I don’t have independent confirmation of these numbers, but I trust Jon Chait to get them right:

The white share of the electorate has been falling steadily for two decades, from 87 percent in 1992 to 83 percent in 1996 to 81 percent in 2000, 77 percent in 2004, and 74 percent four years ago.

That’s a very consistent line. Every four years, the percentage of the electorate that is white declines by about three percentage points. Based on the recent trend, we should expect the white vote to make up between 70-72 percent of the electorate this time around. Yet, for some reason, Gallup is projecting the white vote to be 77% of the electorate this November. Data from the 2010 U.S. Census (pdf) indicates that the non-hispanic white population fell from 69.1% in 2000 to 63.7% at the end of the last decade. That doesn’t seem to support a reversal in the trend. Did something happen between the last presidential election and the upcoming one that would stop and reverse the downward trend?

The answer is that the sharp decline in the economy that started in 2007 but really got going in September 2008 wound up dislocating a lot of non-white voters. A lot of Democrats have moved and need to reregister. Of course, we can add to this the many new Photo ID requirements that disproportionately affect people of color. And then maybe blacks won’t be quite as enthusiastic about voting for Obama the second time around. A combination of all these factors could conceivably stop the trend. Could they go so far as to actually reverse it? Could the electorate of 2012 really look like the electorate of 2004, as Gallup projects?

I think that is a stretch. If Gallup really believes that, they should explain their reasoning. Because it isn’t any secret that Romney is polling better than Obama among non-hispanic white voters. And if Gallup has the demographic model skewed badly to reflect a much bigger white vote than is realistic or justified by the available evidence, then their poll numbers are going to skew towards Romney all year long. Right now, Gallup is polling more like Rasmussen and the Washington Times than they are like more respectable outfits. Hell, even Fox News has Obama with a seven point lead. Gallup says Romney is up by one.

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