We don’t have many, but they vote. How else do you think the Republicans did much better among nearly all groups in 2010 and 2014?
If the Republicans win the same percentages of each demographic group in 2016 as they did in 2014, they will win the Presidency and hold Congress and the Senate easily. Now explain to me how higher turnout is supposed to make Democrats do better among Latino, Asian, lower income, women, and youth voters if the issue isn’t actually Democratic turnout as opposed to turnout among those groups.
Let’s see some numbers. Give us every demographic in which the majority voted Republican in 2010 and 2014.
To be fair, I’ll give some of the demographics in which the majority voted for Democrats: Women voters, black voters, Hispanic voters, Asian voters, voters 45 and under, voters making less than $50,000 a year. These are figures for 2010 and 2014.
The Republicans won 62% of the white vote. They don’t need to win majorities among minorities to win elections given that big margin. That plus the 37% of the Latino vote they won is all they need. If they maintain those percentages in 2016 they’ll have no problems. Winning the Asian vote again doesn’t hurt either. Even the 10% of the black vote they won was a pretty nice bonus over 2012.
What was the reason for the 12 percentage point improvement among Latino voters? WHy would Democrats expect turnout to improve that situation?
The Republicans also did 8 points better among voters making under $30K. How does mobilizing more poor voters help Democrats do better among that group?
The Republicans did 12 percentage points better among the young voters 18-29. How does bringing out more young voters help Democrats do better among that group?
No, thanks to Obama a huge number of young people came out in 2008.
He hit a home run in 2008 and then followed with a solid triple in 2012. It’s silly to complain about the downward trend when the first one was such an incredible achievement.
What reason does anyone have to expect that the Republicans have a chance to get 37% of Latino voters? What have they done, or what do they plan to do, do attract Latino voters?
Do you seriously not understand the basic math involved here? There’s no evidence that Republicans actually did better among these groups in real numbers. That would mean that voters in these groups who had voted for a Democrat in 2012 voted for a Republican in 2014 and there’s no sign of these conversions.
The more obvious explanation is that Democratic voters stayed home. This would raise the Republican percentage in a smaller group but it doesn’t represent any new Republicans.
Let’s say there were a hundred voters in 2012 and forty of them voted Republican and sixty of them voted Democrat. Then in 2014, thirty Democratic voters in this group stayed home. You now have forty Republican voters and thirty Democratic voters. The Republican percentage went from 40% to 57% without a single new voter.
I’m not saying this isn’t a real advantage for the Republicans. Being able to get your core voters out to vote is something that wins elections. But it’s not unbeatable as you’re claiming. If the Democrats do manage to mobilize voters they can still win elections.
To make it short, it’s not that minorities in general didn’t turn out, it’s that minority Democrats didn’t turn out. Republican minority voters did. And while Democrats like to make fun of Republicans for having an overwhelmingly white base of support, Republicans still enjoy the support of millions of minority voters and they did reliably come out in 2010 and 2014. As did Republican poor voters, Republican female voters, and Republican young voters.
Yes, everyone who voted Republican in the last election, whether poor, female, young or white white white white white white white white white, was a Republican voter, who DID come out to vote in the last election! Well said!
True enough, Democratic turnout in midterms has always been a problem, compounded this year by their cowardly running away from Obama. So 2016 will be a rebound year for Democrats as they ride Hillary’s pantsuit tails to victory and again in 2018 as they embrace her in the midterms, ditto for 2020 and 2022. Maybe by 2026 the Republicans will have another good election.
I’m lukewarm on her myself, but I’d crawl over hot coals and broken glass in the nude to vote for her over Cruz, Paul, Bush, Rubio, Christie, or whoever.
Of course not. The issue is WHY. I gave my theory, which is pretty well supported by the numbers. Wesley thinks the key is to turn out poor voters, but the problem isn’t simple demographics. It actually involves the political leanings of the individual voters, which would imply that the problem isn’t that it’s too hard for this or that voter to vote. They just aren’t being given a reason to by the party they support. All the voter participation efforts in the world won’t fix that.
Historically, Democratic voters have been more likely to turn out FOR a candidate the like than out of fear of a Republican. I can think of at least two elections in recent memory where Democrats’ primary campaign issue was how bad Republicans were and both times it failed to motivate the base sufficiently: 2004 and 2014.
Give them an Obama though, and they come out in droves. Can Clinton motivate the base? Seems like a significant portion of the base is not very motivated by her.
This just started two months ago? Sorry, I know what you mean, but I’m really skeptical that Democrats in 2016 will be able to focus a winning campaign on scaring twenty seven distinct special interests with twenty seven different messages, which was pretty much the 2014 strategy. It’s especially unlikely to work among Latino voters if Bush is the nominee. While I don’t know if Bush can win given his family baggage, I do know that if he runs Democrats will have to figure out how to win again with no more than 60% of the Latino vote and I don’t know if they can wrap their minds around that anymore. To beat Bush, there’s no way around competing for the white middle class vote, which Democrats seem to have forgotten how to do.