GOP White Voter Ratio Actually At 30 Year Lows
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Democrats, History, RepublicansI talked about a Gallup poll yesterday that showed only 11% of GOP voters were non-whites. But after reading some of the comments on that post, I felt the need to amend those thoughts.
Basically, the GOP has been VERY white for a while and are getting less so. But not enough to really make a difference.
From FiveThirtyEight…first the GOP’s demos…
88 percent of George W. Bush’s voters in 2004, and 91 percent of them in 2000, were white. And nearly 98 percent of Ronald Reagan’s voters in 1980 were white as were 96 percent of Gerald Ford’s in 1976. The GOP is, in fact, slightly less white than it once was, as they do relatively better among Hispanics and Asians than among blacks (if still not particularly well), and Hispanics and Asians are starting to make up a larger fraction of the nonwhite (and overall) voting pool.
Now the Dems…
Consider this remarkable statistic. In 1980, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Democrats (or at least white Carter voters) — likewise, in 2008, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Obama voters. But whereas, in 1980, just 9 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Carter voters, 21 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Obama voters last year. Thus, Carter went down to a landslide defeat, whereas Obama defeated John McCain by a healthy margin.
The trend is there and the GOP isn’t doing anything to address it. Well, Bush tried to reach out to Hispanics, and he definitely had some success, but McCain’s campaign virtually ignored these voters when he flipflopped on immigration and that sunk him.
So, like any good product, the GOP needs to change with the times or face irrelevancy. But they’re in a tough situation since they’ve built so much of their power around the ideas of social conservatism and national security. Because any of the ideas that more and more people seem to favor are issues that would alienate the GOP’s base. And this is why many think that they’re doomed to become a regional party unless they can have a reformation…and quick.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 and is filed under Democrats, History, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
