Pew Research surveyed 35,071 Americans between June and September of 2014 and compiled information about their religious and political beliefs. One of their findings was that white Christians no longer constitute a majority in this country. Another finding was that a political gap among white Christians has widened during Obama’s presidency.
Nearly seven in 10 white Christians — 69 percent — identify with or lean toward the GOP, while just 31 percent do the same with Democrats…
…In less than a decade, the gap in Christian identification between Democrats and Republicans has increased by 50 percent. According to the data presented, in 2007, 88 percent of white Republicans and 70 percent of white Democrats identified as Christian, an 18-point disparity. By 2014, 84 percent of white Republicans identified as Christian, but the share of white Democrats identifying as Christian fell by 13 points, to 57 percent, a 27-point gap.
Despite these changes, some things have been remarkably stable. For example, separate research by Pew shows that party preference among whites has been nearly identical in the last three elections: (2010: 37D 60R, 2012: 39D 59R, 2014: 38D 60R).
That 59% Republican number from 2012 serves as the baseline for the popular vote calculator used at Latino Decisions. You can play around with the racial and turnout variables to see how small changes can alter the outcome of our presidential elections. This doesn’t account for the Electoral College, of course, but the popular vote predicts the winner most of the time, doesn’t it?
One thing you’ll discover is that if the white percentage of the vote comes in as predicted at 70.5% and the Republicans continue to get 59% of the white vote and other ethnic groups’ preferences and turnout hold constant then the GOP candidate will need about 47% of the Latino vote in order to win the popular vote. It’s actually worse than this because the calculator assumes that without Obama at the top of the ticket, the Republican will get 12% of the black vote rather than the 6% Romney received.
More statistically significant, however, is the fact that Romney only received an estimated 27% of the Latino vote in 2012. So, here’s what this looks like for the Republicans. If they can double the percentage of black votes they got in 2012 and do 20% better among Latinos, they can win the popular vote without doing any better (or worse) with white voters.
Numbers like these are daunting, and they explain why the Republican National Committee’s post-2012 Growth and Opportunity Report (better known as “The Autopsy Report”) determined that passing comprehensive immigration reform was an absolute prerequisite for them having any chance of winning the presidency in 2016. This is why the Senate Republicans made it a top priority in 2013 and ultimately passed a bill in a bipartisan 68-32 vote that included 14 members of their caucus.
I don’t think I need to belabor this point, but what happened next is not going to help the eventual Republican nominee improve twenty points on Romney’s performance with Latinos. If Donald Trump is their nominee, I think he’ll be fortunate to get half the Latino votes that Romney gathered.
Now, here’s the important point.
Since the Republicans didn’t pursue the easier path of improving their popularity with Latinos, they have no choice to jack up that 59% number they got with whites. Let’s look at how much they’ll need.
Using the other Latino Decisions assumptions, if the GOP gets 27% of the Latino vote, they’ll need 62% of the white vote to win the popular vote. If they get only 13% of the Latino vote, they need 64% of the white vote to win the popular vote. And, again, both of these predictions assume that the GOP will double their support in the black community and also not lose any Asian or “Other” voters.
It’s probably a lot easier to get new voters from a group that is generally opposed to you than it is to keep adding voters to a group you’re dominating. In other words, it might be an easier task for the Republicans to get back to the 40-plus percent Latino support that George W. Bush once enjoyed than to grow their white support from 59% to 64%.
But it’s the latter strategy (if we can call it a strategy) that the Republicans are pursuing. They need to racially polarize the electorate in a way that gets them 3-5% more of the white vote.
They can do some of this through turnout instead, of course, so if they can keep lots of blacks and Latinos from voting in the first place, they don’t need to improve quite so much with whites.
I think what’s key to understanding this situation is that the Republicans actually have crossed the Rubicon and they no longer have the option of going back and pursuing more of the Latino vote. They must pursue more of the white vote and there are not too many ways to do that other than aggravating racial consciousness and jacking up the sense of white racial grievance.
This has been a mainstay of conservative/Republican electoral strategy since at least the time that Nixon pursued the Southern Strategy, but I doubt that it’s ever been this much of an urgent and indispensable part of their path to success.
So, we’re seeing two things: a revival of open racism that had been dormant on the presidential campaign trail, and continued efforts to suppress the minority vote. These aren’t really choices anymore. They can’t win any other way.
The only alternative (which is no longer available in this cycle) is for some adults to take back control of the Republican Party from the Conservative Movement. As long as the conservatives are in control and refuse to change, these incredibly unpleasant electoral strategies will only get more pronounced and dangerous.
What the poll numbers at the top tell us, though, is that the religious angle is an important and (it looks to be) successful way for the GOP to ramp up the racial polarization in the electorate. It’s just as important to them to cultivate a mass sense of victimhood among white Christians (e.g., gay wedding cakes, Starbucks coffee cups, War on Christmas, Sharia Law) as it is to talk about blacks and Latinos just wanting a handout.
So, expect a lot more of this.
So, expect a lot more of this.
Damn….that is SO depressing. Mainly because it makes such perfect sense. And as we head in the peak season of white Christian aggrievement, it is probably going to be almost unbearable for me. While on the outside I look like just one of the tribe around my hometown, on the inside I am a liberal, freethinking atheist. So I will do my best to keep from purposely wishing someone a “Happy Holidays”, when I know for a fact that it will piss them off. And I will graciously receive the “Merry Christmas” greetings, and will return them in kind. But I will smile to myself when I see a Feliz Navidad display in a local store, because I know the colons of the nativists among me will be twisted into knots at that sight.
What a season of joy, joy, joy……….
A lot of them are atheists, too. They just won’t admit it. If they really did believe in Christianity would they have all those sexual peccadilloes and be cheating people left and right?
Let me take a SWAG: Donald Trump’s enterprises hire lots of undocumented workers for substantially less than minimum wage.
I could be very wrong, but…
Pretty common in the hotel business for maids, gardeners, and porters.
But then if they continue the attempt to inflame racial division that would seem to DECREASE the likelihood of doubling the African American vote, which means they would need to vent more white voters. However, an attempt at racial division would almost certainly alienate a certain amount of white voters. Plus, Obama won’t be on the ticket, so it seems to me that makes it harder, rather than easier to increase racial division unless they…….
.
They just need more blacks like Ben Carson and Herman Cain. As black people advance in the professions and business, they will appear. It’s pretty common for successful minority people to identify with the majority elite and despise their own people. They see themselves as achievers and their less fortunate brothers/sisters as lazy lowlifes. This was the reason for many Polish, Italian, Jewish, and (to a lesser extent) Irish surname changes. The Irish to a lesser extent because many could pass their name off as Scottish.
I’d go as far as to say inevitable, at least as far as populations are concerned.
Which is why the HRC/Obama/establishment wing of the Democratic Party should think long and hard about waiting for demographics to passively bail the party out while they indulge their addiction to plutocratic sugar. If one or more of Asians/Latinos/blacks/gays decides to pull an Irish or Italians then we’re just fucking fucked.
There already are the Log Cabin Republicans. I can understand gays in the closet being active in the Republican Party as part of the masquerade, see Roy Cohn , but why on earth would an openly gay person?
My guess is for the same reason number of my black acquaintances identify as Republican. To be able to make a difference in close primaries between a moderate bigot and an outright fascist bigot. In the general election they can cross over and vote against the worst. And there is the hope to introduce balance from the inside of the party, which the candidacies of Allen West, Alan Keyes, Herman Cain, and Ben Carson seem to dash. Apparently there is a stiff price to being an acceptable candidate in the white Republican Party.
Which is a reason for the Democratic Party to give up its recent identification as the anti-white non-white party and return to its roots as the non-racial inclusive party. (Yes, I’m talking about the Northern Democratic party, not the Dixiecrats)
The Democratic Party has never identified itself as either anti-white or non-white. All it did was elect a half-black, half-white (if you want to get technical and not go by the one-drop rule) candidate as President of the United States. It might have been the half stuff as much as the black candidate that deranged so many white voters.
In fact of the past twenty or so years, the Democratic Party has not been very good at protecting the gains that were made during the civil rights movement. De facto discrimination in housing and jobs has been continuously winked at and the laws have not been enforced rigorously.
You are correct if by Democratic Party you mean the DNC. I mean the activists in the blogosphere.
It’s pretty common for successful minority people to identify with the majority elite and despise their own people.
so, why do the overwhelming class of Educated Blacks NOT identify with the Republican Party?
Carson? Cain?
As I just replied above, I only know personally, one college educated black man and he was definitely a Democrat. I knew many blue collar black men and women in the Postal Service and they were all Democrats. Many would tell me they knew old people who voted Republican because when they were young, the Democrats were the racists. I once asked good friend of mine, a fellow postal mechanic and very active in politics and the union, why 8% of black people in Chicago voted Republican. He was one of those who told me about the old people. I had assumed that 8% of the voters punched the wrong hole. I haven’t told him yet that I intend to re-register as a Republican. I’m kind of ashamed to.
BTW, he’s very disappointed in Obama too. He gave his all in the election of 2008. I can only guess what that election meant to a kid born to a single mother in the projects.
I haven’t told him yet that I intend to re-register as a Republican. I’m kind of ashamed to.
Is this your announcement here? Which one in the clown car do you want to vote FOR?
No, I’ve posted it before. Can’t really vote for anyone, mostly against. It’s the state races I’m interested in. There seem to be some sane people who actually care about education, state employees, and consumer protection running, versus the corrupt (D) establishment who want to choke the working class to death with property taxes and void union contracts.
IL has been terribly damaged by fuckheads from the D party. Daley the younger has done 3-4 things which horribly damaged Chicago, which include the parking fuckup and the decision some years ago to begin funding normal operating expenses using bonding (that is, similar to taking out a 30 year loan to purchase groceries). Horrible.
The other incredible stupidity, shared by both parties, was to fail to keep the pension system up to date. Horrible disaster, just horrible, and it will punch property taxes higher and higher, and IL will be redder and redder. IL is not a blue state, but is rather a state where the blue area (Chicago, Quad cities, rockford, Metroeast) are just a little larger than the rest of the state. The increase in property taxes will fix that. Just wait – 2020 election will be very interesting in IL.
some sane people who actually care about education, state employees, and consumer protection running, versus the corrupt (D) establishment who want to choke the working class to death with property taxes and void union contracts.
Sane Republicans?
Governments tax people to provide the goods and services that people want/need. How both are accomplished requires the people to be diligent and realistic and demand their elected representatives respond accordingly. General taxation fits within a mere handful of categories — wealth, income, use/consumption — and all of them can be structured as regressive or progressive. How and why have IL property taxes on homeowners become so onerous (assuming they are).
property taxes aren’t that onerous, the media around here just hypes them up more than most; Cook County taxes if you’d ask anyone are the highest anywhere but they’re definitely lower than many suburban rates.
The problem is that we had successive governors, one Republican & one Democrat that ended up in prison. They both fucked up the budget for the state and when we had a relatively honest Governor that was trying to fix the mess he got voted out in favor of a Mitt Romney type. Now the state government is at a stand still and everyone is waiting for the ceiling to fall in.
Thank you. In a well-functioning society and democracy a well balanced mix of taxes should be as rational and equitable as possible, and not be responsive to some fairly taxed group screaming about their income or property taxes.
California is a mess. Prop 13 favored corporations and those that had at its passage and has screwed everyone else. I can recall when the combined state and local sales tax rate was 4%. Today it’s anywhere from 7.9% to 10%. Both have contributed to higher levels of inequality.
Don’t wait for an explanation Rikyrah. Our White Progressive betters know more about Black folks than actual Black folks do. Just sit back and enjoy the Whitesplaining.
Oh, forgive me for having an opinion. I forgot that my white skin is prima facie evidence of mental deficiency and terminal evil.
Are you reading this Marie? You want to know why I’m going to register as a Republican? This kind of crap is why.
because you’re asked for an explanation, if you’re joining the Republicans because you’re being challenged on your assumptions then maybe you weren’t much of a Democrat to begin with
I have some genuine sympathy for you angsting over the Democratic Party stubbornly sticking to the path of economic centrism. And I also agree that the current upper middle class liberal-esque strategy of using cut-rate intersectionalism/identity politics to paper over its weaknesses in foreign and economic policy is going to blow up in their faces, perhaps as soon as the next administration. And ultimately, I feel that most human beings are as selfish and tribal as you; you just have the nerve to openly talk about that chip on your shoulder rather than hide it. So I’ve been mostly ignoring your frequent and aimless whining on this subject over the past couple of weeks.
But seriously, I’m at the point where I’m ready to tell you: “GOOD. GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.” There’s no way to work with someone this emotionally fragile. It’s draining and frustrating. You were (very weakly) challenged on an assumption and you’re so sensitive that responded with a tribalist tantrum and an ultimatum that has no moral backing other than ‘I’m going to make a self-destructive decision because you made me feeeeeel bad’. That’s spoiled teenager logic, man.
The GOP are idiots if they think that white victimhood is the way to a majority.
This hasn’t been really noticed by many liberal or conservative commentators, but the GOP has been slipping badly in the Midwest, Northeast, West, urban South, and Rockies since the start of the 21st century. What’s more, this slip has been solely attributed thanks to non-rural, Appalachian/Southern white Millenials — who are much less bigoted than Baby Boomers and Silents. An ‘All Whites, All The Time’ strategy is doomed to fail as long as the United States is shackled to the electoral college and the state legislatures don’t play funnybuggers with the EVs. Driving up the white vote % in Appalachia and the non-urban South isn’t going to solve their problems, especially since it’s already near a ceiling.
I mean, they had a little bit of hope with this strategy with Trump initially pulling a Perot 2.0 and going Wallace-style populist, but once he decided to give Norquist and Friedman rimjobs he and the rest of the GOP are back to square one.
Demographics are destiny, so maybe the GOP will get some sense knocked into its head when it loses Georgia via Atlanta thanks to it being one of our youngest cities and the influx of Asian-Americans.
Agree. I don’t think they will find it possible to disenfranchise enough minorities to make up the deficit, not for lack of trying, however.
Maybe your experience is different but most of the Asians that I have met in business are Indian or Chinese and professed to vote Republican. See my remarks elsewhere in this page about identifying with the majority elite. Filipinos, I think are more Democratic (big D), but most of the Filipinos I know in my neighborhood and when I worked at USPS didn’t want to talk politics, maybe because it’s hazardous to your health in their home country.
I do know a naturalized Chinese Lady that I am pleased to say I registered as a Cook County registrar. She expressly desired to register so she could vote for Obama. She was a custodian at the postal facility I worked at. Her daughter is an accountant. I wouldn’t be surprised if the daughter voted Republican.
The GOP only got a quarter of the Asian American vote in 2012 and if they continue on this path of neoconfederate destruction it can conceivably be even worse. Which is why I said that Georgia will be the state that smacks some sense into what remains of the sane wing GOP, if they’re not beaten to the punch by Latinos in Texas or urbanites in South Carolina.
I did say “professed to be Republican”. What they actually do in the voting booth is between them and Diebold. Like Roy Cohn’s anti-gay witch hunts, it may be protective coloration i.e. they are talking to upper middle class white men, it may be better to claim to be Republican. OTOH, I have heard these Asians scourge African-Americans like they were pure Tea Party. Typically, something like “I came from a poor family in India. I worked hard at the University and came here and was successful. Why do your American black people drop out of school, walk around with their pants falling off, and demand that the government support them?”
if asian-americans voted Republican, California politics would be much different. They don’t. The exception are the Vietnamese; like Cubans they’re Repubs because communism. Also like Cubans this attitude is fading among younger people.
if there still existed moderate Repubs this might well be different, but those days are gone. The repubs have worked very hard to make themselves the party of white people, and Asian-americans are NOT likely to jump on the anti-immigrant bandwagon.
“Asian-americans are NOT likely to jump on the anti-immigrant bandwagon. ” Makes them different from European immigrants who, in general, were eager to close the door after they and their families came through.
I’ve also had Mexican-Americans tell me “I’m legal. I came here the right way, not like those others.” But that could be protective coloration too. In truth, I rarely hear Mexican-Americans talking about their legal status. Mostly, they tell me their work history, “Started as a migrant fruit picker. Got a job with a landscape company or builder. Saved my money, bought a truck and struck out as an independent contractor.” Sounds like exactly the type of hard working go-getter we want in this country doesn’t it?
I did work once with a Mexican-American computer programmer. I believe he was born in Texas. He was on a different work team and I didn’t know him well enough to talk politics. I also worked with one African-American computer programmer. He was unashamedly a Democrat. Very pro-Clinton, too. Or he may just have enjoyed pissing off the many Republicans in our workplace. Ruy and Texiera claim tech workers are mostly Democrats, as you may suspect about people who can think rationally, but the white programmers that I have personally met, along with at least half of the Asians claimed to be Republican. Of course, it was easier to be a Republican in the ’90s when there were still Republicans that one could claim to support without laughing out loud. If you asked them why they were republicans, they would tell you that Democrats want to raise taxes and give it to loafers. That is a hard-wired mindset, ever since the excesses of the ’70s.
I don’t who the worst troll predicting Democratic doom-and-gloom is on this site. You or dataguy(Nick Danger).
As a resident of the state I so hope you are right about Georgia cause I only see lots of extreme conservatives around me and they aren’t all old. Indeed the most politically active young folks are all Republicans. There aren’t any viable and energetic “Young Democrats”. This “demographics is destiny” meme among the left is made considerable fun of by the conservatives I read.
I see no basis for presuming the death of the party that holds the great majority of downticket offices in most of the states and absolutely all of the state offices in this one. Democrats are so identified with AA’s and so gerrymandered into isolated and compressed inner cities that for whites to identify as a Democrat is to truly set oneself apart and to no longer be part of the club. It’s akin to Kathy Lee Bates in that Sandra Bullock movie in which Bullock is the upper middle class Mississippian who adopts the young homeless Black man and turns him into a successful football player wooed by the best college football powerhouses. Bates is hired as his tutor but confesses to Bulloch that “I’m a Democrat” believing that could cause her prospective employers to not hire her. Bulloch and husband later admit that they’d never before met a Democrat. This IS the way it is here if you are a White Democrat. A real oddity.
One other recent development that helps to cement Republican control of even the smaller cities is the recent move to merge city and county governments vis-a-vis “non-partisan” elections. Allows Republican candidates in the real world to conceal their identities in local elections and pass themselves off as non-partisan. This is generally not an option for African-Americans in those same elections. They are automatically presumed to be “partisan”.
Statistics show that Atlanta (and Charleston) has a lowering median age that’s already well below that of the national average, that it has an exploding Latino and Asian-American population, and that most of the growth in Georgia (and South Carolina) is centered around these metropolitan areas. Your GOP friends are just whistling past Dixie.
That said, I stated above that the Democratic Party should not just be sitting on its ass waiting for passive growth to do the dirty work in the Carolinas and Goergia. It will take a few cycles for demography to make the Obama-HRC playbook to work at its current vote-%s and turnout margins and a lot can happen in the meantime. They should find a way to increase the turnout of their base (the South has a disgustingly low turnout) or make a play for new demographics. They’ll probably have to rely on the former, of course.
The state party has little money because it has no large donors. That is where we are right now. How do you grow if you don’t have the money to field a viable candidate? Even if you did the prospect of getting creamed in the general election is not going to motivate ambitious young folks to serve. By golly, we’ve not even reached the point where an African-American has any hope of winning a state wide office. We’ve got prominent AA Congressional Representatives but they all come from districts deliberately formed to allow minorities to be elected from them but not from a majority of the others.
Forget demographics, the state party has to field viable candidates and give folks a real reason to vote for them. Heck, fielding any candidates at all would be a step forward. To my knowledge, Johnny Isakson, aged 70 and with Parkinson’s disease, is running to be reelected to a new 6 year term in the Senate with as of yet no announced opposition from Democrats. After Michelle Nunn’s loss against a much less able candidate, it’s gonna be hard to persuade anyone to run against an almost sure winner. Isakson is seen as the mild-mannered Republican, but still votes lockstep with the rest. Incumbency counts and we’ve no incumbents. That translates into nascent politicians with little name recognition. It’s a tall hill to climb.
By the way another group that the GOP will have problems with is the Veterans. The Veterans have caught on to the GOP passing Bills then not funding the legislation so it does no good. There are plenty of Veterans that are very upset with being betrayed by the GOP.
It’s about time they learned that the GOP loves to use war to raise the deficit but wants to use the deficit to cut Veterans benefits. The Vietnam Vets who were the first to overwhelmingly vote Republican because Democrats were anti-war (McCarthy, McGovern, etc.) were the first to experience this with Agent Orange denials, but did not grasp that it was political philosophy, not just bureaucratic perversity that blocks adequate response to Agent Orange birth defects and physiological disruption. (No one asks what Agent Orange did to the Vietnamese.)
I have written this here before.
There are two strategies open to the GOP:
I have never had the slightest doubt they would choose number 2.
The road map to victory is in Arizona. In 2012 the GOP lost the Hispanic vote (18% of the vote) 74-24. They won the White Vote 66-32.
They can win that way.
but for how long and at what cost?
The “demographics is destiny” idea is seriously stupid. Yes, the numbers are currently looking good for the D Party, and if things remain like they are, in about X years, the D Party will win every POTUS.
This is just stupid.
In an earlier discussion thread you wrote at length about alienation of white working class voters and attacked the idea that racism has anything to do with these voters’ behavior. Indeed, you attacked the idea that racism has much to do with anything.
You were also dismissive of the idea that the Democratic Party could regain white working class support.
It would be nice if you would offer a positive vision, some sort of alternative to the status quo. But I get the sense that your alternative is to simply adopt the GOP culture-wars agenda.
My apologies if I have misinterpreted what you have written.
There is a simple approach that the D party could do.
Promote jobs for American workers. That means, promote appreticeships, jobs for minorities, jobs for college students, jobs for old people.
Not jobs for illegals. Not jobs for H-1Bs. Not jobs for non-citizens.
Jobs for Americans is my suggestion. And as to the nonsense that illegals do jobs Americans will not do, this is a huge lie, promoted by immigration attorneys and similar crapweasels who make money by the illegal promotion.
The only sector where illegals are sometimes needed is ag work. And I have a solution for that: work with probation officers to release prisoners AT NORMAL WAGES into the ag sector.
Illegals fill the construction trades. They are not needed. Americans can and want to do those jobs.
Illegals fill many high-tech jobs, through the visa overstay approach. When people overstay their visas, they should be found, fined, and deported at their own expense. But the D Party bills about reform of the immigration system do not fix the visa overstay situation. In S744, there was a single paragraph about this, and the paragraph promoted a “study of the problem”. What a patronyzing pile of shit, really.
So, you want to appeal to those we have entirely lost? Promote jobs. Which we do not do.
This sounds interesting until one contemplates the process of rounding up and deporting…what is the estimate? More than 10 million people?
I want to think your vision is something other than Trump-lite, but I’m afraid I’m not on board.
What a ridiculous comment. Try to stay current. In another diary, Booman points out that when illegals don’t get jobs, they go home.
If they don’t have jobs, they’ll go home.
And who the fuck cares what they do? They are a bunch of criminals.
All this crap about “billions of dollars to deport” is moronic stupidity. And that’s putting it kindly.
I honestly get fucking disgusted when I hear comments like yours. What kind of a person says NOTHING about the hundreds of thousands of Americans citizens who have lost their jobs due to illegals? Why do you whine continually about the illegals?
Where is your self-respect? What kind of person are you? I am ashamed for you about you.
The Dems need a coordinated “What would Jesus do” offensive, from the local to the national level. Perfect for the holiday season, with the spectacle of the Republican run-up to the primaries to keep the issues in the public eye.
Practically all Dem politicians are practicing christians, they just don’t flaunt it, but to be viable politicians, still in this day and age, they have to meet that criterion.
The stuff that’s coming from the right today is just so very un-charitable; there’s already lots of pushback from church-related relief orgs on the refugee question.
And if the goal (aside from promoting better policy) is to shore up or reverse the loss of christian whites to the Rs, this has to be the most vulnerable target.
Maybe I overstate “practically all”, but you take my point.