Image Credits: AFP.
We like to talk about and distinguish between high-turnout elections and low-turnout elections. It’s an observable fact that more people vote when the presidency in on the line than when it is not. In recent cycles, this had an important predictive value about which party would have a better election night. When there is high turnout, it helps the Democrats and helps explain why President Obama was twice elected. When there is low turnout, as in 2010 and 2014, it favors the Republicans and helps explain why they gained a lot of seats in those midterm elections. None of this is controversial.
However, there’s something else that needs to be explained. Why, for example, did three and half million fewer people turn out to vote for president in 2012 than had done so in 2008 despite the fact that voting age population was larger in the latter election?
Ever since the numbers started to roll in in November 2012, Republican analysts have been debating the answer to that question. On November 8th, 2012, Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics took an initial pass at the question and estimated that “almost 7 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008” even while the “African-American vote…increased by about 300,000 votes…the Latino vote increased by a healthier 1.7 million votes, [and] the ‘other’ category increased by about 470,000 votes.”
He would explore this thesis more over time and as better and more complete data became available. Eventually, he’d revise the number of missing white voters down to six million. One of his takeaways was that passing comprehensive immigration reform might not be as helpful as the RNC believed because it would do nothing about these missing white voters. In fact, it was most likely to further alienate and antagonize them. And, in any case, the “missing white voters” of 2012 at least represented a big pool of potentially sympathetic voters.
In my recent four-part series on demographic changes, the 2012 elections and immigration reform, I suggested that census data and exit polls reveal that some 6 million white voters opted to sit out last November’s election. The data show these non-voters were not primarily Southerners or evangelicals, but were located in Northeast, Midwest and Southwest. Mainly, they fit the profile of “Reagan Democrats” or, more recently, a Ross Perot supporter. For these no-shows, Mitt Romney was not a natural fit.
I drew the conclusion that one path forward for the Republican Party could involve, in part, reaching out to these voters by altering the GOP’s economic platform and messaging. There are still valid questions that flow from this: How much do Republicans have to change to win these voters? Do they pay a price with upper-income whites for such a shift? Can they make these changes and still be Republicans? What is the best path forward? These are great questions for further debate, but my point in the series was simply that there really are multiple ways to skin the electoral cat, and that the much-uttered meme “Republicans must pass the Gang of Eight [comprehensive immigration reform] bill if they ever hope to win another national election” is sorely lacking, at best.
So, the analysis became for a time a debate over whether the Senate’s immigration reform bill should be sent to the president’s desk or not. Supporters of the bill saw Trende’s analysis as a threat and were eager to argue that white conservatives had indeed turned out in 2012. For Karl Rove, who had famously been so wrong about Romney’s prospects on election night, it’s still critically important that Republicans don’t get it in their head that they can win elections simply by getting the “missing white voters” of 2012 to show up in 2016. But Rove’s analysis is contentious and bogged down in semantics. He says that the missing voters weren’t really conservatives or evangelicals.
Similarly, while Mr. Romney carried 59% of white Catholics who voted in 2012, those who didn’t turn out appear to be middle-class and often blue-collar voters, like those in GOP-leaning counties in northwestern Ohio, who would never vote to re-elect Mr. Obama but apparently felt Mr. Romney did not care about people like them.
These missing moderate, white Catholic and women voters who didn’t vote in 2012 can be motivated to vote for a Republican candidate in 2016—if they think that candidate cares about people like them. Still, getting back some voters in these three groups, while also generating higher turnout among conservatives who generally don’t vote, is probably not enough. To win, the GOP must also do a good deal better among Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American voters than they have since 2004.
Now, this is an interesting and important debate, but there’s something that both sides agree about. They agree that there is a big pool of white voters out there who voted for McCain but not for Romney. And they agree that their profile is basically that of blue collar workers in the Midwest rather than evangelicals in the South. They are, roughly, the “Reagan Democrats” of Macomb County, Michigan first identified by Stanley Greenberg back in the 1980’s.
It seems to me that these are the type of folks who are gravitating to Donald Trump. I need more data to confirm my hypothesis, but here are some supporting indicators. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll just found that 68% of Trump’s supporters say that they would support him in a third party bid while only 18% said that they would not. As for the important first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses, Sen. Ted Cruz leads the polls when a tight likely voter model is used but Trump leads when a looser screen is utilized. In other words, folks who didn’t vote in the 2008 or 2012 caucuses are more likely to support Trump than voters who did participate. Trump is attracting new voters and voters who had dropped out.
His platform, if you can call it that, is pretty well designed to appeal to this demographic. He opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Mexican immigration, and he promises to keep scary Muslims from entering the country. He’s not hammering on traditional social values issues that don’t interest these disaffected voters. He’s making more of a generalized racial, religious and tribal appeal. And he’s saying he’ll make America great again, with the unstated premise that he can preserve what’s great about America and restore what’s been lost. If you want to get missing white voters to the polls, Trump’s approach seems capable of doing that.
But these voters probably aren’t going to turn out in the same numbers for a Republican who seems like a Mitt Romney retread. They may have some pretty conservative or even intolerant attitudes, but they aren’t necessarily Republicans at all. They’re probably as likely to nod their heads at a Bernie Sanders speech about breaking up the big banks as they are to cheer a Trump proposal to stick it to the Chinese. Their default position at this point is, I believe, to just stay home. They didn’t vote in 2012 and they won’t vote in 2016 unless they get something significantly different on the menu.
This is why having Trump in the race, even as independent candidate, will probably boost overall turnout.
The problem is that the election won’t be decided just by who shows up but also by people who change their mind. For every disaffected white voter that Trump brings out of the shadows, there will be a newly motivated voter who shows up just to oppose him. And there will be plenty of Romney voters who can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump, just as there were Bush voters who couldn’t vote for McCain and Palin.
Still, to maximize right-leaning turnout, Trump needs to be on the ticket. He can be on the ticket as a Republican or not, but a lot of his voters won’t turn out without him.
All clear thinking people should oppose TPP.
Does anyone really believe that HRC opposes the TPP in any substantive way? Her campaign and supporters trying to get me this is one of the most intelligence-insulting things I’ve ever read from a Democrat. Even more insulting than that stupid Family Entertainment Protection Act.
Honestly, a utilitarian view of the TPP’s passage has me going ‘meh’. As far as non-rich Americans are concerned, it won’t make much of a difference in the short or long run. I just dislike how blaise Obama and Clinton have been with peoples’ concerns, even if they’re misguided. And I especially dislike HRC’s duplicity.
The United States Family Entertainment Protection Act (FEPA) was a bill introduced by Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and co-sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) on November 29, 2005.
You are known by the company you keep.
Can’t agree about TPP. I agree with Bernie and Thom Hartmann that it is NAFTA on steroids. A treaty designed to enhance the profits of a few mega-corporations while condemning the working class to permanent peasant status.
It means that I would have gone to jail in 2000 instead of getting a warning so I care a lot about the ip provisions.
The missing voters were disproportionately Gen-X and Millenials. In 2008 the <45 white vote was barely a majority for Obama and in 2012 it was a slight majority for Romney. At this point, it’s hard to say whether the drop-out Missing White Voters were Democrat-favored or Republican-favored, but given that black turnout increased in 2012 by 4% yet 14% more black males aged 18-29 voted for 2012 Romney than 2008 Obama I think a fair bet is that in the four years the Democratic Party didn’t just have voter dropout with young Missing White Voters but actual vote switching. So… Read more »
Latino and black vote in Texas will be suppressed. Count on it. ((tm) Arthur Gilroy)
They want a world back where all you had to be was White. And, all those ‘others’ knew their place.
They long for the delusional world of Mad Men…where they believe they were big fish in a big pond..
the truth is that they were fish where 90% of everyone else was locked away in sardine cans.
Nobody’s going back to those days.
They wanna party like it’s 1948.
And, it’s not gonna happen.
I’m glad you noticed: “Why, for example, did three and half million fewer people turn out to vote for president in 2012 than had done so in 2008 despite the fact that voting age population was larger in the latter election?” Obama ran in 2008 on a campaign of change and hope. Then after he was elected this is what happened to his administration as NealB put it in an earlier post: “Look at the names in that administration: Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Robert Gates (R-Bush), Ken Salazar, Kathleen Sebelius (R-Kansas), William Daley, Timothy Geithner (R-Deep Space Nine),… Read more »
“Timothy Geithner (R-Deep Space Nine)”
ROTFL!
Seriously, I wish I could rate that “10”. I’m with you all the way.
Thanks for this.
What I’m about to write is hardly a new observation, but sometimes a post like this reminds me of it nevertheless: Both the GOP and the Democratic leadership really don’t agree with their bases on much – in fact they mostly just agree with each other. The rest is just theatre to keep the political masses entertained.
Personally, when Emmanual was announced as the first appointment I felt cheated given all the time I’d spent campaigning for Mr Audacity to Pretend to Advocate Change when Actually Supporting the Status Quo.
It was like working/voting for not-Clinton/Bush and within hours of winning, learning that there was no not-Clinton/Bush, only Clinton/Bush.
The implication of what you’re saying is that the Trump voter is a person whose objective self-interest is to vote Democratic, but who was abandoned by the Obama/Ram Emmanuel abortive effort to become the party of Goldman Sachs, Google, Hollywood and Big Pharma. As Clinton is still trying to run that play, I don’t see the Dems getting these voters back any time soon.
Excellent analysis. I think that this is a weird kind of swing voter that represents the defecting piece of the FDR coalition. And the key piece of Kevin Phillips’s urban ethnic (industrial Midwest ethnic as well) base for Nixon. These are people more than the evangelicals who answer to the “Silent Majority” dogwhistle. There are those types in the South as well among the non-evangelical Jesse-crats. Bernie has to defang “socialist” as being vulnerability in order for this bunch to swing his way, however. The only gift is that the Cold War is 26 years ago. A lot of… Read more »
Bernie has to defang “socialist” as being vulnerability in order for this bunch to swing his way, however. The only gift is that the Cold War is 26 years ago. A lot of those people are too young to have experienced the McCarthyist-Nixon terror and its long-lived propagation through organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the John Birch Society. FUNFACT: The over 45 vote voted pretty much the same by proportions and relative turnout between 2008 and 2012. Where Obama really bled was with the youth; he outright lost a whopping 6% of the <29 vote to Romney and… Read more »
“…represents the defecting piece of the FDR coalition”
We didn’t leave the Party so much as the Party left us, starting with Bill Clinton’s appeal to the Yuppies.
But these voters probably aren’t going to turn out in the same numbers for a Republican who seems like a Mitt Romney retread. They may have some pretty conservative or even intolerant attitudes, but they aren’t necessarily Republicans at all. They’re probably as likely to nod their heads at a Bernie Sanders speech about breaking up the big banks as they are to cheer a Trump proposal to stick it to the Chinese. Their default position at this point is, I believe, to just stay home. They didn’t vote in 2012 and they won’t vote in 2016 unless they get… Read more »
There were 7 million missing voters in 1996. Rove found them in time for 2000.
Go here: http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-swing-the-election/
Move non-college educated whites to 90% R and Hispanics to 100% D.
Don’t be so complacent about assigning blue collar whites to the ashcan of history.
Update: Move non-college educated whites to 75% R. Move both Hispanics and Asian/other to 98% (higher than the 93% black) D.
That one is a real eye opener.
Play with the numbers. It’s an interesting site for electoral junkies.
You’re assuming a 10% swing in non-college educated whites (relative to the Romney-Obama ticket) in next year’s election?
No, not predicting, but it’s possible. Many on this site think a democratic win is inevitable and blue-collar whites don;t matter. Some have said “Let ’em all vote republican, it doesn’t matter.” But if this simulation is accurate, and nate Silver’s stuff usually is, then it does matter. Play with the tool, it’s fun. BTW, shift the blue collar white vote a little and the Hispanic vote a lot and you get a crushing 406 Electoral vote for Team D. Also, not everything changes. In the scenario i cited above, CA, NY, and IL stay blue. Even in the R… Read more »
Those are non-college-graduate whites. More than half of people attend some college. Why would that demographic suddenly vote 90% R? Those that want to get their hate on already vote. If Obama didn’t bring them out in swing states where they could have made a difference by voting R, Trump won’t either. AA voter participation likely peaked in 2012, but the 93% D rate isn’t likely to change much in 2016. However, would need to drill down by states as to where AA voters increased in 2012 over that of 2008 to make any intelligent assessment of whether a lower… Read more »
You are assuming that all are racists. Many are frustrated with lack of jobs, bad pay, continual tax increases (local but they are not sophisticated enough to understand the federal system) and just agitated by the rabble rousers. TV stations, most are right wing owned, blast out fear messages every day to sell advertising (and with the added benefit of pushing RW politicians). If they move, they will not move to DLC candidates. They might turn Left, but maybe not after a lifetime (from 1980 on) of messages that the Left are dictators that hate freedom (freedumb is more like… Read more »
Where have I ever said that all non-college graduate white people are racist? Starting an argument with “you assume X” without any evidence to support the “you assume X” statement is a debate fail. Likening what the DEM party represents for AAs to what the GOP represents for working class white people is also a fail. The GOP has become the party that actively works to disenfranchise AAs, supports segregation and redlining, and in countless other ways puts a boot on the lives of AAs. It’s tiresome for men and white people to liken the reduction, in law and… Read more »
It’s not the freaking taxes (your continuous harping on this makes you sound like a Republican) You live in an enlightened state. Illinois has one of the most regressive tax structures in the country. Until Toni Preckwinkle took over the Cook County board (from another Democrat) on a pledge to lower sales taxes and clean out corruption (in the first two weeks she fired all her predecessors relatives and cronys), Cook County had the highest sales tax in the Nation, nearly 11% and over 12 percentage on cooked food (from Micckey D’s to Charlie Trotter’s). Our property tax rate is… Read more »
Where have I ever said that all non-college graduate white people are racist? Starting an argument with “you assume X” without any evidence to support the “you assume X” statement is a debate fail. Those are non-college-graduate whites. More than half of people attend some college. Why would that demographic suddenly vote 90% R? Those that want to get their hate on already vote. That’s the statement that I took as dismissive. Upon re-reading it, I realize that I may have misinterpreted you at 4:50AM CST. In light of your later protest, I apologize for my misreading. But the… Read more »
Not so enlightened here. Sales tax ranges from 7.5 to 10%. Prop 13 [1978] — contrary to what you may think you know about it — totally screwed up the tax base. Two classes of homeowners, those that purchased before implementation of Prop 13 and those after. The pre-Prop 13 haves also have ways to carry-forward their low tax rate when they sell and purchase another house. Those that purchased after are stuck with the purchase price valuation and that can be increased based on the market (but not by as much as pre-Prop 13). Large (corporate) real estate owners… Read more »
A multiple of at least three and probably four for the purchase price. Even if you inherit such a house, I doubt that a normal person could afford the property taxes if they were proportionate, $18,000 to $28,000. No I don’t know the mechanics of Prop 13. That is true. I once (last year?) went to Zillow looking for a house under $300,000. For the area, I just put in “CA”. I was surprised that 42 houses came up. The first one was a nice looking Spanish-style ranch. I noticed the front yard had no grass. I didn’t recognize… Read more »
It’s not hate so much as fear.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Obama lost 14% of black males 18-29 to Romney relative to his 2008 performance. That’s very much not good news for the Democratic Party, especially if Trump wins the primary and it turns out that we’re even less post-racial than the centrists crowed about.
Do you have a reference for that statistic?
http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/26/young-voters-supported-obama-less-but-may-have-mattered-more/
Romney doubled the GOP support from 18-29 year old black males?
More likely the participation rate for young black males dropped significantly between 2008 and 2012. As Obama increased his percentage among blacks overall, it’s likely that he retained the 2008 black males that were 26-29 in 2008 and the newly franchised 18-21 year olds didn’t bother to vote.
Romney doubled the GOP support from 18-29 year old black males? I’m afraid so. As Obama increased his percentage among blacks overall, it’s likely that he retained the 2008 black males that were 26-29 in 2008 and the newly franchised 18-21 year olds didn’t bother to vote. http://web.archive.org/web/20100327202709/http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications /p20/2008/tables.html http://web.archive.org/web/20131001091210/http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications /p20/2012/tables.html 2008 Black Male Voter Turnout 18-24 year olds: 50.7% 25-44 year olds: 59.1% 2012 Black Male Voter Turnout 18-24 year olds: 43.6% 25-44 year olds: 59.0% Turnout increased overall for blacks (by 4%, which is huge for one electoral cycle), but it was done solely by turnout of older… Read more »
My (white) grandson was an enthusiastic Obama supporter in 2008. I’m not sure he voted in 2012, although I urged him to. The young are too guileless. They believe politicians. It takes a lifetime of lies to become a cynical old man. And I even yet, believe in Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. BTW, didn’t matter if voted in 2012. He was living in Phoenix then, so it didn’t matter either way. Now he’s living in Washington (state), so it might count. He’s still looking for work, but I don’t know how hard. He is grateful to Obama for giving him… Read more »
The young, more so than other age demographic groups, are most likely to vote when there is someone on the ballot that they want to vote FOR or they can register their anger (a factor in 2000). Fear doesn’t work well to get them to vote.
At this time, young voters have more demographic power than ever. That fact seems to escape the DEM Clinton supporters who believe the numbers for her are so good that they can blow off the young.
We’ll know when Iowa comes around. My best prediction is Clinton 2016-2023, maybe McAwful after that, but it really won’t matter then will it? my secondary prediction is Trump 2016->forever. It’s been a downer. Went to lunch with my lifelong democrat friend, white Irish Catholic (age 65), and yes, I did know he was a racist. Talked about Trump a lot and how trump had great ideas. Scary. You might see those defections I talked about in another thread. Tried to steer the conversation back to Postal gossip. He gave me a copy of the union floor letter. Employment at… Read more »
Trump’s “great ideas” fall into two categories: Immigrants are evil and we’re gonna ship them all back to where they came from and not let anymore in. (Might want to remind your friend that the same was said by those like Trump when Irish immigrants were flooding into the country. Lucky for him that there was just enough right thinking people that his ancestors weren’t shipped back to starve in Ireland or rounded up and place in internment camps.) “We’re going to look into that.” How much cheaper does it get than suggesting agreement with whatever an idiot presents as… Read more »
Ironic, isn’t it? Of my two closest friends there, the lifelong Conservative Republican, never voted for a Democrat, is not a racist and the lifelong Democrat, never voted for a Republican (before) is. Both hate the ground Hillary walks on.
Unless they can specifically articulate what Clinton has done or stands for that causes them to loath her, they are sexists. I have no respect for those that use sexism, racism, homophobia, or religion (usually highly superficial) as a guide in evaluating candidates for political office. While any dynastic political candidate starts in the hole with me (RFK wouldn’t have and Teddy didn’t get my primary vote), who they are and what they’ve done and propose to do, carries far more weight. Thus, I could loath GWB and so far merely dislike Clinton. Obama was far from my ideal… Read more »
Personally, I don’t think Clinton gets two terms.
I hope you are right. Care to make a prediction? Not what you want, but your best guess what’s going to happen.
Still mulling. The GOP tends to recover more quickly when the crazy wing of the party, much to the displeasure of the elites, leads the way to a loss than when they can’t see much wrong with what they did that resulted in a loss.
Check out Bernie’s two latest ads. Clean, direct, positive, and without all the fake saccharin coating of standard issue “positive” campaign ads. Unknown if good positive ads can be effective enough against whatever crap the opposition throws out.
I especially liked the second one pointing out “effective Mayor”. In the beginning that’s what bothered me most about backing a Senator. Burlington isn’t Balrimore or Chicago, but it’s executive experience.
I like both. The first one not effective for Iowa — while farmers have a lot of smarts, suspect that Iowa farmers may be too dumb to relate to dairy farmers. Will work better in CA, WI, NY, PA, and ID. A focus on the crops dairy farmers grow to feed their livestock would be helpful in Iowa. The second is a distillation (well done I might add) of his longer introductory video production. Hitting the relevant high points. Believe I recommended that. Check out his Tonight Show appearance. Calling the Trump/GOP fear mongering “crap” was great. Also nice to… Read more »
I’d like to point out that the difference between 2008 and 2012 Obama is due to two things: 10-15% increase in support with Asians and Latinos and youths across the board abandoning him. Both in turnout and in outright defections. Otherwise, excluding age and age-related dependent variables (like black Millenial support) things were pretty stable: in black/white racial support, by class, by region, and even by partisan preference. If Obama 2012 had gotten his 2008 numbers with voters aged 18-29 and changed nothing else, 2012 would’ve been an even bigger landslide than 2008. The HRC campaign being dismissive of the… Read more »
Not so much dismissive as aware that socially, culturally, and economically she is far more conservative than the young. She can’t inspire them and they wouldn’t believe her if she attempted to snooker them by suddenly evolving quickly into a progressive. Plus, she’s going for an older and more conservative electoral base and for any point gained by appealing to younger voters, she could lose more than a point with older voters. She’s counting on them not voting or at the last minute deciding that the GOP nominee is too evil and they’ll hold their noses and vote for her.… Read more »