Split Ticket

Native American voters are an under-discussed voting bloc in American elections, but by no means are they an insignificant one. Well-known Senate victories by candidates of both parties have been attributed to the Native vote — from Republican Lisa Murkowski’s 2010 write-in win in Alaska to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp’s 2012 upset in North Dakota. More recently, Native American voters have been credited with helping Joe Biden win the presidency through his razor-thin victories in the swing states of Arizona and Wisconsin. 

Why, then, hasn’t the Native American vote received much attention ahead of this November’s hotly contested presidential race? Part of it has to do with conventional wisdom, which has often treated the Native American vote as a Democratic monolith. While national surveys from 2022 do indicate that Native American voters are more Democratic than not, they are by no means a homogenous bloc. Political preferences vary extensively between tribes; differences between strongly Democratic tribes such as the Lakota Sioux and their Republican counterparts like the Cherokee in Oklahoma are like night and day. 

To give the Native American vote the spotlight it deserves, we decided to dive into the data and see how Native voting power has impacted the last three presidential elections with the ultimate goal of developing some benchmarks for 2024. We focused on states with substantial Native American populations that also happen to be hosting at least one competitive race this cycle. These states are Arizona, Wisconsin, Montana, North Carolina, and Alaska. All are home to federally recognized tribes and/or numerically significant Native localities.

A table of the percentage shares and raw vote margins among Native-heavy localities discussed in this article is attached for reference.

State Breakdowns

Arizona

We start with Arizona, which will host highly competitive races for president and Senate this fall. Competitive House races, however, are not contested over reservation land, which have been drawn into the Republican-held AZ-02. There are eleven federally recognized tribes in the state whose impact is visible at the precinct level: the Navajo, the Hopi, the Kaibab Paiutes, the Tohono O’odham, the Hualapai, the White Mountain Apache, the San Carlos, the Pima, the Ak-Chin, the Colorado River, and the Salt River Tribes. Collectively, the precincts on their reservations are almost all majority-Native by voting age population. The only exception is the Colorado River reservation, which is only 39% Native, 35% Hispanic, and 30% white by VAP. 

The largest tribe in Arizona is the Navajo, which contributed significantly to Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the state. Of the 42,200 votes that Biden won Arizona’s Native American vote by, 32,936, or 78% of that margin, came from Navajo reservation precincts. The other reservations of notable size all lean Democratic, except for the Colorado River reservation, which narrowly voted for Trump, and the Kaibab reservation, which cast only 105 votes. 

The Democratic advantage among Arizona’s Native reservations is so strong that even though tribal reservations largely swung right in terms of margin, the raw turnout increase was arguably the deciding factor in securing the state for Biden. The reservation precincts netted Democrats an additional 10,657 votes relative to 2016 and Biden won the state by only 10,457 votes.

Wisconsin

Moving to Wisconsin, there are six major tribes: the Menominee, which borders the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe, the Oneida, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe, the Bad River Ojibwe, and the Ho-Chunk. Most of the state’s Native vote comes from the Oneida tribe near Green Bay, but, this is also the whitest and most Republican reservation at only 18% Native VAP. Democrats have the advantage on all the other reservations, with the Bad River Chippewa and the Menominee being the bluest.

Owing to the smaller Native population, swings among tribal precincts themselves are not quite as crucial as they are in Arizona. This is not to dismiss the bloc — in a closely divided state, every group is crucial. However, the vote volumes are simply significantly lower in the state. In 2012, for example, Obama netted just under 2,000 votes from these precincts. Four years later, Hillary Clinton actually lost them by 372 votes. That shift may have played a role in her 22,748-vote loss, but it was by no means dispositive. 

North Carolina

North Carolina has two significant Native American populations: the Cherokee in the west and the Lumbee in the east. Unlike the Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation, the North Carolina Cherokee reservation has a slight but consistent Democratic lean, with even Hillary Clinton winning there.

Standing in stark contrast to their western counterparts are the Lumbee, a tribal community in Robeson, Scotland, and Hoke counties. Once a staunchly Democratic group, even in the 1984 Republican landslide, the Lumbee have recently switched to the GOP en masse due to the heightened salience of social conservatism leading to more ideological sorting. In 2012, Obama easily won the Lumbee vote; eight years later, the tribe backed Trump by a near-identical margin.

The Lumbee are a rare exception among Native American tribes where Biden in fact did worse than Clinton. Though they are not a federally recognized tribe, they are still an important and influential voting bloc. By outvoting the Cherokee, their rightward shift has pushed North Carolina’s metrics to the right. 

Montana

Montana doesn’t have a competitive race for president, but it does feature a close Senate contest that is crucial for control of the chamber. Split Ticket previously did a detailed analysis of the importance of the Native vote to Democratic Senator Jon Tester’s reelection bid, so we won’t repeat ourselves too much here. In short, however, if Tester is to win, he will need to turn out the reservation voter in full force. While fundamentals favor his Republican opponent Tim Sheehy, Tester’s performance in 2012 and 2018 suggests that he can reach Native voters that Democrats’ national campaigns cannot. That’s why we’re not writing him off just yet.

Alaska

The final state worth discussing is Alaska, though it’s quite different from its counterparts with high Native populations. At nearly 16%, Alaska has among the largest percentages of Native voters in a single state, and large parts of its rural areas are dotted with isolated, majority-Native settlements.

Generally, Alaska Natives lean Democratic, but there are a few important caveats. For starters, Native voters here are willing to split their tickets for incumbents and Republican candidates engaging in strong efforts to earn Native votes. Examples include Don Young (R) to Mark Begich (D) and Lisa Murkowski (R). Second, extremely low turnout owing to relative isolation and the difficulty of campaigning in such remote areas impacts the uniformity of the Alaska Native vote.

Due to the lack of federally recognized reservations in the state, we broke the Alaska Native vote into buckets of 40–70% Native precincts and 70–100% Native precincts. Across the board, the Native vote has been getting more Republican by margin, but unlike in most of the lower 48, turnout increases are not netting Democrats more votes. This is not to say that Alaska Natives are all staunch conservatives in the same way that the Lumbee are in North Carolina; there is a long history of Alaska Native voting preferences favoring politicians who can deliver for their communities, regardless of party affiliation.

In 2014, for example, when Democratic Senator Mark Begich narrowly lost re-election, his stronger-than-expected performance was attributed to high Native turnout. In the 70-100% Native precincts, Begich won by 6,000 votes, 74–17. On the same ticket, Republican Congressman Don Young won these voters by 3,500 votes, 63–32. Eight years later, the same pattern appeared but with the offices switched. Alaska Native Rep. Mary Peltola (D) won these precincts 86–13, while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) won them 85–15 at the same time. 

2024 Signals

Ultimately, Native voters differ in political outlook, but are connected by a few common threads. First, in key swing states, Native American voters tend to back Democrats (with the noteworthy exception of North Carolina). Second, 2016 marked a high point for Republicans among Native voters, with new marginal voters turning out while the Democratic advantage in terms of raw votes stayed the same. Third, raw turnout can be more important margins when it comes to forming a voting bloc significant enough to change the tide in important swing states; the divergence between the Lumbee in North Carolina and the Navajo in Arizona show this best.

Taking our knowledge of these groups to 2024, there are a few signs that Republicans could gain with Native voters. In Robeson County, a sizable protest vote was observed in Lumbee precincts that was not observed in 2020. This suggests that Biden’s weakest demographics among the Democratic base are ideologically moderate to conservative minorities. 

The pattern isn’t limited to North Carolina though. In Arizona, where the Native vote played a much bigger role in 2020, Biden’s weaker-than-average primary showing in the Navajo regions stands out like a sore thumb. While Biden got 89% statewide in the primary, in Navajo and Apache Counties, where the Democratic primary electorate is almost exclusively Native, he earned 80% and 78% respectively. For context, a similar result was observed in Utah, where Biden’s 87% statewide share was met with only 76% in southeastern San Juan County, where the Democratic electorate is almost exclusively Native. Defections will not hurt Biden’s forgone chances in Utah, but they will hurt him in closely-contested Arizona, and could mean the difference between victory and defeat for either candidate. There may finally be legitimate ideological sorting on Native reservations, which until now have voted as consistent blocs.

As of late, conventional wisdom seems to suggest that for every conservative minority voter who switches from Democrat to Republican, there is one moderate white voter who switches the other way. This may in fact be true, but it is still good advice to try and campaign to earn the votes of everyone, liberal, and conservative alike. With Biden struggling in national polls, Democrats would benefit from campaigning hard for the Native vote, which is anything but monolithic.