Losing whites: the biggest polling problem for the GOP
by David Atkins
Joshua Holland has perhaps the most cogent take on the potential long-term electoral consequences of the shutdown for the GOP:
A civil war among Republicans is also a civil war among white people, since there is little else in the party these days. This clarifies just how close to the brink the GOP may be. A civil war among white people will surely hurt the party right where it cannot afford any slippage: among white voters.
It is only the very large majorities the GOP has been running lately among white voters that are keeping the party competitive. Indeed, majorities that not only remain large but increase are at the heart of what passes for GOP electoral strategy these days. Start cutting those majorities and the strategy goes up in smoke, replaced by immediate and serious electoral danger.
Consider that Congressional Republicans got 60 percent of the white vote in the 2010 election, compared to just 37 percent for the Democrats. What if, as we move into 2014, the war among white people breaks out in earnest, with the Tea Party on one side, business and establishment Republicans on the other and white working class voters already suspicious about the party’s Paul Ryan-inspired drive to cut Medicare and Social Security watching from the sidelines?
All this would make it prohibitively hard for the party to replicate its 60 percent showing among white voters in 2014. Say white support subsides to, say, 55 percent, with Democrats edging up to 42 percent. Assuming that the minority share of voters rises by a couple of points relative to 2010 and support for Democrats clocks in close to 80 percent, we are then in take-back-House territory, a popular vote margin of 6 points or so.
Impossible you say? Hark back to 2006 where Democrats only lost the white vote by 4 points, 47-51. Democrats don’t need to do that well in 2014. In fact, they don’t have to come particularly close. All they have to do is compress the GOP’s 2010 margin so it is still strong but not overwhelming.
Loss of white support would certainly put the GOP’s hold on the House in danger. But it would make them positively uncompetitive in Presidential elections. A “mere” 13 point margin among white voters would translate into a crushing 10 point defeat in the 2016 Presidential popular vote.
It’s true that come November 2014, the vast majority of the “civil war” will have been tamped down, and that few of these intramural combatants will ever cast a vote for a Democrat.
But it doesn’t take that many to engineer a big shift. Although it isn’t reflected in the Congress, there are moderate Republican voters out there. They do exist. You meet many of them when you get involved in local politics: they’re older Eisenhower Republicans, socially liberal ones, folks who want to tax the rich but are uncomfortable with abortion, or the locally centered “federal government doesn’t bother me much, but local regulations need to be loosened on small business” ones. There aren’t that many left, but let’s say they make up at least 1/12th to 1/10th of the Republican coalition. That’s probably understating the percentage, but let’s say it’s only that many.
More importantly, they tend to be concentrated in areas that aren’t ruby red–states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. States and districts where gerrymandering has given the GOP an undue edge. In districts hyperleveraged by gerrymandering, small shifts can have big impacts.
Remember that given demographic changes, the Republicans are doomed in national races and eventually even in the House if they can’t expand their coalition. That’s not liberal wishful thinking: that was the whole point of the post-election “rebrand” campaign. The disaster won’t befall them immediately, but if they allow the Latino and Asian vote to go the way of the African-American vote and if six in ten Millennials continue to vote Democratic, they’re basically finished in about 10-15 years. They certainly can’t afford to lose key parts of their existing white base. Not now, and not later.
If Republicans do lose that moderate 1/10th or so, that really could spell disaster even as soon as 2014.