Sunday, June 14, 2009

Broadening the Base

Interesting article on the Republican demographic problem.

In the last election, there were more than 2 million additional African American voters, about 2 million more Hispanic voters and about a million more Asian American voters. All are groups in which Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote over 2004. Frey estimated that minority voters in nine states made the difference in Obama's victory margin.

I think most articles like this overestimate the endurance of minority voters in the election cycle, as well as the swing of white voters to the Democrats. 2008 was most likely an anomaly; many people were tired of George W. Bush and have spent two election cycles punishing all Republicans for him. Couple that with a successful black candidate and you have the numbers that have everybody talking.

95% of black voters voted for Barack Obama. That is a stunningly high percentage. Then there is the fact that black voting participation rose from 11.1% in 2004 to 13% in 2008, and you can understand what happened. The question is whether these voters continue to turn out for Democrats when a black person is not running for president.

Then there's the disaffected GOPers who also voted for Barack Obama. Many voted for the Democrats because of perceived "broken promises" by the GOP. Many of those people called radio talk shows to argue that the Republicans needed to be "taught a lesson" by becoming the minority party.

I don't really take these articles predicting the demise of the GOP too seriously, since these same publications made the same predictions about the Democrats in 2004. There's no question that the GOP must become more attractive to minorities in order to win elections, but perhaps enough Americans will feel the pain of their recent vote to change their minds anyway.