Reading an annoyingly titled but interesting piece about the next election cycle, I came across this interesting tidbit, which I hadn’t seen before:
As The New York Times’ John Harwood recently noted, McCain won the same percentage of the white vote that Ronald Reagan did in 1980 — and lost.
Reagan (additional link) and McCain each won about 55% of the white vote.
Here’s something else interesting: Bush won 58% of the white vote in 2004. If McCain had won 58%, he still would have lost badly. If he’d won 65% 60% of the white vote, the race would have been essentially a tie.
The media has a strange tendency to treat non-white voters as if they don’t count (EDIT: But I am not suggesting Harwood is doing that here). The “real battle” is always for white, suburban “security moms” or “NASCAR” dads or Chris Matthews’ cranky Reagan Democrat uncle. But we’re now in a position where Republicans have to win two-thirds of the white vote in order to win an election, assuming current trends continue. That’s pretty striking to me.
Thomas Levenson
Which, of course, is why the repeated GOP attacks on Sotomayor is such brilliant politics.
RSA
Some of my best friends are white voters.
jenniebee
Well, you know, if you don’t factor out Obama’s huge support among African-Americans you could get a skewed picture about how popular he is with Americans.
/wingnut
Karen S.
The tendency on the media’s part to treat non-white voters as if they don’t matter could be due to journalism (both print and broadcast) still being among the whitest professions. I’m going on my own observations here, having worked in a few newsrooms at small daily and weekly newspapers as well as being friendly with reporters from bigger metro dailies in the Chicago area. Before I got out of journalism almost two years ago, I recall some hand wringing about the need to have more people of color in journalism. But it usually didn’t get past the hand-wringing stage. I was usually the only African American in the newsrooms I worked in, with one exception.
djork
BEST.TITLE.EVER.
smiley
Sorry to go way OT but this is too good to not share. I’m thinking of including it in my lectures on advertising and persuasion, but I fear some might be offended.
cmohrnc
I haven’t read the NYT piece in question.
BUT:
– If the thrust of the piece is that this is an indicator that the white vote is a significantly less dominant portion of the electorate in 2008 than it was in 1980, I don’t see it as any indication of clueless lack of insight by Harwood; quite the opposite.
– if OTOH the thrust of the piece is that this is an indicator that the relative position of the GOP in the electorate (especially as it portends the future) is in fact much sunnier than the 2008 election would seem to indicate THEN by all means this is indeed indication of clueless lack of insight by Harwood.
I’ll check out the article on-line and see which it is.
handy
This meme will be trotted out time and again, even if (when?) a candidate were to need 90% of white voters to overcome shortcomings in other demographics. Why? Because our media is stupid. That is all.
DougJ
That’s interesting.
Another thing that I find striking is how much the media ignores African-American talk radio. The audience sizes for guys like Tom Joyner and Tavis Smiley are significant.
Michael Sheridan
The dwindling few non-insane people in the GOP have been trying to tell their colleagues for several years that they have to start appealing to the Latino vote (while still not giving a flying cop about any other minority in the house).
But the idiots won’t listen, and are still trying desperately to get that 2/3rds of whites by ramping up their white “nativist”, anti-gay, anti-sex freakshow every two years, while dumping millions into primary battles against the remaining non-insane to drive them out of the party.
That’s one hell of a permanent majority Rove built, isn’t it?
Rommie
And enough of those white voters are gay, read the wrong bible, etc. that getting 2/3 of the vote is a tall mountain. The ability to appeal to one voting block at a time, while turning off the others, is gotta have them feeling like Phyrrus vs. the Romans.
I still worry when they finally lose seat #41 in Senate and the majority starts to use it like a mop handle to the head. They aren’t going to handle irrelevance well at all.
Zifnab
@handy: It’ll be fun to see the pundits scratching their heads about why Republicans keep losing seats when they’re doing such a good job of appealing to rich white suburban families from the 50s.
anonevent
Which is why all Republicans must attack ACORN, require IDs to vote, repeal the fourteenth amendment, and make sure all laws are skewed towards making sure that minorities have more felony convictions.
The Grand Panjandrum
That particular Politico piece made me a feel a little seasick. Now that the elected Republicans have been shaved down to the almost smooth rump (with only a few notable exceptions) and cries from the conservative jihadists for more purity that isn’t going to change any time soon.
It should also be noted that support among women fell i.e. white women declined significantly. So that means the GOP is holding on to the Grover Nordquist and militia crowds. Not a particularly good way to win national elections, is it?
SenyorDave
I can’t understand why Romney, Palin, Huckabee, and company aren’t wildly popular in the Hispanic or African-American communities. Especially after all the extensive minority outreach the GOP has done.
Betsy
Who was it a few months back that made the infamous comment that (paraphrasing) McCain’s numbers were better than they looked on the surface, because the high percentage of the minority vote that went to Obama tipped the scale? I don’t remember, but it was an incredibly telling moment. The guy really believed deep down that those voters just don’t count, that their opinions, values, needs, and issues were somehow not as important or worthy of being considered as white voters.
Roger Moore
@Michael Sheridan:
The problem is that there’s no guarantee that whites are a permanent majority. Actually, in fairness to Rove, he and Shrub tried to reach out to Hispanic/Latino voters. I assume that he knew to care about them because anyone from Texas would understand their electoral importance. Rove’s problem is that the rest of the party didn’t go along.
slip
sorry to be a spoilsport, but there is a conflict between your post and the “reagan” link.
you write: “Reagan and McCain each won 55% of the white vote.”
“reagan” link: “In the last election 55% of Whites voted for Obama.”
Bill E Pilgrim
Here’s how the other side of that story looks in a bar chart, from DKos data via Yglesias.
The non-white vote is ever more important as you show, and the Republicans are losing it to the point of vanishing.
BP in MN
Assuming you mean the Democratic majority, I don’t think you need to worry anytime soon. Hell, the Republicans could be down to 25 Senators and I still wouldn’t worry on that score.
Betsy
I have to say that while this is good for the Democrats, I actually think it’s bad for minorities that they effectively have only one party. It sets a really low bar – as long as the Democrats aren’t joking about watermelons and gorillas, they’re the only possible choice. Which means that they don’t work nearly as hard as they could to address the issues important to those voters. The same goes for gays, I think.
DougJ
That was a typo on their part. I linked to the exit polls for Obama and McCain.
(Good catch, though.)
DougJ
I totally agree.
The Moar You Know
Fear not. The Dems will bend over backwards to be kind and inclusive to the Republicans, who will then promptly repay the kindness of the Democrats with unlubed sodomy, which is why I don’t give the party money any more.
When the party decides they want to act like winners, that’s when they’ll get my cash.
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
It is for the side I vote for.
Brian J
I agree it’s pretty bizarre that they are treated as if they don’t matter. Considering that they are all registered illegally by the George Soros and Nancy Pelosi-controlled group ACORN, as part of a grand plan to convert the U.S. into some sort of gay Muslim nation, you’d think those in the media would be paying attention.
parksideq
I forget where I read it, but sometime between 2040 and 2050 whites are projected to be less than 50% of the population. If voting trends continue as they are now (barring a mass exodus of teh crazy from the GOP), at some point it won’t matter if Republicans get 100% of the white vote.
Them’s the facts; the GOP is on the fast track to obsolescence by implosion, the decline in their base’s population, or (probably) both.
Brian J
Like you, I think that a robust competition for votes would be a good way to get the interests of minorities represented. Extend this to any constituency, and I’d tell you the same thing.
But nobody is preventing blacks (or any other group, ethnic or otherwise) from voting for voting for Republicans, just as nobody is preventing Evangelicals from voting for Democrats. For the most part, I’m willing to believe that groups know what they are getting when they are voting for a candidate or political party. When one group doesn’t vote for a particular candidate in large enough numbers, it’s because that group doesn’t feel that candidate represents its interests. If it sounds pretty obvious, it’s because it is.
Until any minority group feels the Republicans are representing their interests, they aren’t going to vote them. It’s that simple.
gex
@parksideq: And when my conservative relatives send emails about the how immigration is killing the Judeo-Christian morality of this country, I can easily view this data and realize what they actually mean: “Oh noes! Too many brown people!”
Napoleon
@Betsy:
I think that was Jonah Goldberg (or whatever his name is).
BTW, I don’t think Harwood is in any way shape or form discounting or taking less seriously minority vote, but that what he is saying is something that was first predicted in this book in 2001 but that most MSM prognosticators, like Ron Brownstein, Charlie Cook, etc. are first taking notice of in the last few months, even though the trend has been clear starting with the 2006 elections.
I think mentioning Reagan is to show you what the high end of the bar is for the white vote for a Republican candidate and that McCain hit that bar, which tells you the issues they have are somewhere else (in the minority community). Implicitly Harwood is almost saying the minority votes are more important now.
Zifnab
@Betsy:
I don’t know why. You’ve got the civil rights party and the non-civil rights party. What else are you going to vote for on the basis of ethnicity? It would be nice if BOTH parties respected civil rights, but then civil rights wouldn’t be a party platform, would it?
If we had a centrist Dem and a leftist party, rather than just a centrist Dem party, that would be nice too. I would welcome a more-liberal third party. But political realities in the US just don’t allow for that.
And I don’t really like the idea of parties divided up by race. I wouldn’t want to see the “Latino Party of America.” That could easily be demagogued into all sorts of horrible bullshit – “You’re not really a Latino unless you vote for the pro-war / anti-abortion / anti-death penalty / anti-environmental Latino Party. So define yourself by your race rather than your political opinion.” Or worse still, “She’s a member of the Latino Party, so she’s a racist!” crap they tried to stick to Sotomayor.
Brian J
I remember reading that book either before or after the 2004 elections. It put me in a remarkably good mood, because it gave me hope that despite all of the calls to the contrary, the Democrats weren’t finished at a national level.
I also remember mentioning ideas from that book in arguments with conservatives and getting roasted for suggesting that states like North Carolina could soon be in play. At the time, looking at the numbers, it seemed like those people had a point. Oh well, I’m glad I turned out to be (partly?) wrong.
DougJ
Me neither. I didn’t mean to suggest that.
drumwolf
@gex:
Exactly. When I read right-wing fundie rhetoric, I see quite a few instances where the use of the word “Christian” is essentially a euphemism for “white.”
Xecky Gilchrist
@Betsy: …it was an incredibly telling moment. The guy really believed deep down that those voters just don’t count…
Yup. We learned all sorts of interesting things in the 2008 elections. Non-white voters don’t count, some parts of Virginia are Real American while others aren’t, Alaska is American and Hawaii isn’t, it’s not American to early-vote on a Sunday, etc.
slag
@Betsy: Byron York.
Rosali
@DougJ:
Another thing that I find striking is how much the media ignores African-American talk radio. The audience sizes for guys like Tom Joyner and Tavis Smiley are significant.
Michael Baisden has a huge audience too and spent months talking about registering voters and GOTV last fall.
slippytoad
@ Roger Moore
Rove’s problem was that he kept inviting racists, xenophobes, and Nazis into the GOP tent to shriek their poisonous fug from the podium, and that the rest of the nation now pretty much assumes that the GOP is 1/3 rich guys and 2/3 bigoted shitbags.
DonBoy
I can’t remember where I read this — maybe Kinsley? — but here’s a decent paraphrase of something from just after the 1992 election:
“If only men had voted, George Bush would have beaten Bill Clinton. This was in the second paragraph of most news stories the day after the election. On the other hand, if only white people had voted, Bush would also have won. This fact, reported clearly in the European press, didn’t make it into the second paragraph of any American story.”
Tsulagi
Got that right. Regardless of skin color, who doesn’t have sympathy for old white GOP privileged legacy frat boys victimized by the likes of a racist Sotomayor and her ilk? The tales of their suffering will continue to gain traction translating into certain electoral success. You can take that to the strategery bank.
Napoleon
@DougJ:
I knew you were not but some of the responses seem to be saying that they thought either Harwood was or more generally that people that point out things like Harwood did are somehow saying that white votes count more. Sometimes its hard to tell the point people are trying to make.
FreeDem
@Betsy:
Actually except for the shrinking minority crossing the event horizon everyone effectively only has one party now. With the Constitution welded into a two party system that will mean both new parties will have to come from the Democratic Party. The big question is who will get to keep the name, The Democratic wing of the Democratic party, or the Corporate wing.
It took Slavery and both parties for it, to allow the Republicans to become the second party, and will take something that brain dead on behalf of both to do that again.
Health Care could be that something, or perhaps a disgust with all the Vampires sucking civilization dry but it will have to be big and open to happen.
Napoleon
This may seem at first blush somewhat OT, but when you think about it is instructive of what does and does not count with the media elite, but two NPR pieces I heard, one in the the last month and the other perhaps last fall discuss similar situations of a like kind.
Then one I heard recently was about how big new sitcoms are on some kids/teens channels like Nickalodeon. I forget the names of the shows (well other then Hanna Montana) but for one of them I swear they said it leads all programing in its time slot. They gave the numbers and its audience is huge, so much so if it was in prime time on NBC you would not be able to get away from its stars on Entertainment Tonight or the rags in the grocery store line, yet I had never heard of the show.
The older story was about some born again/fundamentalist Christian movie studio, which I had never heard about, nor did any of the movies they mention ring a bell, and yet out of something like the top 10 viewed movies for the year something like 2 or 3 of them were these movies I had never heard of.
binzinerator
@slippytoad:
An accurate assumption, as far as I can tell. (I tend to think it’s 1/3 rich guy, 1/3 christianist fundamentalist and 1/3 plain vanilla bigoted shitbag, but because christianist fundamentalists are in fact bigoted shitbags I can see why they get thrown in with the other bigoted shitbags.)
Brick Oven Bill
This is odd as the Democrats are the more overtly racist of the two parties, as far as I can tell. Establishment Republicans purport to believe that the poor residents of Washington DC can improve their lot in life by obtaining private school vouchers. They purport to believe that education can narrow or close the achievement gap.
When the Democrats took control, this program was ended, despite the fact that it costs less to send a kid to private school than to public school in Washington DC, saving the taxpayers money. The only possible reason that I can come up with for this change was to keep inner-city minority children away from the children of the Democratic establishment / political class who had taken control.
The Democrats can get away with this.
Dusty
Not to defend the media, but isn’t this partly about the electoral story always being swing voters? The African-American vote is locked down; the only question there is turnout and there’s no good way to measure that in advance. Hispanics were a possible swing pickup, but that’s looking less and less likely.
It’s why there’s a million stories about Ohio and not New York. Not that New York’s not important, the Democrats have to win it, but, as long as polls have the Democratic candidate way out in front, it’s not a story, not from a horse-race perspective and that’s what guys like Matthews cover.
Of course, I’m not counting those wingnuts who really think winning margins among women rather than men are somehow less valid.
Raenelle
There’s a danger in averages, when the election really is decided by electoral votes. I heard that, while McCain got the majority of white votes overall, he lost to Obama among white voters in blue states while trouncing Obama (getting 2/3 of the white vote) in the south. Average it out, and McCain got the white vote. In states where white supremacy is less an issue, he lost it.
DougJ
I see your point.
Peter J
How about giving Arizona, New Mexico and part of Texas and California to Mexico? Might that help? Something like that is being considered by some in another country being hit bit by a “demographic bomb”.
Brian J
You know, I wonder how all of this will be affected by the possibility that some swing states have been so thoroughly dissected by each side that they need to expand into states that are traditionally ignored.
I remember reading that almost every single possible voter in Ohio–94 percent–was registered as of October. Obviously, the rolls won’t stay the same, as people move, die, or become newly eligible, but I’d bet that the number of registered voters in targeted states like Virginia and Washington is pretty high, and even higher in states bitterly fought over like Florida. When you compare it to states like New York or Texas, where there’s not usually a battle for the Electoral votes, it’s even more eye popping. Now, if there just aren’t that many voters left to register in Ohio, and if each side ramps up its efforts in states like Virginia and North Carolina (or any other that might become a swing state) so that the percentage of registered voters is similar to that of a state like Ohio, where will each party go?
The Democrats could go to a state like Texas (and, in on an unrelated note, I expect them to for 2012) and the Republicans to New York or California. If they do, considering how big and diverse (not just in ethnicity, but in opinion based on region) each state is, things could stay the same. But if the Democrats decide to target, say, Kentucky and Tennessee or Mississippi and Alabama, or the Republicans Rhode Island and Massachusetts, might that change their parties and platforms?
Now, this probably isn’t likely. There’s no clear reason that the Democrats are going to start targeting Kentucky over Ohio and the Republicans Massachusetts over Pennsylvania, but if the race does ever extend into states where the population is a little more homogeneous for the Democrats or a little more diverse for the Republicans, I’d be curious to see what, if anything, it changes about each party.
[edit: Here’s the link for that statistic about Ohio:http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/10/astounding_numbers.php%5D
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Brick Oven Bill:
Wow, the spoof tells are getting pretty thick there, Bilious.
They “purport” to believe? Excuse me while I wipe away the tears of laughter.
Anyway, Republicans don’t give a rat’s ass about improving inner city schools. They favor anything that defunds traditional public education, period, dot.
The same way they favor anything that defunds Social Security and funnels electrified trainloads of money into the securities market.
Republicans are all about moving the money their way, and lying about why they are doing it. That is a one sentence description of the GOP and the phony “conservative movement.”
Now excuse me, I need to go take a conservative movement.
Kris
DougJ,
Tavis doesn’t have a radio show and I am glad he doesn’t. Tom Joyner on the other hand does and is quite successful when the corporate warlords aren’t trying to boot him off the air for alleged “ratings decline.”
I agree with everything you said here and loved the title.
Brick Oven Bill
This is a very good analysis of the impact of regular interracial contact upon the voting patterns of white Democrats.
The behavior shown is consistent with the behavior of the Democratic leadership with respect to school vouchers in Washington DC.
handy
I didn’t realize advocating policies that made a basic need in a modern industrialized nation free and accessible to all its citizens made one a racist. Overtly racist at that.
LD50
This actually explains the GOP’s Zombie Reagan strategy — it actually would have worked in 1980!
Does that count for nothing?
Brick Oven Bill
Both parties have given up on the inner-city school systems PeopleAreNoDamnGood. The Republican party has demonstrated a willingness to let potential achievers from these systems be taught alongside their own children. The Democratic Party prefers to keep their own children segregated from those influences.
This is the only reason that I can see for the Democrats sending the former voucher recipients away from the Political Class schools back to those inner-city schools. If there is another explanation for this change, I am all ears. The Press doesn’t talk about it because their kids also go to the Political Class schools.
These people live by a separate set of rules. I commute in a Ford Focus. Nancy Pelosi commutes in a 757. This is for National Security purposes, you see. She is looking out for the American people.
Allan
I learn something new from Baghdad BOB every day. None of it true, of course.
handy
I take from the snarkiness in your post you’d rather she commuted cross country from California to D.C. in a Focus like you? Damn, you’re harsh.
LD50
Why do I somehow know that if the speaker of the house were male or a conservative, BOB wouldn’t care in the slightest how she got from SF to DC?
Joe
I don’t quite see why what percentage of what race votes for who is important. I guess it’s just because I’m a conservative and I just see people as people. Many Republicans are losing because they’re acting like Democrats. They try to “reach out” because that’s what they think they need to do. When in reality, all they need to do is be true to their values.
Brick Oven Bill
I just don’t care for the double standard and hypocrisy LD50. It is surreal to be lectured about morality and environmentally-correct behavior by this segregationist, CO2 belching group of politicians.
Hans
@Brick Oven Bill: @Brick Oven Bill:
teapotdome
“This is odd as the Democrats are the more overtly racist of the two parties, as far as I can tell.”
Yes, you just keep believing that. Believe that people of color are too dumb to figure out which party best represents their interests. And keep waving those pieces of watermelon and fried chicken at the Palin rallies. That’s how you’ll win the minority vote!
Michael Sheridan
@Brick Oven Bill:
Talk about not understanding what you’re linking to.
The second map shows, wonder of wonders, that a black Democrat got a poorer percentage of the vote in the South than he did elsewhere. He also did poorly in areas where members of the Mormon church, which up until fairly recently by historical standards, still preached that black people were evil (or some such stupid thing) are a significant part of the population. Hardly news.
The first map shows that in the really Deep South (and Louisiana, where black voters are still displaced after Hurricane Katrina in greater numbers than white voters), Obama got a smaller percentage of the white vote than Kerry did in 2004. That there is still a significant percentage of white Southerners, even those in the Democratic party, who are racist enough to vote against a black guy also is not newsworthy.
The maps say fuck all about which party is more racist than the other. I’d invite you to try again, but I’m pretty sure this is already the least lame “evidence” you have, as shown by your later reference to Democrats as “segregationists”. That ignores the historical evidence that the Dixiecrats who favored segregation migrated pretty much as a block to the GOP after the Democratic Party embraced Civil Rights. You really ought to look up “Southern Strategy” on the Intertubes some time….
Phoebe
BOB, I think the reason the Dems in DC don’t support vouchers is probably the same reason the Dems everywhere don’t support vouchers – not because they’re worried about black kids in private schools, but because they think that vouchers = bad for public schools, and public schools = good for black kids. What they fail to see is that most public schools are cauldrons of shit, with or without vouchers, and nobody should have to go to one.
Plantsmantx
“Which means that they don’t work nearly as hard as they could to address the issues important to those voters. The same goes for gays, I think.”
As a black person, it would be nice to be able to afford to vote for Republicans. I’m sure I wouldn’t do it, but it would be nice to know I could, I guess.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fixed.
How about a new name for the Republicans? Something that combines love of corporation and hate of anything that isn’t right.
How about Hate Incorporated?
asiangrrlMN
This is something that infuriated me during the campaign season. The only non-white demo that apparently mattered was the Latino one. The rest of us? Still didn’t matter. Feh.
gex
@Plantsmantx: Agreed. As a gay person the “choice” between outright hostility towards our concerns and outright neglect of our concerns doesn’t feel like any choice at all. Those who constantly emphasize how all the other issues in politics are more important, never acknowledge the fact that the issues that affect us don’t affect them and that if they were affected their prioritization of the issues might be different.
gex
@asiangrrlMN: To be fair, Pat Buchanon’s “Speak English Dammit!” conference did call out to us “yellow” people to join the whites in _______. I don’t remember what the invitation was specifically for, but I would fill in that blank with the phrase “race war”.
superdestroyer
The real question is how will politics work in the U.S. when the Democratic Primary is the real election. Will an incumbent ever see a real opponent in the coming one partystate.
Will there be a de facto black party, Hispanic Party, progressive party, conservative party inside the Democratic party.
Also, how will minorities be affect when the President is selected in the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary. If the same candidate wins both, the presidential election ends one year before.
Will special interest become more powerful in the coming one party state such as the way Chicago works today?