Cherry pick much?
White electorate share/party advantage
2000: 81%/R+13
2004: 77%/R+17
2008: 74%/R+12
2012: 72%/R+20
Looking at and interpreting all the data is important rather than just picking two numbers such that your ideology is satisfied. This is a lesson you should have learned last November.
It’s not just two numbers. 2008 was a wave election that interrupted the trend. In 1996, whites only voted R+3.
Unskew those numbers!
It’s not the demographic voting patterns that change, it is the parties that do. Southern rural whites did not switch from Democrat to Republican just because they felt like trying something new, the parties switched positions. You can’t just dismiss the demographic advantage of the Democrats by saying “things change”, the party has to change to attract those people. What do you expect the Republicans to change in order to attract women, younger voters, minorities and urban voters?
That’s a tall order, there, podnuh. I mean, skewing numbers isn’t so hard, but unskewing? That takes a rare intellect, with a profound and instinctive grasp of the underlying reality. Which may not be readily seen when the numbers are skewed!
A nation can be seething with hatred and contempt, and if the numbers are all skewed, makes it look like folks approve of him, more or less. Makes him look like the Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery of the presidency. Middlin’ fair, he’ll do. Might have done better if he wasn’t in a room full of people shrieking and tearing their hair, but unless they suddenly stop, we’ll never know.
You picked two numbers to show a “trend”, and are ignoring data inconvenient to your pre-established conclusion. You are also failing to do even a cursory bit of analysis.
Notice the second number I included previously. The white share of the vote is dropping. This is an actual trend, one we can count on continuing, and one that is independent of the number of major candidates, attributes or actions of those candidates, or voter turn out.
Now, contrast with “whites are becoming more Republican”. R+ advantage amongst whites clearly depends on a wide variety of factors. For instance, is there anything about the candidates in 2008 and 2012 that could have potentially caused a significant white shift to R? Can we depend on this “trend” continuing independently? We have a counter example in 2008 - perhaps it is an “outlier” - but what if 2016 is too?
That’s sorta right. On civil rights, the parties did not switch so much as civil rights was taken off the table politically. Once Democrats were no longer the party of segregation, southerners voted based on other things. Like guns, God, and gays, as Howard Dean once said.
The same thing will happen if the parties converge on abortion and gay rights. If the Democratic Party becomes majority minority, that will make it a more religious party, which may result in two majority pro-life and anti-gay parties. That will change the way a lot of people vote.
Where you’re really wrong is in thinking that a demographic change requires that the Republican Party change. Might as well just not bother with voting and assign votes based on people’s demographic characteristics. There’s still the whole thing about convincing people to vote for you. I would be thrilled if Democrats just assumed that demographics will bail them out. That complacency is how Republicans managed to dominate the discourse to the point where liberal became a dirty word.
I picked two numbers to illustrate the point. You give a bigger picture, but it says the exact same thing.
You cannot count on that continuing. Immigration from south of the border is in decline, which has been the primary source of the reduction in the percentage of Americans who are white. Likewise, we cannot count on whites trending more and more Republican.
We’ll know more in 2016 and even learn a little in 2014 and this year. I’m also curious about whether minorities will continue to turn out at high levels when the Democrats nominate a white person, which is practically a certainty in 2016. Black turnout was equal to white turnout(maybe greater) in 2012. That’s never happened. Think it will happen again? I doubt it, because it hasn’t happened in off-year elections. When Obama isn’t on the ballot, African-American voters don’t show up. Be interesting to see who votes in the upcoming Massachusetts election.
There is a small number in the middle susceptible to convincing, but it is not large. If large numbers of people of the same demographics are voting against you it is because of something specific you are doing to drive them away. The biggest player in “convincing” people to vote for you is the platform the party supports, and a Republican party with a platform appealing to young, minority, or female voters would be irrecognizable compared to todays party.
Hardly. There is nothing intrinsic about being a minority, female, or young, that would make you not like smaller government, and there’s even less of a problem for those groups about being pro-life.
Young people are trending pro-life.
Now the gay rights thing, that’s something the Republicans need to just get on board with, that’s a problem for them. But their views on national security, abortion, and the role of government are just fine and can appeal to any demographic.
Are those the only things in the Republican platform? because if that was it they wouldn’t be driving away women, minorities and young voters.
Don’t see that on a more recent pool, most are still in favor of Roe-v-wade.
On the 18-29 demographic 54% are pro choice and only 36% pro life.
There’s more, but those are the major items. The issue with the Republican brand, IMO, is twofold:
The damage caused by GWB and many Congressional Republicans. Poor performance leads to poor election results. Good performance results in good election results. Regardless of ideology, a government that governs well will be reelected 9 times out of 10. that’s why we haven’t had a Democratic mayor in New York in two decades despite NYC’s overwhelming Democratic advantage.
The culture wars. Many in the Republican Party has been talking as if there’s only one way to be a real American, and that way is to be an evangelical WASP. It’s not the ideology that’s driving away women and minorities and young people. It’s the repugnance towards the culture war.
The first part can be fixed by governing well. The second part can be fixed with more minority candidates. One thing the GOP does better than Democrats is electing minorities in races where most voters are white. 90% of Democratic Congressmen who are minorities represent districts where voters are mostly the same race as they are. Right now that’s neutralized by having a Democratic black President, but once Obama’s gone it’s back to the parade of white guys + Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, while Republicans have a Presidential field that’s half minorities, plus minority Senators and minority governors. It will take a LONG time to change views, but I could see a Republican Party successfully casting itself as the party of One America, while Democrats are cast as the party of Balkanized America.
Roe is popular because it only guarantees a right to abortion in the first trimester. A large majority of Americans think abortion should be illegal after that.
Moving the goal posts, the reason why people still are pro choice is because for a long time (since 1992) they are already aware of the limits states can impose after the first trimester, the bottom line remains: when speaking of pro choice it is understood that the limits are already there; so no, there will be less of a chance that looking for more restrictions in abortions will be a winner for the republicans.
Maybe the should stop playing dirty? Maybe they could stop cooking up bogus “health regulations” with the intent of driving clinics out of business? Maybe if they can’t win fair, they shouldn’t win.
This is the kind of thinking that made Sarah Palin a VP candidate. The idea that “it’s not the platform, it’s the makeup of our candidates” is a losing one.
Oh it certainly takes more than minority candidates. Running a lot of minority candidates is just window dressing. But it can be more effective window dressing, combined with changes in rhetoric, if all Democrats ever do is run minorities in minority districts and shunt minorities aside when campaigning for statewide offices. Democratic strategy is to encourage balkanization and that can be exploited by a party that’s serious about inclusion. But yes, the rhetoric has to change, and it has to stay changed for a long time, probably decades. And, we have to have minority candidates in statewide and national office too, and contrast that to Democratic unwillingness to run minorities for offices where they’ll face a mostly white electorate.
The thing with the abortion issue is that there are roughly three positions, each of which is held by roughly a third of the population: Some people think that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, some people believe that it should be legal under all circumstances, and some people believe it should be legal under some circumstances and illegal under others. Both sides then try to claim that middle third, and so claim that 2/3 of the country agrees with them.
And I’m sure it’s true that a lot of women and minorities would like smaller government. But the Republicans would have to change so much as to be unrecognizable to cater to such a desire.
You are just SO precious! You really think that once the Civil Rights Act was passed, racism was removed from consideration as a political goad and ALL of the South moved over to the Republicans solely for DIFFERENT culture war reasons? Really?