The rise in multiracial births in the United States could influence electoral politics

But complex multiracial identities like Wallace’s are no longer so rare in Massachusetts or across the United States. In recent years, the number of people who identify as multiracial has grown rapidly, especially as more multiracial babies are born.

The issue has come to light after former President Donald Trump made headlines when he questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s multiracial identity at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago last month.

In Massachusetts, the share of mixed-race babies born rose from 18.6 percent (7,204 babies) in 2016 to 21.8 percent (8,315 babies) in 2022, according to a Globe analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention birth data. That means more than one in five babies born in Massachusetts are mixed-race.

Today, multiracial babies are the second most common birth group in Massachusetts, behind whites. Going forward, experts say it will be difficult to accurately categorize or predict the voting patterns of this growing multiracial group, but assuming they cluster into a clear voting bloc, they could have a significant influence on electoral politics, with the power to even swing elections.

“This is where we’re headed: These are the people who will make up our population in the future,” said Peter Ciurczak, a senior research analyst at Boston Indicators, who has studied multiracial births in the Boston area. “They don’t adhere to any particular identity … They’re changing social norms.”

According to Richard Alba, professor emeritus of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, this trend in Massachusetts is reflected more broadly in the United States. About 33.8 million Americans, or 10.2 percent of the population, identified as multiracial in the 2020 census. Experts say that number is considerably higher than in previous years, though changes in methodology make it difficult to clearly compare with previous years.

The national surge, though often little discussed in academic and popular circles according to experts who study race, has undermined the common conception of the American racial paradigm, which contrasts a declining white population with a growing nonwhite population.

“There is a large group emerging that is both white and non-white,” Alba said.

Alba said the thing about multiracial identity is that “it’s a much more fluid category” than other racial groups. People who in the past identified as white, black or Latino may now see themselves as multiracial as the term has entered mainstream culture.

This is true of Wallace, who used to check the “white” box on demographic forms but now identifies as multiracial.

Harris is the second major-party presidential candidate, after Barack Obama, to identify with that more fluid racial group.

The daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, Vice President Kamala Harris has long identified as multiracial. She visits India regularly and attended Howard University, a historically Black university, for her college degree.

But in his remarks in Chicago, Trump claimed not to know.

“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black, and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said. “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”

Those comments sparked outrage among many biracial Boston-area residents, but they were not particularly surprising to Wallace, a mother of two from Boston, who viewed them as simply more of the same from a candidate she had long ago decided she did not like.

While Wallace said she feels more energized now that Kamala Harris has replaced President Biden as the head of the Democratic ticket, it’s not actually Harris’ multiracial identity that’s the big change.

“I think it’s very exciting, even more so for me, that it’s a woman as opposed to (a multiracial woman),” Wallace said. That’s especially true in a post-Roe world, where states across the country are rolling back abortion rights, Wallace said.

In general, political experts say multiracial Americans like Wallace tend to identify with the political left, but they are still a relatively young group that could be influenced as their political identity forms.

But Trump’s remarks were, at best, unhelpful to the Republican Party, which is already struggling to woo young, multiracial Americans, said Tatishe Nteta, a politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“The Republican Party is not doing itself any favors by trying to mobilize this group of people when the Republican presidential nominee questions Harris’ identity.

That’s not to say this group is fully committed to Democrats. Currently, it appears to be leaning firmly toward the Democratic Party, Nteta said, but that may not last.

“They may be more conservative when they turn 25, 26, 27,” he said. There is also less evidence that multiracial Hispanic voters prefer the Democratic Party compared to other multiracial groups.

Where this multiracial voting bloc sits politically in the future could profoundly transform American politics, given its projected sheer size, experts say. This is especially true if it coalesces to form a cohesive voting bloc.

“We’re seeing the development of what this (multiracial) identity is, both politically and culturally,” Nteta said. “If you can talk to them, or at least help define, who they are and what they support, you have the potential to mobilize them into your coalition.”

“Their place on the political continuum can determine future elections.”

Scooty Nickerson can be reached at [email protected].