at 14.38%.

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    NAU: Harris, Gallego by a landslide in Arizona tribal communities

    Unlike the national poll, the NAU survey stuck to likely Native voters in Arizona. And those results were quite different. The poll, conducted Oct. 19 through 24, surveyed 400 voters with questions similar to the national poll: key issues, candidate preference and outreach. Those polled also gave their advance opinion about President Joe Biden’s apology to Native Americans for the government’s policies on Indian boarding schools.

    One of the starkest contrasts between Arizona and nationwide: 64% of likely Native voters here prefer Harris, while Trump garnered just 29%. Although 91% of Native American Republicans’ support went to Trump, Democrats and independents (94 and 59% respectively) heavily outnumbered them.

    NAU professor Stephen Nuño-Perez, who directed the poll, noted that he and his team used digital, text, phone and online panels to complete the survey. Respondents were matched to voter files to verify they were registered voters. Nuño-Perez said about 40% of respondents said they had already voted.

    In the race for the open US Senate seat between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego, the spread was even wider: Lake garnered just 24%, while Gallego led by 43 points, with 67% of respondents saying they plan to vote or have already voted for him. And, while 77% of registered Republicans in Indian Country said they would vote for Lake, 19% indicated they were switching parties to choose Gallego.

    Native people in Arizona express similar concerns to their national Native neighbors: the cost of living, inflation and jobs were their top issues. They also named housing costs and affordability as their third-highest concern. Those were almost evenly spread across party affiliations.

    Respondents also identified environmental and water issues as top of mind. Support for expanding clean water infrastructure to tribal lands had broad appeal across party lines, with 98% of Republicans, 97% of Democrats and 90% of Independent voters weighing in.

    One other key difference between the national and state polls: Indigenous people in Arizona said that Harris and the Democrats care a great deal more about Native Americans (57% total) than do Trump and Republicans (23%) although Democrats and Republicans chose to disagree . Independents went with the Democrats on which candidate and party they thought would do a better job of looking out for Native people.

    In the national poll, nearly 41% of respondents thought that Trump would do a better job looking out for Indian Country. Harris was nipping at his heels, with 39.21% who believe she better serves Native interests. But almost 20% of Indigenous people think neither candidate would be preferable, or weren’t sure.

    The respondents also said that almost half of them had not been contacted by any party about the election. The people who reported they had been contacted told NAU that Democrats slightly outnumbered Republican outreach efforts, with 55% from the Dems and 44% from the Republican party. Some respondents said they had been contacted by more than one entity, including non-partisan organizations or ballot initiative groups.

    Ace of Oct. 7, the Arizona Secretary of State reported that nearly 36% of registered voters are Republicans. Democrats account for 29% and 33.7% registered as “other,” with no party affiliation. Just 1.65% registered as members of the Libertarian, No Labels or Green parties.

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    How the pollsters overcame traditional barriers to survey Native people

    Historically, pollsters have been reluctant to attempt meaningful surveys of tribes and indigenous peoples. Poll director Paul Bentz of the public affairs consultant firm HighGround said that one issue is that would-be surveyors cannot assume all Indian tribes think alike.

    “They hold different, unique beliefs and can’t be painted with a broad brush,” he said.

    Also, just as with other small towns and communities, tribal communities vary greatly in size and population, which makes it difficult to create a representative sample reflecting factors such as age, gender, region and other demographics necessary for an accurate survey.

    And traditional polling methods like telephone and online polling may not be easy due to telecommunications issues, Bentz said.

    Pollsters who want to learn what tribes are thinking must then use a variety of resources, adding in-person engagement, mail and other ways to reach enough people to be sure of an accurate picture.

    “That’s particularly hard to do,” he said.

    The two Native poll directors acknowledged that heavy lifting was involved to ensure a representative sample size. Hersh said that with just 1.5% of the population nationwide, Native people are difficult to recruit to take surveys. (On the other hand, the 461,000 Native people account for 6.2% of Arizona’s population, according to the 2023 Census.) The third-party firm the NNO/Medill survey used wielded many resources, some from Qualtrics’ competitors, to create a good selection.

    After asking some key questions like tribal affiliation and what Native issues were important to each potential individual, Medill had to manually sort through the responses to weed out people who weren’t really Native or, worse yet, were bots.

    Nuño-Perez, who specializes in surveying people of color, said higher quality surveys cost more because it’s harder to reach people. But, he said, “I’ve spent my career trying to get this right for not only my community but for the media.”

    For those intrepid pollsters with the resources and knowledge of tribes to accomplish a decent survey, Bentz has some advice: Stick to smaller geographic regions.

    “Each state is uniquely different and the election will depend on the electoral college,” which is determined state by state, he said. “You can’t apply a national rubric to it.”

    For example, most tribes in Arizona tend to vote Democratic, and Bentz said the Biden campaign took full advantage of that factor in the 2020 election.

    “Biden spent time making inroads to tribes in 2020, that’s why they won here,” he said.

    “That’s why Biden was here talking in Gila River,” Bentz said. “It’s an important voting block and they want to replicate what happened in 2020.” That’s when President Joe Biden won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes by just 10,457 votes, with many Native voting rights activists believing that Native voters accounted for most, if not all, of that margin.

    Both Native pollsters plan to release more survey results: The Native News Online/Medill will release its second of three polls next week and NAU will release more data later this week and next week.

    Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at [email protected]. Follow her on X @debkrol.

    Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.

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