Could we spare a moment for the disappearing white voter? No, I’m serious. In the wake of the 2012 election there were many discussions of the coming demographic revolution that would lower the percentage of white people and thus render obsolete the Republican electoral strategy. Before we assess if this makes demographic sense, we should have a look at the strategies of the two parties.
A strange dilemma
What have been the strategies of the parties to appeal to white voters? Much of the time, it appears that Republicans are trying to scare them, and Democrats are just hoping they will die off.
First the Republicans. Too many (non-white) moochers. The culture of dependency. Too many (non-white) immigrants. Take back America (from non-whites?). White people are the ones who built America. Different values. Obama only won because too many non-whites voted for him, because “those people” vote as a block. We heard a lot along these lines. Many on the left decry this as racist, a form of what the British call “dog-whistle” politics: The use of code words like “immigrants” that the intended listener can hear as “non-white immigrants” but will pass beyond the hearing of others.
Bracket, just for a moment, the racial dynamic and consider the nature of these appeals. No one can deny that they are fear appeals, attempting to present a scary future where good solid citizens are overwhelmed by zombie immigrants and those who want to take things without earning them. They certainly are not calls to build a common future or even to enlist people to positively help shape and preserve good things. It’s a call to buy some more guns, stock up on canned goods and pull up the drawbridge. And I, a white person, find it insulting, demeaning and crucially, just inaccurate.
Is this appeal working? Certainly some surprising numbers have been bandied about. CNN reports that exit polls show that white voters broke for Romney 59 percent to 39 percent, non-white voters went for Obama by even larger margins. Eighty-eight percent of Romney’s votes were from whites.
What CNN doesn’t report, and what would be fascinating, is the breakdown of race and income with voting patterns. Do rich non-whites vote more like rich whites? More about this later.
The Democratic strategy
By contrast, Democrats and liberals of all types seemed happy on election night, not just for the immediate results but for the future. Regularly we heard words to the effect that “this was the last election cycle” that Republicans could be competitive by focusing on the white vote. Demographic change would soon make this impossible.
Isn’t this a rather demeaning and divisive strategy? Basically writing off an entire race of voters, an undifferentiated block whose every impulse for safety, every value, every desire is decoded as racist and nothing else. Is there a moral difference between this and Republicans writing off the black vote? Of course, the Democratic strategy might actually work.
The demographics
The U.S. Census Bureau goes quietly along producing reams of numbers on myriad aspects of the U.S. population. Even more handily, they provide many tables as downloadable spreadsheets. It’s one more little reason why we need government.
Their table “Projections of the Population by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin for the United States: 2010 to 2050” will be instructive. But, since it is the census, we have to get some definitions clear first. In casual talk “Hispanic” and “white” are two options, and we assume you are one or the other. But the Census Bureau is more precise and allows that Hispanics might be either white or non-white. They also account for people who identify as more than one race.
So, in 2010 there were 251 million whites but only 200.8 million whites who were non-Hispanic. We’ll use this smaller definition of “white” in what follows.
In 2010, 79 percent of the population was white and 65 percent of the population was non-Hispanic white. CNN reported that whites contributed 72 percent of the votes in 2012. Given that poor people vote less frequently than middle and upper income people and that non-whites are more likely to be poor, it would seem reasonable to think that the 65 percent of the white citizenry accounted for 72 percent of the votes.
So what will change? The Census Bureau predicts that the fraction of whites in the population will decline about 4 percent every 10 years, with the estimated figure being 46 percent in 2050. Hence the optimistic view of the future among some progressives.
Four percent in 10 years is 1.6 percent per four-year election cycle. How would 2012 have played out with 2016’s demographics? We can make a crude estimate of the sort we used to call “back of the envelope” by assuming the various races vote the same way, but that whites account for 70.4 percent of the total votes instead of 72 percent. This rough approximation suggests that would mean a gain of 0.6 percent for Obama and a corresponding loss by Romney, all other factors holding steady.
That doesn’t exactly seem revolutionary. In 2016 there will not be an incumbent president. Republicans might well offer a more compelling candidate than Romney (or McCain, for that matter). There would seem to be many factors that might swamp the shift in demographics. Project out three or four election cycles, however, and the impact becomes more significant.
The melting pot
I’m old enough to remember when a common metaphor for the United States was that of the “melting pot.” People immigrate here, the first generation doesn’t understand English and keeps to the “old ways” but the next generation which is born here is just “American.” This was never completely true and we seldom hear this image now.
Other metaphors compete for attention: We’re a “stew” of various permanently distinct flavors blending together, a “patchwork quilt” all contributing to making a comforting blanket. Or maybe we fear we’re devolving into warring camps.
The question is, however, just how distinct will the various groups be after they are a more significant portion of the American landscape? People continue to identify as Irish-American, German-American and so on, but no one thinks of these as distinct voting blocks except on some very narrow and specific issues. What about more recent immigrant groups such as those from Southeast Asia? I suspect they are mirroring the experience of previous groups, but not with the same intensity or speed.
We have to focus on Hispanics in particular. The demographic change is driven almost entirely by the growth in the Hispanic population. Non-Hispanic blacks, for example, will increase from 14.6 percent in 2010 to 17 percent in 2050, by Census predictions. Of course, growth in the Hispanic population is not driven by immigration alone, so the model of other immigrant groups may not be as applicable.
When Hispanics increase from 16 percent of the population in 2010 to 30 percent in 2050, will they still be a “block” in quite the same way? How much inter-marriage, how much assimilation will take place? And, critically, those Hispanics that succeed economically, to what extent will class become a significant identification compared to biological origins. I have no idea, but I suspect it will be more than zero.
In the mass media we still talk about “the Latino vote” or “the black vote” because (in part) they do vote largely for one party. But note that while blacks vote in excess of 90 percent for Democrats, the Hispanic percentage is closer to 70 percent, just 10 percent more than whites voted for Republicans. There are already significant numbers of Hispanics voting Republican. So as they become more integrated will that decline? Again, I don’t offer an answer. But what I would suggest is that mechanically projecting votes on the basis that race trumps everything else and will always do so is likely to start breaking down.
Certainly, liberals are often surprised that black voters can be opposed to homosexual rights or even take conservative positions on issues. And what will happen if the Republican candidate embraces immigration reform or is Hispanic?
But, if I’m forced to predict, I would expect that 2016 still finds Republicans clinging to their theory that the solution to being beaten by someone to their left is to move to the right. Given a compelling candidate and a stumble by the Democrats, it could work, at least one more time.
Whither white people
And this brings us back to white people. Poor demonized, racist, misogynistic white people. Is there really nothing to do but wait till a few more of them die off? Only if you have no imagination. Certainly a 39–59 split is a big difference. And equally certain, Republicans seem to see white people as a natural constituency. But is that different than progressives assuming the Republicans are right?
In my view, both parties have failed equally. Both see multiple millions of people as a single mass, lumping farmers and college kids, aging hippies and coal miners, Wall Street lawyers and beat cops, salespeople and clergy, bikers and psychologists, all into one group with the same outlook, interests and values.
Which party will be the first to go beyond this?