PLANK JUNE 4, 2012
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From messaging to ad placement, campaigns make critical decisions based on demographics and geography. Indeed, coverage of campaign decision-making and the ups and downs of the horserace are incomplete without accounting for these variables. That’s why I’ll be following the evolution of the electorate and how it shapes the campaign at TNR.
Demographics aren’t quite destiny, but they’ll play an outsized role in the 2012 presidential election. The Obama campaign is counting on repeating an unprecedented performance among non-white voters. If the Obama campaign succeeds, Romney will need to counter with a historic share of the white vote. Should non-white voters support Obama to the extent they did in 2008, Romney will need to compensate by winning 60 percent of the white vote while holding Obama to 38 percent.
In the modern political era, it has taken extraordinary circumstances for Democrats to do so poorly with whites. The last Democratic candidate to fall so low was Walter Mondale, who only won 35 percent of the white vote in 1984. (That said, to the extent that congressional elections can be used as a proxy, the 2010 midterms augur better for Romney: In 2010, House Democrats only won 37 percent of the white vote.) Recent polls confirm that Romney has a tough fight ahead. In polls conducted over the last month, Obama averages approximately 39 percent of the white vote—enough to secure victory, if his share of the non-white vote matches that of 2008—while Romney lags well behind his 60 percent target, holding at around 53 percent of the white vote.
Of course, just because Romney is in uncharted territory doesn’t mean he can’t conquer it. Given the prevailing political and economic climate, Romney will certainly have the opportunity to assemble the requisite number of votes—especially since there is no guarantee that non-white voters will turnout and support Obama as they did in 2008. Even if Romney is forced to deal with a worst case scenario, he can take solace knowing that old certainties are often cast aside in election campaigns. Indeed, the new precedents that emerge to take their place often seem, in retrospect, both easy and obvious. Since 1948, the GOP has made a veritable habit of breaking new electoral ground, whether it was Goldwater’s sweep of the Deep South after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, or George W. Bush’s victory in West Virginia in 2000.
There are still many unresolved questions that will be pivotal to the election. Will Obama’s young and diverse base turnout to the degree necessary to force Romney to make historic gains among whites? If Romney does need to win 60 percent of the white vote, who are the voters he will need to persuade? What are their backgrounds, beliefs, and aspirations and how does that influence campaign strategy? How does their distribution alter the electoral map? With the help of new data, I’ll be expanding on all of these questions, and hopefully providing answers, throughout the election campaign.
8 comments
BHO was elected in 2008 with Dem majorities in the House and Senate not seen since LBJ. And now Dems with Prez incumbancy are sweatring whether they win any Congressional chamber or the Prez. BHO has governed and supported Repub policies comparable to those of Nixon or Ford. And the Senate in particular has done similarly. Re-electing that crowd may be better in the short term than Tea Party-fearing/supporting Repubs, but not by much. Especially since a BHO win is not very likely to generate a moderate Dem left that pushes hard for Progressive policies-- but rather to repeat the recent past: Progressives admonished to shut up so that Dems can repeat and extend the errors of the past 4-40 years.
- drofnats1
June 4, 2012 at 11:16am
drofnats, again I ask, who is the mystical magical progressive who will lead America to this imagined promised land of single payer? Certainly not Hillary (though I think she has the best shot to win in 2016) as she is in the DLC wing of the party. And you forget that there were nowhere near 50 Democratic progressives in the Senate, so even if Dems. got rid of the filibuster at most we would have had a public option. This last jobs report has put me into a deep funk. drofnats might be deluded enough to think Obama would only be a little bit better than Romney, I sure as hell don't. Romney will be a long term disaster for America, dismantling programs that will take a generation to rebuild. And the worst thing is he might get away with it short term as Republicans will suddenly forget all about the deficit. Ask any pro Romney supporter out there why they support him and they will say because he will support pro business policies, ask them exactly what and they will say things like get rid of too much regulation...ask specifically which regulation and they will say regulations which stymie business. You simply can not pin them down, their stupidity is their shield.
- blackton
June 4, 2012 at 3:05pm
The decision by the Democrats to become the non-white party is reckless, given that the 2010 electorate was 79% white. There is no reason why Romney can't do as well among whites against Obama as Reagan did against Mondale. Obama has a white problem, and he is clueless about how to address it. He might want to spend some time with Clinton and Carville, as opposed to the two Davids and Valerie.
- mahoneyct@gmail.com
June 4, 2012 at 5:13pm
Mahoneyconcerntroll@gmail.com, When did the Dems decide to "become the non-white party?" 2010 was a mid-term with the usual 40% low turnout of geriatrics trying to keep the government out of their socialist healthcare (medicare), and is not reflective of what the vote will be like in a presidential election. I'm also pretty sure Obama did better among white voters than Kerry. The 90's are over and Clinton and Carville's strategy of sucking up to Wall St and playing it middle of the road helped lose the House and eventually destroyed the economy. Your implied strategy of appealing to white racism and self-pity also sounds like a loser, long and short term.
- Pnaut
June 4, 2012 at 5:46pm
"Romney will be a long term disaster for America." Amen, blackton. I share drofnats' disappointment in Obama. Back in early 2011, I was even advocating for a primary challenge from the left. But that didn't happen, and drof's notion that a GOP victory would spell doom simultaneously for extreme conservative Republicans and middle-of-the-road, third-way Democrats, clearing the ground for progressives is a pipe dream. Drof's problem is that he assumes that the United States is a fully functioning democracy where outcomes are determined by a rational, well-informed electorate. This assumption is false. And while Obama is a failure on many levels, it is without doubt that he will do much more than Romney to defend and reinforce the vestiges of true representative democracy, most specifically by defending and reinforcing the liberal minority on the Supreme Court bench. If Romney wins, the influence of money on elections and on Congress will expand, efforts to suppress the vote from non-white, non-Republican voters will advance, and we'll be several steps closer to the Mel-fascist pseudo-democracy than we already are.
- AaronW
June 4, 2012 at 9:58pm
neo-fascist Autocorrect problem
- AaronW
June 4, 2012 at 10:34pm
I was wondering who Mel Fascist was. Drinking buddy of Joe the Plumber?
- zardoz67
June 5, 2012 at 10:34am
I'm pretty sure Mel Fascist had book credit on "Springtime for Hitler", along with Franz Liebkind's credit for the score and musical numbers.
- wildboy
June 5, 2012 at 5:58pm