demographics

A lot of commentary has been focusing on the fact that the GOP lost Virginia for the first time since 1964 and North Carolina since 1976. This is treated as absolutely unprecedented, and to a certain extent it is.

But consider the demographics. The last Republican loser, Dole, won Virginia by a tiny 2 point margin while McCain lost it by 5.5. However, in 1996 the Virginia electorate was 81% white and 16% black while in 2008 it was 70% white and 20% black. Dole won white voters 53-39 while McCain won them 60-39--a substantial improvement. The problem was, of course, that the black vote in 2008 was larger and more monolithic than in 1996. The same lesson applies to 1992, where the elder Bush won the state by 4 points while obtaining an identical margin among whites than McCain did.

Similarly, in North Carolina whites were 80% in 1996 and Dole won them by 24 points, carrying the state by 5. McCain did better at 29 points but barely lost the state because whites only constituted 72% in 2008.

The point is that we lost these former Republican strongholds not necessarily because parts of the state have more white liberals, but rather because the white share was lower (and the black share correspondingly higher) than in the past elections we lost. We can look forward to these states being purple for as long as these turnout trends hold up.

In thinking about the Palin pick, I was thinking that there is a demographic group out there which has been often overlooked by political strategists, but which she is pretty much a "bulls eye" for.

I've seen women voters categorized as feminists, soccer moms, et al. But much of this description seems frankly, too "pink" for a large segment of today's women voters.

I'm thinking about woman entrepeneurs, woman blue collar tradespeople, female hard rock fans, woman bikers, and sportswomen. Girls who listen to country artists like Gretchen Wilson or Carrie Underwood who certainly don't "stand by their man" in their songs.

For some reason, I've seen a lot of pickups with door signs identifying a woman proprietor, and I'm not sure Wellesley grad Hillary Clinton is really her role model. These folks are post-feminist in that regard and distant from yuppie society.

I think there is a great opportunity for the Republicans to lock in a new demographic group "Winchester Women"---self-reliant rural/exurban women under 50---due to the Sarah Palin pick.  

Think the spouses of last cycle's "Nascar Dads". I suspect that this group had heavy voter falloff from '04 to '06, but has the possibility to exceed the Bush percentage this year if properly motivated.

The Obama camp may have already started on helping us out, as attacks on Palin's experience and zip code are going to come off haughty and elitist to these voters. 

I imagine the RNC has already focus grouped and polled this demographic. If not . they should, since I think reliance on sisterly solidarity with a wronged Senator Clinton might miss the mark for these voters. 

Over the last 15 years Americans have physically sorted ourselves into cultural enclaves that share strikingly similar tastes in everything from cars and clothes to churches and politics.  Bill Bishop isn’t the first observer to point this out, but his new book The Big Sort is the deepest analysis of the phenomenon’s origins and political effects so far. 

One of the first big discussions we had on this blog was a debate over the roles of targeted micro messages and unifying macro themes and this book breaks down the demographics behind that debate. Americans have retreated into enclaves of “image tribes” as divided by geography as they are by ideas and tastes and according to Bishop, there’s very little common dialog left.

Are GOP political fortunes held hostage to the will of white women?

Allow to me to explain.

The so-called "gender gap" first came into the public mind during the Reagan years when it was noted that women were 16 percentage points less likely than men to support Reagan over Carter, compared to no difference in 1976, quite possibly due to Reagan's stated opposition to big government. Since minority women already voted (and have continued to vote) for the Democrats heavily in these elections at pretty much the same rate as minority men, the phenomenon has mainly been noted as a substantial gap between white men and white women.

For a while, the gender gap was irrelevant to the ultimate outcome of the elections. Both men and women voted for Reagan twice, then Bush in 1988 , then Clinton in 1992.

Then 1996 rolled around. For those who don't know what happened, I'll summarize: Bill Clinton and the Democrats took some Chinese money to help finance their campaign and then proceeded crush Senator Bob Dole by an 8.5% margin. Clinton did three points better than he had done against George Bush in 1992. Yet at the same time he managed to lose, or come close to losing the male vote to Dole, meaning that he actually performed worse among men in 1996 than 1992. His increased margin was entirely due to more support from women: in 1992 they backed him by 7 points, in 1996 they backed him by 17 points.  Specifically, while white men backed Dole 49-38, white women supported Clinton 48-43. 

So why does this matter to us?

Well, it's no secret that George W. Bush's infamous "compassionate conservatism" rose about largely because of his campaign's need to appeal more to white suburban women who didn't like the GOP's anti-government actions in Congress. Republicans in Congress like Newt Gingrich had been painted as mean conservatives who wanted to cut funding for, well, just about everything.  Bush wanted to indicate that he wasn't like that, in fact he would increase spending even as he cut taxes and add even more inefficient government oversight to areas such as education.

Politically, Bush's pro-government message worked--barely. According to CNN Exit Polls, he managed to tie or beat Al Gore among white women in 2000 while maintaining a 24 point lead over white men. In 2004 his lead over white men was about the same while white women backed him by a substantially larger 10 points.

If the election was held today and only men voted, John McCain almost certainly would defeat Barack Obama. The challenge for conservatives and Republicans is to figure out how to erase the gender gap so we never fall into the same trap that Bush and the Tom Delay Congress did by acting as if they could win by acting like somewhat less generous Democrats.