The Divide: The "Trumpians" vs. the expected 2016 demographics

[blunthead]

Charlie Cook and David Wasserman just put out an interesting analysis of the 2016 election in terms of demographics, and the concensus is that it looks very, very ugly for the GOP, much uglier than the GOP wants to admit.

So, here we go:

2016 Voters by the Numbers - NationalJournal.com

..through a demographic lens, the modern GOP's increasing reliance on a shrinking pool of older, white, and working-class voters—and its failure to attract nonwhite voters—would seem to present an enormous obstacle to the eventual Republican nominee. In 1980, when nonwhite voters were just 12 percent of the electorate, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and was elected in a landslide. But in 2012, when nonwhite voters accounted for 28 percent of the electorate, Mitt Romney took 59 percent of white voters—and lost the presidential race by 4 percentage points. Without a total brand makeover, how can Republicans expect to prevail with an even more diverse electorate in 2016?...

...If the electorate evolves in sync with the Census Bureau's estimates of the adult citizen population (admittedly, a big if), the white share of the electorate would drop from 72 percent in 2012 to 70 percent in 2016; the African-American share would remain stable at 13 percent; the Latino portion would grow from 10 percent to 11 percent; and the Asian/other segment would increase from 5 percent to 6 percent. If the 2012 election had been held with that breakdown (keeping all other variables stable), President Obama would have won by 5.4 percentage points rather than by his actual 3.85-point margin.

In addition, the group with which the GOP does best—whites without college degrees—is the only one poised to shrink in 2016. President Obama won just 36 percent of these voters in 2012, while 42 percent of white voters with college degrees pulled the lever for him. But if the electorate changes in line with census estimates, the slice of college-educated whites will grow by 1 point, to 37 percent of all voters, while the portion of whites without degrees will shrink 3 points, to just 33 percent of the total. In other words, the GOP doesn't just have a growing problem with nonwhites; it has a shrinkage problem as well, as conservative white seniors are supplanted by college-educated millennials with different cultural attitudes.

That's it, in a nutshell.

To back up the stats, here are the exit polls from 1976 through 2012:

How Groups Voted in 1976 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1980 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1984 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1988 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1992 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1996 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2000 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2004 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2008 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2012 - Roper Center


Yes, the statistic from 1980 is correct but at the same time somewhat misleading. Ronald Reagan only took 56% of the White vote in 1980 and still won with a +9.74% landslide over Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter because it was a three man race and John Anderson (Independent) was also in the mix.

In 1984, the second largest popular vote landslide since 1964 and the largest EV landslide since 1936, Ronald Reagan took 66% of the White Vote, which is the high water mark in this category since Roper has been polling for voter demographics.

The main message is that Romney came close to 60% of the White Vote in 2012 and still lost to Obama by 3.86 points. The reason is obvious: a shrinking White electorate, and a elderly White electorate that is shrinking even more quickly.

So, in 2016, even if for some reason, a GOP nominee were to get 66% of the White Vote as did Ronald Reagan in 1984, since the White Vote is likely to go from 72% of the electorate in 2012 to 70% of the electorate in 2016, that would probably not be enough to get a GOPer over the top in the EC, but maybe in the PV. The problem with that is that no GOPer is likely to get to 66% of the White Vote, because the female vote is already showing a major tendency toward Hillary Clinton (D), also among White Women.

As the data shows, had Obama won with the same groups, but with the projected 2016 demographics, his margin would have been +5.4 over Romney instead of +3.9. That's an automatic 1.5 point difference, just based on expected shifts in the demographics for the next presidential cycle.

The math makes it clear: without inroads into the minority vote, there is no real path for a GOP victory at the national level, plain and simple.

And Charlie Cook's assumption that the White Vote will sink again in 2016 is exactly in line with electoral history. In fact, instead of 70%, I would not be surprised if the White Vote clocks in at 69% in 2016.

Here the exact numbers for the White Vote, vis-a-vis electorate and GOP take of the White vote:

YEAR / % of electorate / Republican take
1976: 89% / 52%
1980: 88% / 56% (three-man-race)
1984: 86% / 66%
1988: 85% / 60%
1992: 87% / 41% (three-man-race)
1996: 83% / 46% (three-man-race)
2000: 81% / 55%
2004: 77% / 58%
2008: 74% / 55%
2012: 72% / 59%


Actually, I think that Charlie Cook's comparison of Reagan to Romney was false. It is much more logical to compare Bush 41 to Romney. In 1988, Bush 41 took 60% of the White Vote and won the election by +7.73%. In 2012, Romney won the White Vote by 59% (he did better than Bush 43 from both 2000 and 2004!), but lost by -3.86%. That's an 11.59% difference, in spite of the fact that both gentlemen took essentially the same amount of the White Vote.

This is how much of a difference the electorate shows when it goes from being 85% White (1988) to 72% White (2012).

Let's look at the shifts as well. In every cycle EXCEPT 1992, the White Vote shrunk over the previous cycle. And since 1996, the White Vote has shrunk by no less than 2% over the previous cycle, so a prediction of 70% for the White Vote in 2016 is absolutely in-line with electoral history.

Also, let's think about the Women's vote:

Obama won the women's vote by +13 in 2008 and by +11 in 2012. Hillary is polling between +15 and +21 in the women's vote and has been the entire time - and I am being VERY conservative with this estimate here: against Ted Cruz, it's +29. Let's take a mean of +18, 5 points higher than Obama's margin from 2012. Assuming 90% of the Black Vote for Hillary, 70% of the Asian Vote and at least 70% of the Latino vote, this can only mean a certain amount of that rise in the women's vote must come from White women voters, which leads to the logical assumption that it is going to be very hard for a Republican to get above 59% of the White Vote overall, much less even hold at 59%.

So, at a time when Donald Trump is holding a mega-anti-immigration rally in a state well known for it's antipathy toward Latinos, namely, Arizona, the demographics are pointing clearly to a need for the Republican nominee to make inroads into the Latino vote.

It's that simple. And it is also the reason for the title of the OP: "The Divide" - because there is a huge divide between that which seems to attract the ultra-conservative majority of the Republican party in a primary election - and that which will attract General Election voters in November 2016.

In other words, the phenomenon of the "red-meat" that Mitt Romney threw to the Right in 2012, which then ended up being a poison-pill for him in the General, appears to be even more prominent looking toward 2016.

George W. Bush (43) managed to get to -9 in the Latino vote in 2004 and he took 58% of the White Vote, and that barely got him over 270 EV (286, to be exact). With a reduced White electorate looming in 2016, a GOPer cannot afford anything worse than -10 in the Latino vote, and it looks like the cleft might be as large as -60. That is a math that they cannot win with.

Yepp, the demographic numbers look brutal for the GOP in 2016.

Look who likes Wasserman...

"Nate Silver of the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight Blog has written: "Wasserman's knowledge of the nooks and crannies of political geography can make him seem like a local," and the Los Angeles Times recently called David a "whip smart" and "scrupulously nonpartisan" analyst whose "numbers nerddom was foretold at a young age."

David has served as an analyst for the NBC News Election Night Decision Desk in 2012, 2010, and 2008, and has appeared on NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, C-SPAN Washington Journal, CNN, and NPR. His commentary on House races has been cited in numerous print and online publications including Politico, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and RealClearPolitics.com."

In other words Wasserman is just another left-wing tool.

 

[blunthead]

ZZZZZzzzzzzzz....bunch of left wing nutters trying to tell us how to vote, how to win elections, Blah blah blah.

ZZZZZzzzzzz......

Uhm, no.

And Charlie Cook is anything but a Leftie.

Try again.

Charlie Cook - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

"Cook worked on Capitol Hill for then-Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., a Democrat from Shreveport who served from 1972 to 1997. Cook also worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Policy Committee. In addition, he worked as a pollster and campaign consultant and on the staff of BUILD-PAC, the political action committee of the trade association, the National Association of Home Builders.[1]

In 1984, he founded the newsletter The Cook Political Report,[1] which publishes analyses of the primaries and general elections for federal political offices and state governorships. The Report's predictions are accorded high credibility among journalists and politicians.[2] CBS News' Bob Schieffer called the Cook Political Report "the bible of the political community."[citation needed]

The New York Times has called Cook "one of the best political handicappers in the nation" and has said the Cook Political Report is "a newsletter which both parties regard as authoritative."[citation needed] David Broder wrote in The Washington Post that Cook was "perhaps the best non-partisan tracker of Congressional races."[citation needed]"

Yawn. Democrat. I don't listen to them anymore.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Charlie Cook and David Wasserman just put out an interesting analysis of the 2016 election in terms of demographics, and the concensus is that it looks very, very ugly for the GOP, much uglier than the GOP wants to admit.

So, here we go:

2016 Voters by the Numbers - NationalJournal.com

..through a demographic lens, the modern GOP's increasing reliance on a shrinking pool of older, white, and working-class voters—and its failure to attract nonwhite voters—would seem to present an enormous obstacle to the eventual Republican nominee. In 1980, when nonwhite voters were just 12 percent of the electorate, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and was elected in a landslide. But in 2012, when nonwhite voters accounted for 28 percent of the electorate, Mitt Romney took 59 percent of white voters—and lost the presidential race by 4 percentage points. Without a total brand makeover, how can Republicans expect to prevail with an even more diverse electorate in 2016?...

...If the electorate evolves in sync with the Census Bureau's estimates of the adult citizen population (admittedly, a big if), the white share of the electorate would drop from 72 percent in 2012 to 70 percent in 2016; the African-American share would remain stable at 13 percent; the Latino portion would grow from 10 percent to 11 percent; and the Asian/other segment would increase from 5 percent to 6 percent. If the 2012 election had been held with that breakdown (keeping all other variables stable), President Obama would have won by 5.4 percentage points rather than by his actual 3.85-point margin.

In addition, the group with which the GOP does best—whites without college degrees—is the only one poised to shrink in 2016. President Obama won just 36 percent of these voters in 2012, while 42 percent of white voters with college degrees pulled the lever for him. But if the electorate changes in line with census estimates, the slice of college-educated whites will grow by 1 point, to 37 percent of all voters, while the portion of whites without degrees will shrink 3 points, to just 33 percent of the total. In other words, the GOP doesn't just have a growing problem with nonwhites; it has a shrinkage problem as well, as conservative white seniors are supplanted by college-educated millennials with different cultural attitudes.

That's it, in a nutshell.

To back up the stats, here are the exit polls from 1976 through 2012:

How Groups Voted in 1976 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1980 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1984 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1988 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1992 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 1996 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2000 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2004 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2008 - Roper Center

How Groups Voted in 2012 - Roper Center


Yes, the statistic from 1980 is correct but at the same time somewhat misleading. Ronald Reagan only took 56% of the White vote in 1980 and still won with a +9.74% landslide over Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter because it was a three man race and John Anderson (Independent) was also in the mix.

In 1984, the second largest popular vote landslide since 1964 and the largest EV landslide since 1936, Ronald Reagan took 66% of the White Vote, which is the high water mark in this category since Roper has been polling for voter demographics.

The main message is that Romney came close to 60% of the White Vote in 2012 and still lost to Obama by 3.86 points. The reason is obvious: a shrinking White electorate, and a elderly White electorate that is shrinking even more quickly.

So, in 2016, even if for some reason, a GOP nominee were to get 66% of the White Vote as did Ronald Reagan in 1984, since the White Vote is likely to go from 72% of the electorate in 2012 to 70% of the electorate in 2016, that would probably not be enough to get a GOPer over the top in the EC, but maybe in the PV. The problem with that is that no GOPer is likely to get to 66% of the White Vote, because the female vote is already showing a major tendency toward Hillary Clinton (D), also among White Women.

As the data shows, had Obama won with the same groups, but with the projected 2016 demographics, his margin would have been +5.4 over Romney instead of +3.9. That's an automatic 1.5 point difference, just based on expected shifts in the demographics for the next presidential cycle.

The math makes it clear: without inroads into the minority vote, there is no real path for a GOP victory at the national level, plain and simple.

And Charlie Cook's assumption that the White Vote will sink again in 2016 is exactly in line with electoral history. In fact, instead of 70%, I would not be surprised if the White Vote clocks in at 69% in 2016.

Here the exact numbers for the White Vote, vis-a-vis electorate and GOP take of the White vote:

YEAR / % of electorate / Republican take
1976: 89% / 52%
1980: 88% / 56% (three-man-race)
1984: 86% / 66%
1988: 85% / 60%
1992: 87% / 41% (three-man-race)
1996: 83% / 46% (three-man-race)
2000: 81% / 55%
2004: 77% / 58%
2008: 74% / 55%
2012: 72% / 59%


Actually, I think that Charlie Cook's comparison of Reagan to Romney was false. It is much more logical to compare Bush 41 to Romney. In 1988, Bush 41 took 60% of the White Vote and won the election by +7.73%. In 2012, Romney won the White Vote by 59% (he did better than Bush 43 from both 2000 and 2004!), but lost by -3.86%. That's an 11.59% difference, in spite of the fact that both gentlemen took essentially the same amount of the White Vote.

This is how much of a difference the electorate shows when it goes from being 85% White (1988) to 72% White (2012).

Let's look at the shifts as well. In every cycle EXCEPT 1992, the White Vote shrunk over the previous cycle. And since 1996, the White Vote has shrunk by no less than 2% over the previous cycle, so a prediction of 70% for the White Vote in 2016 is absolutely in-line with electoral history.

Also, let's think about the Women's vote:

Obama won the women's vote by +13 in 2008 and by +11 in 2012. Hillary is polling between +15 and +21 in the women's vote and has been the entire time - and I am being VERY conservative with this estimate here: against Ted Cruz, it's +29. Let's take a mean of +18, 5 points higher than Obama's margin from 2012. Assuming 90% of the Black Vote for Hillary, 70% of the Asian Vote and at least 70% of the Latino vote, this can only mean a certain amount of that rise in the women's vote must come from White women voters, which leads to the logical assumption that it is going to be very hard for a Republican to get above 59% of the White Vote overall, much less even hold at 59%.

So, at a time when Donald Trump is holding a mega-anti-immigration rally in a state well known for it's antipathy toward Latinos, namely, Arizona, the demographics are pointing clearly to a need for the Republican nominee to make inroads into the Latino vote.

It's that simple. And it is also the reason for the title of the OP: "The Divide" - because there is a huge divide between that which seems to attract the ultra-conservative majority of the Republican party in a primary election - and that which will attract General Election voters in November 2016.

In other words, the phenomenon of the "red-meat" that Mitt Romney threw to the Right in 2012, which then ended up being a poison-pill for him in the General, appears to be even more prominent looking toward 2016.

George W. Bush (43) managed to get to -9 in the Latino vote in 2004 and he took 58% of the White Vote, and that barely got him over 270 EV (286, to be exact). With a reduced White electorate looming in 2016, a GOPer cannot afford anything worse than -10 in the Latino vote, and it looks like the cleft might be as large as -60. That is a math that they cannot win with.

Yepp, the demographic numbers look brutal for the GOP in 2016.

Look who likes Wasserman...

"Nate Silver of the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight Blog has written: "Wasserman's knowledge of the nooks and crannies of political geography can make him seem like a local," and the Los Angeles Times recently called David a "whip smart" and "scrupulously nonpartisan" analyst whose "numbers nerddom was foretold at a young age."

David has served as an analyst for the NBC News Election Night Decision Desk in 2012, 2010, and 2008, and has appeared on NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, C-SPAN Washington Journal, CNN, and NPR. His commentary on House races has been cited in numerous print and online publications including Politico, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and RealClearPolitics.com."

In other words Wasserman is just another left-wing tool.

Just because someone from the Left respects him does not make him tilted to the Left, Right or anywhere.

You do understand this, right?

Or are you mebbe a little bit retarded?

 

[Statistikhengst]

ZZZZZzzzzzzzz....bunch of left wing nutters trying to tell us how to vote, how to win elections, Blah blah blah.

ZZZZZzzzzzz......

Uhm, no.

And Charlie Cook is anything but a Leftie.

Try again.

Charlie Cook - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

"Cook worked on Capitol Hill for then-Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., a Democrat from Shreveport who served from 1972 to 1997. Cook also worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Policy Committee. In addition, he worked as a pollster and campaign consultant and on the staff of BUILD-PAC, the political action committee of the trade association, the National Association of Home Builders.[1]

In 1984, he founded the newsletter The Cook Political Report,[1] which publishes analyses of the primaries and general elections for federal political offices and state governorships. The Report's predictions are accorded high credibility among journalists and politicians.[2] CBS News' Bob Schieffer called the Cook Political Report "the bible of the political community."[citation needed]

The New York Times has called Cook "one of the best political handicappers in the nation" and has said the Cook Political Report is "a newsletter which both parties regard as authoritative."[citation needed] David Broder wrote in The Washington Post that Cook was "perhaps the best non-partisan tracker of Congressional races."[citation needed]"

Yawn. Democrat. I don't listen to them anymore.

Excuse me, asswipe.

The COOK PVI rating for all congressional candidates is based on pure, simple math. Righties use the values every bit as much as Lefties.

I see you have alot to learn, noob.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Illegals and the non-living still favor Democrats

~99% of the Hispanic vote is LEGAL!!!!! Only 46% of that vote even came out in 2012 so you better hope it doesn't come out with a higher percentage and holds 73% towards the democrats as it did in 2012.

It is nearly impossible for the republicans to get 60% or more of the white vote this election. Not with Hillary pulling away white votes with the womans I have a pussy vote.

Republicans are fucked.

Sure we are. Just like we were in 2014.......it's demographics.....

Midterms are base elections between whites! Presidential elections are far bigger and far more diverse.

Crude and crass, but essentially on the mark. Not bad for a frothing racist.