Real Clear Politics
By _Sean Trende_
(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/?author=Sean+Trende&id=17480) -
November 30, 2011
The _latest report_
(http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/11/pdf/path_to_270.pdf) from Ruy
Teixeira and John Halpin of the progressive Center
for American Progress contains a thoughtful examination of President
Obama's re-election chances. There's an awful lot packed into the 60 pages of
text, but the basic thrust is as follows: We should expect the non-white share
of the electorate to grow at least 2 percent from the 2008 election,
padding Obama's base line. If he can hold serve among either the white working
class or college-educated whites, he should be able to pull out a victory,
even amid troubled economic times.
In truth, the report is substantially less bullish on Obama's re-election
chances than some of the articles analyzing it have suggested (see Dan Balz
_here_
(http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/11/26/20111126demographics-may-key-re-election.html)
and Michael Tomasky _here_ (http://www.thed
ailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/22/michael-tomasky-how-obama-can-get-to-270-elec
toral-votes.html) ). It acknowledges that the president has a “tight
needle to thread” and that “Americans will be open to replacing President
Obama
with an even-tempered, nonthreatening GOP leader focused on the economy.”
In other words, the triumphalism of Teixeira’s “Emerging Democratic
Majority” argument of the early 2000s is decidedly tempered throughout the
report, and with good reason. After all, the GOP just won its second-largest
share of seats in the House of Representatives since 1928, with an electorate
that had the second-smallest share of non-Hispanic white voters in history.
In retrospect, those repeated “last gasps” of the GOP coalition (1994,
2002, 2004, 2010) look a lot more like “steady breathing.”
But the optimistic tones in Teixeira and Halpin’s piece need to be tempered
even further. The “demographics versus economics” debate that Teixeira
and Halpin suggest will determine the outcome of the next election isn’t a
50-50 proposition. It is weighted heavily toward the economics side, and I
think it’s unlikely that demographics will save the president. There are
three critical observations here:
1. The minority population may not grow substantially from 2008 through
2012.
Probably the central feature of the Teixeira/Halpin argument is that the
nonwhite share of the electorate should have grown 2 percent by 2012,
reducing the white share of the electorate to 72 percent (for simplicity’s
sake, I’
ll shorten “non-Hispanic whites” to “whites”). This is certainly
possible, as the white share of the electorate has contracted by 2 percent, on
average, in every presidential election since 1980.
But it hasn’t been a straight line. In 1992, the white share of the
electorate actually increased by 2 percent, in response to H. Ross Perot’s
candidacy and the economic contraction. In 2004, the white share of the
electorate declined by 4 percent, in part due to the growth of the Latino
population.
So why might we expect the demographic changes in the electorate to be more
like 1992 than 2004? First, the Latino share of the electorate has
actually remained stagnant for much of the past decade. In 2004, Latino voters
comprised 8.24 percent of the electorate. In 2006, they were 7.94 percent of
the electorate. In 2008, they were 8.38 percent of the electorate. In 2010,
they were once again around 8 percent. In other words, for a variety of
reasons, the surge in Latino population has not translated into a surge in
Latino voting power (and remember, there was a huge registration and
get-out-the-vote drive in 2008 among Latinos, both in the primaries and the
general
election).
And while the headline from the release of the decennial census was the
surge in the Latino share of the populace, the lesser-known truth is that
Latino immigration _has largely stopped_
(http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/what_if_the_mexicans_stop_coming_N2mHNDEUFdJy55UlTroJSP)
over the past several years. It may have even reversed. There are multiple
reasons for this, including the United States’ deep recession and slow
recovery, as well as the continued modernization of the Mexican economy. In
other
words, to the extent that Latino immigration is what accounts for the
increase in the Latino share of the electorate from 1992 through 2004, we
should not expect it to do so from 2008 through 2012.
But while the Latino share of the electorate was stable from 2004 to 2008,
the white share of the electorate nevertheless decreased. Why would this
be? The answer is simple: The increase in the non-white share of the
electorate from 2004 to 2008 was largely driven by a surge in African-American
voters. The African-American share of the electorate is typically between 9
and
11 percent. In 2008, it was 13 percent, by far the largest vote share in
history.
The problem for the president is that he has probably maxed out among these
voters -- the African-American share of the electorate in 2008 was about
10 percent more than their share of the population as a whole. In fact, I
wouldn’t be surprised if the number of African-American voters declined
somewhat in 2012. This isn’t because African-Americans are disappointed in
Obama
-- his approval among African-American voters remains stratospheric -- but
rather because it will probably be much more difficult to energize
marginal African-American voters with the prospect of re-electing the first
black
president than it was to energize them with the idea of electing the first
black president.
____________________________________
But the bottom line is that we should be very surprised if the
African-American share of the electorate increases further from 2008 to 2012.
We
likewise have good reason to believe the Latino share of the electorate will
remain stable. This suggests a pretty strong argument that the minority share
of the electorate will be roughly the same in 2012 as it was in 2008, and a
decent argument that it might contract somewhat.
(2) Obama will have a difficult time winning either white working-class
voters or upscale whites.
Even if the non-white share of the electorate does increase by an
additional two points in 2012, Obama still faces an additional hurdle. As
Teixeira
and Halpin suggest, Obama cannot afford to lose white voters at the same
rate Democrats lost them in 2010. In other words, he must hold serve among
either upscale whites or downscale whites if he hopes to win.
But keeping the margin close, much less winning, among either group will be
difficult. Remember, Obama enjoys a low-to-mid-40s approval rating right
now for one reason: He maintains an approval _above 80 percent_
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/obama-black-voters-jobs-approval-ratings_n_100
3973.html) among African-Americans. Among whites, it is a mere 33 percent.
At that level, there are almost by definition very, very few subgroups of
whites who approve of the job the president is doing.
So when we see, for example, that Obama’s job approval among all adults
making more than $7,500 a month is 40 percent, we can probably imagine that
his overall approval among upscale whites is a few points lower than that.
His job approval among adults making $2,000-$7,500 a month is not much
different, and his job approval among adults with “some college” or a “high
school diploma or less” is also in the low 40s. Once again, we can pretty
safely assume that his job approval among whites in those categories is
somewhat
lower.
In other words, Obama doesn’t just have some “tidying up” to do among
various white groups. He has to either improve his image there by about a
point
a month over the next 11 months, or hope for a Republican nominee so
unacceptable to the overall populace that Obama can convince a substantial
number of voters who disapprove of him to nevertheless cast ballots for him.
Right now, the latter looks much more likely than the former.
(3) Winning minority voters and white voters is something of a zero-sum
game.
In a little more than a month, my book, “_The Lost Majority_
(http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Majority-Future-Government-Grabs/dp/0230116469) ,”
hits the
stands. The central argument of the book is that the famous permanent
Republican and Democratic majorities that many commentators foresaw emerging
in
the 2000s were mirages, precisely because long-term, permanent majorities
are almost always impossible in this country.
There are myriad reasons for this, but two are of particular importance
here. First, as new issues emerge, the party that is in power will inevitably
have to choose winners and losers on these issues from among its coalition.
This is even more pronounced in a time of economic stagnation, when the
question isn’t “who gets the new slices of pie?” but rather “who is going
to have to give up their share of the pie?” Second, the party that is out of
power will adapt, and will chase after groups that the other party either
takes for granted or ignores.
So, for instance, Obama can try to shore up his support among Latino voters
by embracing immigration reform and combating Arizona’s profiling law. But
in doing so, he risks alienating white working-class voters and, to a
lesser extent, upscale white voters. In fact, this is precisely what happened
in Arizona in 2010. Jan Brewer won the state by three points more than John
McCain, despite running about 13 points behind McCain among Latino voters.
She more than made up for this decline among Latinos by increasing her
share among whites (who are still three-quarters of the Arizona electorate) by
three points. The idea that there is a zero-sum game at work here is an
inherent assumption underlying the argument that Obama has to choose between a
“Colorado strategy” focusing on upscale whites, or an “Ohio strategy”
focusing on downscale whites.
To be clear, if Republicans win total control of the government in 2012,
they’ll have to make similar tough choices. Holding together a party composed
of semi-secular soccer moms in Loudoun County, Va., evangelical attorneys
in Edmond, Okla., and Catholic auto workers in Youngstown, Ohio, is almost
as difficult as holding together a coalition of blacks, Latinos,
working-class whites, suburbanites and urban liberals. These types of
difficulties
run throughout history, and they help explain why parties almost never win
the popular vote more than three times in a row.
But for now, Obama is the president. The state of the economy, as well as
policy choices made early in his term, are forcing him to pick winners and
losers among his 2008 electoral coalition. Republicans will craft their 2012
message based in large part around the choices he makes. Barring a gift
from the Republicans in the form of their nominee -- and this is something we
absolutely should not rule out -- the president will likely have a very
difficult time holding it together.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
