What if only white females voted in the 2008 presidential election?
This is the type of question social scientists and individuals like me love to explore, and which everybody else presumably finds quite boring. More fascinating still, there is actually a somewhat reliable answer to the question. This is because, in every state of the union, there are exit polls of the white female vote in 2008.
It turns out that if only white females voted in 2008, Senator John McCain would have won the popular vote 53% to 46%, taking a comfortable eight-point lead.
Senator Barack Obama, however, would be president. He would win a razor-thin, 273 to 265 majority in the electoral college:
Ruy Teixeira, of The Emerging Democratic Majority fame, has a new, lengthy paper (large PDF) up on the coming impact of demographic changes on American electoral politics.. The basic thesis as one you have heard before: over the next two or three decades, demographic changes strongly favor the Democratic Party, since population growth is concentrated within groups that vote heavily Democratic (non-whites, non-Christians, Creative Class, Millennials etc).
In the face of these trends, Teixiera lays out two possible paths forward for continued Republican electoral competitiveness:
Increased appeal to Democratic base groups through ideological moderation;
Ineffectiveness of Democratic governance
The second path is the only realistic one. This is because there is simply no conceivable institutional force that could push Republicans to the center.
There is simply no engine that can apply enough pressure to move Republicans to the center in the face of the combined force of right-wing media (Limbaugh, Fox News and more), the Christian Right (even though they have faded a bit lately), the Club for Growth, and the Tea Party (whether or not that is actually a definable institution). None. Zip. Zero. Nada. The resources simply do not exist for any group that would be interested in moving Republicans to the center. Further, there isn't even really a group interested in acquiring those non-existent resources. With over 70% of Republicans self-identifying as conservative, there is no base for it.
What funding did exist was largely produced by progressive, single issue advocacy infrastructure that, kin the interest of retaining influence on both sides of the aisle, used a double-standard and lot of its money to prop up moderate Republicans such as Lincoln Chaffee, Arlen Specter, and the Maine Senators. However, that infrastructure was not producing any new moderate Republicans, just protecting the old ones. Further, it faces a new left-wing critique, was based on a double standard of choosing slightly-less than horrible candidates on their issues, and has generally proven to be no match for the right-wing forces outlined above.
So, the path forward for Republicans is to rely on ineffective Democratic governance. On that front, they are doing pretty well. The current manifestation of the Democratic Party is designed primarily govern in a fashion that protects center-right members of its own party. Unfortunately, governing in a fashion that improves the lives of most Americans is only its secondary purpose. The irony of this structure is that the only way to protect center-right members of the Democratic Party over the long-term is to cement a governing majority by improving the lives of the majority of Americans. But hey, I'm just a frakking stupid, pajama wearing, Cheetos munching blogger, so what do I really know anyway.
This is the first part of two posts examining the Texas panhandle, a rock-hard Republican stronghold. The second part can be found here.
In the Texas panhandle and the empty plains surrounding it, Democrats go to die. There is no place in the country more Republican than this rural region, where conservatism is ingrained bone-deep and from birth. Not even the most Mormon stretches of Utah, or whitest areas of the Deep South, exceed the Republicanism of this part of Texas.
Yet, in the vast emptiness of the Texas prairie there are a number of interesting patterns - some of which are quite strange to behold.
In a video message to Organizing for America's 13 million members today, President Obama announced that targeting people who voted for the first time in 2008 would be the top tactical priority for OFA 2010. This makes perfect sense. Compared to Gore and Kerry, young voters and first-time voters where President Obama's top demographic groups. Obama's margin among those two groups surpassed Gore's by over 30%:
Young voters and first-time voters are absolutely Obama's base. McCain actually won voters age 40 and over, and Obama only won non-first-time voters by 2%. Compared to other recent Democratic coalitions, Obama relied far more heavily upon young voters and first-time voters.
Long-term data from the census bureau indicates that the turnout gap between Americans above and below the age of 45 widens significantly in mid-term elections. For example, over the last nine Presidential elections, Americans aged 45-64 turned out, on average, at a rate 12.7% higher than Americans aged 25-44. However, in mid-term elections, the average gap over the last nine cycles has been 17.1%.
In 2008, Democrats did better among young voters than in any other election in since 1964. President Obama won voters under 45 by a 57%-41% margin. This means that the "natural" lower turnout among young voters in midterm elections will hurt Democrats more than in any midterm since 1964.
Any coalition based so heavily on younger voters, as is Barack Obama's, will almost inevitably suffer a major setback in midterm elections. Shifting 10% of the electorate (which happened from 2004 to 2006) from the under-45 age group (which Obama won by 16%) to the over-45 age group (which Obama lost by 2%), results in a national popular vote shift of 2% of the popular vote to Republicans.
When young voters and unlikely voters form such a central pillar of a presidential electoral coalition, then that coalition is going to face huge problems in midterm elections. While it is absolutely the correct move for Organizing for America to try and get those voters back to the polls in 2010, they are unfortunately faced with an almost impossible task. Overall turnout drops by more than 33% from presidential elections to midterm elections, and by much more than that among young voters. No GOTV operation, however strong, can reverse trends on that massive scale. Whatever efforts OFA ends up making will only limit the amount of damage Democrats will suffer by basing their coalition on younger voters and irregular voters.
Survey USA has a new poll on the California ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for recreational usage. It shows the initiative favored by a strong majority of the state's population, with 56% in favor and 42% opposed.
This is positive news, but there is reason to be cautious. The poll shows a huge age gap between voters under 35, and the rest of the population, in terms of support of legalization. Further, the bill heavily oversamples the younger voters who are much, much more in favor of legalization that the rest of the state. Check out these crosstabs:
Survey USA postulates that young voters will turn out at even higher rates than they did in 2008, much less 2006. That simply isn't going to happen. Voters under the age of 45 decline by 10% as a percentage of the electorate from Presidential to midterm elections (and voters over the age of 45 increase their share of the electorate by 10% in midterms). When the crosstabs of the Survey USA poll are redistributed according to the 2006 age percentages of the California electorate, support for legalization drops from 56% to only 51%. Numbers like that make the campaign for legalization in California a real nailbiter.
On the plus side, as with marriage equality, the massive generation gap on marijuana legalization shows that it won't be very long before marijuana is legalized in California (and elsewhere). Even with 2006 turnout estimates, 55% of Californians under the age of 65 approve of legalizing marijuana. With young, socially liberal voters replacing older, socially conservative voters in the electorate every year, over the long-term these are culture wars that conservatives simply cannot win.
This is another example of how, even though it is not expressed in the dramatic terms of the 1960's, the political gap between the generations in the United States has never been larger. Underlying this gap is a massive generational divide on ethnicity and religion. To put it as bluntly as possible, younger Americans are way, way less white Catholic and white mainline Protestant (two groups that I collectively term "white traditionals" in the chart below) than older Americans. Take a look at the rapid ethno-religious change the country will experience because of this gap over the next two decades:
Projected Ethno-religious % of Electorate, Presidential Elections 2008-2032
Group
2008
2012
2016
2020
2024
2028
2032
White Evangelicals
24%
24%
24%
24%
23%
23%
22%
White Traditionals
37%
35%
33%
31%
29%
27%
26%
Non-Christians
20%
21%
22%
23%
25%
26%
27%
Non-white Christians
19%
20%
21%
22%
23%
24%
25%
Currently, there are roughly twice as mainly white Catholics and white mainline Protestants as non-Christians. In twenty years, the two groups will be roughly the same size. That will result in a dramatic shift in social attitudes in America. The widespread legalization of marijuana, along with real marriage equality, will be just two of those changes.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/ Imagining what the Founding Fathers would think about our nation today always constitutes an interesting exercise. America's strength and enduring democracy probably would have delighted many of them. On the other hand, its political parties and many foreign alliances might have raised an eyebrow or two.
In fact, if one reads George Washington's farewell address, its quite amazing how much of his advice was not followed. "Avoid...overgrown military establishments" (nope); "steer clear of permanent alliances" (nope); "preserving the Union" (the Civil War ruined that one); "avoiding...the accumulation of debt" (funny, that); "party dissension...is itself a frightful despotism" (stopped following that advice even before his death).
Because this is a politics blog, however, the question here is what political party Washington would have belonged to.
"Self-identified white conservatives versus self-identified non-whites and white liberals" is perhaps the best, one-sentence description of the demographic difference between two major political coalitions in the United States.
Earlier today, I noted that "drop off" voters (that is, people who voted in 2008 but are currently considered unlikely to voter in 2010), are actually much happier about the direction of the country, and of the Democratic Party, than are likely voters. This makes it very difficult to argue that drop-off voters are dropping out primarily due to increasing cynicism rooted in the current direction of Democratic governance.
Surely, there are some drop-off voters whose primary motivation is the Democratic failure to deliver on sweeping change. As with any large group of people (in this case, tens of millions), more than one motivation is in play. But what is the primary motivation behind drop-off voters, and what can be done to get Democratic drop-off voters to the polls in 2010?
I have a theory: nothing. There is nothing that can be done to bring the drop-off voters to the polls. The lack of participation among drop-off voters is consistent with long-term civic trends in the United States, and not specific to the current political situation. The problem is particularly pronounced for Democrats in 2010 because the Democratic coalition has become increasingly dependent upon young voters who, despite what anyone has tried since 18-year olds were first given suffrage almost 40 years ago, have always seen their participation plummet in midterm elections relative to older voters. As such, Democratic and progressive efforts to win elections in 2010 must be focused primarily, if not entirely, on voter persuasion rather than voter mobilization.
On the Meet The Press yesterday, David Brooks reminded us all just how completely loaded with bullshit most cultural criticism actually is in America:
MR. BROOKS: I always look at passionate outsiders. Who are the passionate outsiders who are going to come into the mainstream? Because the people with passion really can control the decade--the feminists in the 1970s, the evangelicals in the 1980s. And so when I look around the world at who are the real passionate outsiders, one, the people that we've already talked about, which are the, the democracy protesters in Iran. But two, and I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of them, but the tea party people. They have real passion. They're now at the outside. If they can merge with responsible leadership and become a real movement--there's real disgust at government, there's real disgust about fiscal issues--they could become maybe a destructive force in the Republican Party, maybe a positive force. But, to me, those are the people with real passion who may play a much larger role in the coming decade and so forth.
WTF does any of this actually mean? Define "passionate." Define "outsiders." For that matter, define "mainstream." And, while you are at it Mr. Brooks, please provide some justification for how any single group "controls" a decade, and what causality mechanism allows a qualitative group to do this.
Everything Brooks says here is purely bullshit masquerading as knowledge. It reminds me of why I like to ground my writing in actual facts, rather than subjective, vague, qualitative terminology that doesn't actually mean anything.
To that end, here are some things that are actually going to happen over the next decade:
1. Continuing, gradual identity changes The people of the United States are going to become:
Higher voter turnout rates (due to aging population)
Higher public spending as a % of GDP (partially due to older population, largely because that never really drops)
More tolerant (because, generally speaking, more tolerant people tend to be younger)
Equal, or greater, overall income inequality (because that has been happening for so long, and current policies will only slow the trend, not reverse it.) However, economic inequality between ethnic and gender groups will probably continue to decline.
The European Union will continue to pull away from the United States as the #1 economic region in the world. While China will not catch up to the USA, they will firmly establish themselves as a third world Superpower in this regard. These three Superpowers will dominate the world for decades.
Even as China and the EU gain on the United States economically, and even as the rest of the world gains on all three of those regions in terms of population, the Anglophone world will become an increasingly larger percentage of the wealthy world. This is because per capita income in China remains very low, and because Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom all sport population growth rates far exceeding Japan and Western Europe.
The world will get hotter.
That's all stuff that is actually going to happen. After a month of maddeningly vague and meaningless predictions of the sort quoted above, I thought this would provide a useful counterweight.
Entering an election year, the Democratic Party faces a problem with its relatively less enthusiastic voting base. However, the extent of that problem is often exaggerated, especially when compared to long-term trends. In fact, enthusiasm woes are currently costing Democrats at most 3% nationally, and possibly as little as 2%. Further, that 2-3% problem mainly appears to be caused by a lack of enthusiasm among the part of the base that votes Democratic due to economic fragility, rather than for the part of the base that votes Democratic for more ideologically oriented reasons.
A Chris Bowers Golden Oldie
From Wed Apr 16, 2008. Original HERE. Since 1968, the discursive center of conservative electoral dominance has been a backlash narrative against people of color and "liberal elites." Over the past month, as seen in both the Jeremiah Wright and "bittergate" episodes, that narrative has also been the discursive center of attacks on Barack Obama. The double implication is that Obama is too black and too elitist to become President. This, of course, was always going to be the thematic center of attacks against Obama, given that he is an African-American university professor from Hyde Park. Given that Obama is the best demographic fit for conservative attacks against Democrats that has come along, possibly ever, it is pretty hard to fathom that they would abandon their tried and tested narratives now.
In The New Republic, John Judis is openly worrying that Obama is extremely vulnerable in a general election because these narratives will severely damage him among white working class voters. Meanwhile, the always helpful to Democrats Doug Schoen is urging Hillary Clinton, and really anyone running against Obama, to adopt these narratives against Obama 24-7. The basic premise in both arguments is that Obama is extremely vulnerable to these longstanding conservative narratives, and in fact using them might be the only way to defeat Obama. However, if there is one point I have tried to make in my blogging over the past three years, it is that the changing demographics of the electorate are rendering these conservative attacks increasingly ineffective, and that Democrats need no longer fear them as a result. We have reached a point where conservative backlash narratives against people of color and "liberal elites" appeal to such a small segment of the electorate, that Democrats no longer need them in order to win.
In 2004, John Kerry took 41% of the vote among whites, and lost the popular vote by 2.46%. In 1988, Michael Dukakis took 40% of the white vote, but lost the popular vote by 7.72%. With only a 1% improvement among whites, John Kerry improved 5.26% overall (source).
In 1992, whites were 87% of the electorate. In 2004, whites were 77% of the electorate, a 10% drop in just 12 years. Further, the three groups of whites among whom Democrats hold more than a 2-1 edge on Republicans, white union members, white non-Christians, and white LGBTs, are all increasing their share of the electorate and the white vote. Although not by a 2-1 margin, Democrats also do very well among white single women, who are also increasing their share of the electorate.
Who don't Democrats do well among anymore? Straight, Christian, non-union whites who are not single women, do not self-identify as liberal, and are over the age of 30. Basically, that is just about the only group where the backlash narratives will still have wide appeal. While about 90% of the punditry falls into that category, and while Republicans win this group with more than 70% of the vote, it only represents about one-third of the electorate, and decreases in size every year.
There once was a time, not long ago, when credible charges of liberal elitism would be devastating to a Democratic candidate in a Presidential election. However, the effectiveness of these charges has also decreased throughout time. In 1972, McGovern won 37.52% of the popular vote. In 1984, Mondale won 40.56% of the popular vote. In 1988, Dukakis won 45.65% of the popular vote. In 2004, John Kerry won 48.27% of the popular vote. The basic reason for this is not consistent improvement of the quality of the Democratic candidates, but the changing demographics of the electorate that these candidates more acceptable to the nation of the whole.
In 2008, we have probably reached a point where the demographic tilt of the electorate favors those candidates by 50% + 1. If this is the case, then it would represent the end of the "liberal elite" and civil right backlash narratives as an effective anti-Democratic tactic on the national level. Obama is just about the perfect demographic test-case for this theory, and he is not losing ground against either Clinton or McCain nationally during a month long wave of attacks based on these narratives. As such, I think there is compelling evidence that we have indeed reached the end of "liberal elites" and civil rights backlash as a majority position in America. Hopefully, this will result not only in Barack Obama becoming President, but also in Democrats in general starting to realize that they are beholden to a very different sort of electorate then the one that handed them numerous resounding defeats from 1968-2004.
If you change which voters Democrats believe they must attract in order to win elections, you change the Democratic Party irrevocably.
A Chris Bowers Golden Oldie
From Fri Mar 07, 2008. Original HERE.
Back in 1988, I became obsessed with a compute game called President Elect 1988, which was an early PC game that simulated a variety of historical and ahistorical presidential elections. One of the lessons I learned from the game is that it was a lot easier for Democrats to win if they nominated a southerner, and especially if another southerner was also on the ballot as vice-president. As such, four years later, when I was barely old enough to vote in the Democratic primary in New York, I liked Jerry Brown (despite his horrendous sales tax proposal) but also didn't mind if Bill Clinton won, because I figured Clinton could win some southern states and take the general election. When Clinton chose Al Gore as his running mate, I was pretty happy, since my lesson from playing hundreds of games of President Elect was that there was pretty much no way such a ticket could lose during an economic downturn.
That was all well and good, and it worked well for its time. The civil rights backlash had fractured the New Deal coalition, and white, socially conservative, working class and middle class voters were turning to Republicans in droves. The vast majority of these voters lived in the south, which had once been a solid Democratic region and gave Democrats a nearly unbreakable partisan hold on power in Washington, D.C. The so-called "Republican Revolution" of the time was basically flipping conservative southern whites. These were the so-called "Reagan Democrats" who Dems became obsessed with winning back after the Mondale general election fiasco. While Clinton used them to win in 1992, in 1994, Republicans flipped these voters for good, and took control of Congress. Now, this is a group of voters that chooses Republicans in general elections by margins of more than 2-1.
While this treads into "votes that don't matter" territory, the truth is that after watching politics for more than twenty years, at this point trying to win back those "Reagan Democrats" feels like a lost cause. I've had enough of it. I'm tired of how trying to appeal to these voters basically never seems to work, but always succeeds in pushing the Democratic Party to the right. I'm tired of how it has created a perception in the Democratic Party that the progressive base don't matter, except as an ATM machine. And I'm tired of it because it has just gone on for so long at this point that we now have massive, emerging Democratic voting blocks that we should appeal to instead: non-Christian whites, the "creative class," and Latinos / Asians. While the once-Democratic and now Republican "Reagan" Dems are growing pretty darn old, the future of the country and the electorate can be found elsewhere. Why continue to chase after voting groups that are shrinking in size, that push the party to the right, and who we never seem to win anyway, when instead we can chase after far more fertile voting blocks that will push the party to the left and who represent more than 100% of the population growth in the United States?
One of the reasons is that Reagan Dems are still voting, and still on the brink of swinging not only the 2008 general election, but also the 2008 primary for the same stupid, racist reasons that they put Republicans in power back in the last quarter of the 20th century . Consider the following chart from Brendan Nyahn:
(* With 10% of the country following some form of vegetarian diet, this number is based on the assumption that vegetarians break Democratic 3-1, which is a margin very similar to the LGBT community, non-Christians, and not "white non-Hispanic."
Also note: Women are also disproportionately Democratic. However, unlike all the other groups listed here, women make up a significant percentage of Republican voters, too.)
Even though there is some overlap between these categories, the vast majority of Democrats fall into at least one of these five. And by "vast majority," I mean "over 70%."
Now, of course there is still a not-insignificant straight, meat-eating, non-union, white Christian contingent within the Democratic Party rank and file. However, that group is older than the rest of the party, and as such continues to shrink as an overall percentage of Democratic voters. Non-whites, non-Christians, LGBTs and vegetarians are all disproportionately under the age of 50, which will make future incarnations of the Democratic Party even more skewed toward these groups. This process is accelerated even further by Republicans targeting their messaging, and making the vast majority of their gains, among Americans who do not fit into one of those five categories.
I write--or at least attempt to write this--in a value-neutral sense. It isn't good or bad, it is just who the Democratic Party is at this point. It is significantly not-"white non-Hispanic," and the "white non-Hispanic" segment is significantly vegetarian, non-Christian or non-straight. Among Democratic voters who fit into neither of these groups, it is significantly union. Further, demographic and political trends will only make this more so in the future. The end result will be a Democratic Party that looks much more like that Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a Republican Party that includes the Blue Dogs and Conservadems.
So, 90% of McCain's support came from whites, and 89% came from Christians, but the country is getting less white, and less Christian, and even whites and Christians are voting more and more for Democrats.
That sentence should set any Republican sweating. But here's the number that should send them crawling under the covers and whimpering: 66. 66% of those aged 18-29 voted for Obama last November. If only people this age had voted, Obama would have about 40 states and somewhere around 469 electoral votes, according to exit polls. Including Mississippi. And Arizona.
In one of the first diaries of this series, we noted that 90% of John McCain's votes came from white voters. More specifically though, 83% of John McCain's votes came from white Christian voters. As a proportion of the electorate, we saw whites are declining. But guess what? So are Christians, slowly but steadily. Here's how that looks:
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