cawacko
Well-known member
Nothing really groundbreaking in this column. It states the obvious the ethnic make-up of the US is changing and if the Republicans want to be competitive in future elections they are going to need to get more than white votes.
They won't get the black vote for a long time. It sucks to say you almost have to write that off. The Hispanic vote is where it's at (god that is horrible English). Right now it goes 2/3rd Democratic and they are the largest growing voting block in the country. You never really hear much about Asian's on the national political scene. They vote majority Democratic as well.
It's also crazy to think the U.S. was 94% white in 1960.
The GOP's Racial Challenge
Republicans can't win in the future without more nonwhite votes
Lost in the GOP's euphoria over its landslide midterm victory is the fact that the Republican Party has almost become a whites-only party. Its strategy may win seats now, but it will lose over the long run.
Republicans won big in 2010 primarily because they won big among white voters. The 60% of the white vote that Republicans garnered last Tuesday is, by most estimates, the highest proportion of the white vote that the GOP has won in any national election since World War II.
Relying on white support is not a new strategy for the party. In 2008, 91% of the votes that John McCain received in his presidential bid came from white voters.
.The problem for Republicans is two-fold. First, whites may currently be the majority but they are a declining demographic. The proportion of all voters who are white has already declined to 75% today from 94% in 1960. By 2050, whites are no longer expected to be a majority of the U.S. population.
Second, Republicans are alienating racial and ethnic minorities—the voters who will ultimately replace the white majority and who they need to stay in power. In every national election in the past few decades, Democrats have dominated the nonwhite vote. Democrats typically garner about 90% of the black vote, two-thirds of the Latino vote, and a clear majority of the Asian-American vote—and 2010 didn't fundamentally alter this pattern.
Even with Democrats presiding over the worst economy since the Great Depression, racial and ethnic minorities did not turn away from the Democratic Party. Last week Latinos favored Democrats over Republicans nearly 2 to 1 (64% to 34%), blacks voted overwhelmingly for Democrats (90%), and a clear majority of Asian- Americans (56%) supported Democrats.
If minorities didn't give up on the Democratic Party last week, they are unlikely to do so without dramatic changes in the platforms of the two parties. A growing and resolutely Democratic nonwhite population is clearly a serious threat to the Republican electoral calculus.
Republicans thus face a real dilemma. They may be able to gain over the short term by continuing their current strategy of ignoring or attacking minorities. But that is short-sighted.
Over the long term—as white voters become a smaller and smaller fraction of the electorate and Latinos and other racial and ethnic minorities become a larger and larger share of the electorate—any campaign that appeals primarily to whites will be doomed.
Mr. Hajnal, an associate professor of political science at U.C. San Diego, is author of "America's Uneven Democracy" (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...602942138252552.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion
They won't get the black vote for a long time. It sucks to say you almost have to write that off. The Hispanic vote is where it's at (god that is horrible English). Right now it goes 2/3rd Democratic and they are the largest growing voting block in the country. You never really hear much about Asian's on the national political scene. They vote majority Democratic as well.
It's also crazy to think the U.S. was 94% white in 1960.
The GOP's Racial Challenge
Republicans can't win in the future without more nonwhite votes
Lost in the GOP's euphoria over its landslide midterm victory is the fact that the Republican Party has almost become a whites-only party. Its strategy may win seats now, but it will lose over the long run.
Republicans won big in 2010 primarily because they won big among white voters. The 60% of the white vote that Republicans garnered last Tuesday is, by most estimates, the highest proportion of the white vote that the GOP has won in any national election since World War II.
Relying on white support is not a new strategy for the party. In 2008, 91% of the votes that John McCain received in his presidential bid came from white voters.
.The problem for Republicans is two-fold. First, whites may currently be the majority but they are a declining demographic. The proportion of all voters who are white has already declined to 75% today from 94% in 1960. By 2050, whites are no longer expected to be a majority of the U.S. population.
Second, Republicans are alienating racial and ethnic minorities—the voters who will ultimately replace the white majority and who they need to stay in power. In every national election in the past few decades, Democrats have dominated the nonwhite vote. Democrats typically garner about 90% of the black vote, two-thirds of the Latino vote, and a clear majority of the Asian-American vote—and 2010 didn't fundamentally alter this pattern.
Even with Democrats presiding over the worst economy since the Great Depression, racial and ethnic minorities did not turn away from the Democratic Party. Last week Latinos favored Democrats over Republicans nearly 2 to 1 (64% to 34%), blacks voted overwhelmingly for Democrats (90%), and a clear majority of Asian- Americans (56%) supported Democrats.
If minorities didn't give up on the Democratic Party last week, they are unlikely to do so without dramatic changes in the platforms of the two parties. A growing and resolutely Democratic nonwhite population is clearly a serious threat to the Republican electoral calculus.
Republicans thus face a real dilemma. They may be able to gain over the short term by continuing their current strategy of ignoring or attacking minorities. But that is short-sighted.
Over the long term—as white voters become a smaller and smaller fraction of the electorate and Latinos and other racial and ethnic minorities become a larger and larger share of the electorate—any campaign that appeals primarily to whites will be doomed.
Mr. Hajnal, an associate professor of political science at U.C. San Diego, is author of "America's Uneven Democracy" (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...602942138252552.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion
