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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

On both sides of the Atlantic, one of the oldest patterns in electoral demographics has started to break down.

The strongest predictor of a swing away from the Labour party in this year’s UK general election was the Muslim share of the electorate, while the Conservatives’ best results came in areas with large Hindu populations. Overall, Labour won less than half of the non-white vote for the first time on record.

In the US, the majority-Hispanic Rio Grande valley swung sharply towards Donald Trump in 2020, Vietnamese Americans in California deserted the Democrats, and majority-Black neighbourhoods in Philadelphia became decidedly less blue. Republicans performed better with non-white voters four years ago than at any time since 1960.

There is always a danger of over-interpreting upsets, and it should be noted that non-white Britons and Americans as a whole still lean leftward. But countervailing results are becoming steadily less exceptional. More importantly, these examples highlight something that has always been true but often ignored: ethnic minority voters are not a homogenous bloc.

Measuring public opinion among small and hard-to-reach groups is challenging. But this week a groundbreaking new study by the think-tank UK in a Changing Europe and polling company Focaldata did just that, shedding light on the wide range of attitudes and priorities among different minority groups in Britain. It found that they were often closer to the conservative than progressive end of the spectrum.

To take one example, 22 per cent of ethnic minority Britons say it’s important to them that the government keeps taxes low. This is almost exactly the same as the figure among white Conservative voters, and far higher than the 14 per cent of white Labour voters who hold this view.

Similarly, while 37 per cent of white university-educated Labour voters say the government should take a strong stand on social justice issues, only 25 per cent of minority voters agree, falling to 21 per cent among British Indians — closer to the 14 per cent of white Conservatives who take the same view.

These patterns are consistent with the idea that post-materialist politics have become increasingly common among those who have already reached a comfortable position in society, but those still climbing their way up — ethnic minorities among them — often still have primarily material concerns.

The situation is similar in the US, where the sharp leftward turn among educated white liberals has caused white Democrats to overshoot the minority position on a growing number of issues, including immigration, racism, patriotism and meritocracy.

White progressive Americans now hold views on these culture questions that are completely out of line with the average Black or Hispanic voter, according to analysis from pollster Echelon Insights.

To be clear, hardline US conservatives are just as far from minority opinion in the opposite direction. But where, historically, the left was the natural home for non-white Americans, that is growing less obviously the case. In terms of self-reported political ideology, Americans of colour are now roughly equidistant between white progressives and conservatives.

These shifts are particularly notable in election campaigns in both countries. In the US, Kamala Harris’s tough stance on immigration at the southern border is not a betrayal of the Democrats’ diverse base; it brings her closer to the typical non-white American’s policy preferences.

In the UK, the Conservative party leadership contest between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick takes on a new significance when framed in the context of these findings. A Tory party focused on economic aspiration and helmed by a British Nigerian could well make inroads into the large population of conservative-aligned minority Britons whose right-leaning values and vote choice have not yet lined up.

Next month’s US election will come down to very fine margins while old party allegiances in the British electorate are breaking down. It has never been more important to understand where public opinion really lies.

Politicians of all stripes would be wise to start listening to what different ethnic minority voters actually want, instead of relying on increasingly erroneous stereotypes or painting highly heterogeneous groups with one broad brush.

john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch

Events to look out for on Thursday include the US inflation reading, jobless claims data, updates on the impact of Hurricane Milton and quarterly results from Delta Air Lines:

Inflation: Price pressures in the US are forecast to have eased in September, with that month’s annual rate of inflation projected to be 2.3 per cent, from 2.5 per cent in August. Annual growth in “core” CPI, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, is expected to remain at 3.2 per cent.

Initial jobless claims: New applications for unemployment aid are expected to have ticked up to 230,000 in the week ending October 5, from 225,000 the week before.

Hurricane Milton: Officials will begin surveying the damage wreaked by the storm, which made landfall near Siesta Key in Sarasota County on Wednesday night. The National Hurricane Center earlier in the day warned that a “life-threatening storm surge, damaging winds, and flooding rains” were expected “across portions of central and south-western Florida”.

Delta Air Lines: Investors will be keen to understand the impact on the Atlanta-based airline of July’s global IT outage, which led to thousands of flight cancellations. The company is expected to post third-quarter revenues of $14.7bn before the opening bell, a less than 1 per cent increase compared with the same period last year.

St. Lucie County, Florida
CNN
 — 

As Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, as a dangerous Category 3 storm — weakening to a Category 1 as it sliced through the state — at least nine tornadoes tore through communities over 100 miles inland, including three in less than 25 minutes, according to a CNN analysis of National Weather Service warnings.

Milton, the third hurricane to hit Florida this year, dumped about 16 inches of rain on St. Petersburg, a more than a 1-in-1000 year rainfall event for the area, according to the National Hurricane Center.

But residents in St. Lucie County faced an entirely different threat: fatal tornadoes that were “supercharged” compared to typical hurricane-spawned tornadoes, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan told CNN Thursday. The tornadoes killed five people, according to county officials.

Video from the moment one of the tornadoes fiercely and quickly ravaged through the area shows intense winds hurling large chunks of debris through the air in several directions as the sky turns from a light gray color to an intense fog within 50 seconds.

Officials say some of the hardest hit areas include Spanish Lakes Country Club Village, a retirement community, Portofino Shores, Holiday Pines, Lakewood Park, South Florida Logistics Center 95 and Sunnier Palms Park and Campground.

“Their whole homes with them inside were lifted up, moved, destroyed,” St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson said. “I mean everything in the hurricane or this tornado’s path is gone,” including the 10,000 square-foot, red iron sheriff’s facility.

Statewide, there have been 38 tornado reports, with over 125 issued tornado warnings by the National Weather Service, the agency said early Thursday morning – the most tornado warnings ever in a single day for the state of Florida, crushing the previous record of 69 set in 2017, during Hurricane Irma.

“There’s no way we could have predicted this type of activity because this is just not precedented,” Port St. Lucie Mayor Shannon Martin told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Thursday morning. “I know I’ve never seen anything like that before in almost 20 years that I’ve been here.”

Now, parts of St. Lucie, which has recently been on the US Census list of fastest growing cities, are looking at significant structure damage including downed power lines, as dangerous winds uprooted trees, overturned cars and reduced homes to piles of rubble. As of 6:35 a.m. Thursday, more than 64,000 customers don’t have power in the county,. and rescue and recovery efforts continue.

Worried about her mostly elderly Spanish Lakes customers, Laura Gabriel, manager of Prestige Storage in St. Lucie, told CNN she wants to make sure she’s around so her customer’s can access their storage units, where many are keeping supplies they need.

“I love my people here, and it just hurts my heart that their whole community got devastated,” she said fighting tears. “It’s scary, it’s very, very scary.”

Now that the storm has passed through, Gabriel is focused on checking on everybody in surrounding areas, she said.

“We knew that it (Milton) was going to eat up everything it came across,” she said. “And we were just praying.”