The percentage of whites in the electorate dropped from 89 percent in 1972 to 74 percent in 2008According to exit polls from the 2008 election, McCain won 55% of the white vote. That was not enough, of course. Bush won 58% in 2004, but he also did significantly better with Hispanics and Asians. There were also more white voters in 2004 than in 2008, and it's steadily dropping. The Republican Party is 90% white, and much has been made about Obama's decline among white voters. The non-white share of the electorate was 26% in 2008.
54% of the white vote 74% is about 41% of the entire electorate. You can't win with 41%. You have to get a lot of minorities, or you have to get a much bigger share of the white vote. If Republicans can get 68% of the white vote, they win 50% of the electorate.
Whites are already voting disproportionate to their share of the population. This study (figure 5) shows that white voters were 74% of the eligible voters in 2008, yet they made up 78% of those casting ballots. This is only possible because minorities turn out in much smaller numbers relative to their share of the population. Hispanics, for example, are 9% of the eligible voters, but only 6% of the actual voters.
The latest PPP survey (12/15) has a match-up between Obama and a generic Republican candidate. White voters break 54/39 for the generic candidate. So that's about what McCain got, and people don't vote for a generic candidate; they vote for an actual person. 53% of whites think that Obama is "too liberal". Okay, that's right where the match-up breaks down.
Yet only 35% of white voters express approval of the Republican Party, compared to 52% who disapprove. And, in PPP's surveys since 1/11, white voters have a median approval of Congressional Republicans of 37%. It's currently sliding into the high 20's. Currently, 56% of white voters have an unfavorable opinion of John Boehner. Although the Democratic Party is rated unfavorably by whites 35/56, the Republican Party only breaks 35/52 in the same demographic.
So, if the Party and it's elected officials are not any more popular with white voters, why do they break Republican? It seems like coin flip from an objective perspective, but instead 20% of whites side with a Party they dislike. Normally, we would expect a depressed turnout from a demographic like that. But 2010 was a high turnout for white voters, and the narrative from the Right has always been that white voters sat out 2008 because McCain wasn't conservative enough. Remember, Romney was more conservative than McCain in the 2008 primaries; yet he's not conservative enough four years later.
On that 12/15 PPP survey, 48% of registered white voters consider themselves to be "very excited" about voting in the 2012 elections. Another 29% say they are "somewhat excited", and 23% are "not at all excited". This is the indicator of potential turnout that I am going to use. So, if you combine the "very" and "somewhat", you get a total of 77% excited, 23 not.
Compare that to 79% (55%"very") of the 18-29 age demographic. Or the 74% (48% "very") of the 65+ group. Hispanics break down at 75% (49% "very"). Independents are at 69% (41% "very") In short, it looks as if white voters are as excited (or more) about the election as anyone else is at this early date. White voters should turn out.
However, with a slowly diminishing number of voters, you need a larger percentage of them to vote each election just to tread water. 23% likely to sit out the election is maybe more than the Republicans can afford. And about the same percentage of those white voters are expected to vote Republican as they did when the Republicans lost. The more incisive issue may not be Obama's declining share of the white vote, but rather the issue that the Republicans are not seeing much benefit from it on a generic match-up. It's that 20% of white voters that vote Republican while not liking the Party nor it's elected members. They were promised big things in the 2010 election, and they aren't seeing big things. They were asked to give the Republicans a chance to fix things, and they didn't fix things.
Another usually reliable Republican demographic is the elderly. Aged 60+ voters went for McCain by 51% in 2008. Not enough, and McCain was certainly their age. On the generic Presidential ballot question, voters over the age of 65 break 44.5% for Obama (median over all 2011 polling). Currently, 48% choose the generic Republican - about as strong as the percentage when the Republicans lost. Maybe it's the unfavorable (30/55) opinion of the Republican Party keeping those numbers down. Only 49% of the age group consider Obama to be "too liberal". Certainly, that more than the 39% who consider him "about right", but this is a core demographic for the Republicans.
There just isn't a lot of room for improvement in the numbers for white voters and elderly voters. Pretty much all of the whites that think Obama is too liberal are already voting Republican (generically). It's the same with elderly voters. Sure, the number who consider Obama to be "too liberal" could rise, but they've shown remarkable stability for the 65+ age group throughout 2011. People know Obama, at least as far as forming an opinion on his degree of "liberalness".
Meanwhile, the Republicans are left with 31% of Hispanic voters in a generic match-up (12/15), which is exactly what McCain got - when he lost. Generally speaking, Independent voters are split, with only a few points (<5%) for a plurality at best.
So, what do Republicans expect will be the big "game-changer"? A bad economy? We've got that right now and the game isn't changing. Harsh criticism of Obama? Already got that. The Tea Party? They are slowly declining in numbers, enthusiasm, and purity. And the TP adherents most likely voted in 2008 anyway, so that's not a new advantage. If people were going to turn against Obama on those things, they would have already done so. We could very well be looking at the ceiling for the Republicans.
It's looking like the battle lines for 2008 in a lot of ways. The Republican field is largely already known, at least for the viable candidates. Sure, Romney isn't completely familiar to some low-information voters, but he's had substantial media exposure in the primaries. It's, for all practical purposes, daily coverage. And it's going to increase. Romney may have some room to go up, but he also has problems with the base. Consider also that, the longer the primary campaign goes on, the more negative material those low-information voters will be exposed to. His image could actually get worse instead of improving. Gingrich? He's getting pretty well-known, but the general electorate isn't liking what they see. His campaign is not in good shape right now, too. Paul is a coin flip. A lot of people don't know him, but it's hard to say how much exposure would improve things for him.
There are significant chances of internal Republican dissent, conflict, and controversy in this primary season. Usually, the Party is pretty much locked down, people speak the Party line, and it's a binary mindset of us versus them. However, in order to create the Tea Party from whole cloth, the Republicans had to not only gin up large numbers of their own to near apoplexy, but also let them speak freely. The genie can't be put back in the bottle. The Tea Party made these bozos appear important and someone who should be listened to. Now these same bozos are going to be set loose on their own Party. So far, the Party has been keeping them tame, but the cost of that could be to demoralize the bozos.
In 2008, the Party machinery effectively froze out Ron Paul from the process through a huge array of devious and mostly obvious parliamentary tricks. If they do the same thing this time, there could be bitter divisions created that would be unlikely to hurt the Obama campaign. With candidates being locked out the process in VA and TN already, it would seem that the Party organization is going to flex its muscles this time around and tell the Tea Party to play ball with them or go home. Of course, if the Tea Party knuckles under to this pressure, they will lose all of their credibility as anything other than the reliable Republican base. In that eventuality, the Tea Partyers will look back on 2010 as their Summer of Love (so to speak) and become just another group that demands lip service now and then.
The stakes are high for the Republicans. That white vote is just going to keep decreasing, that elderly vote is going to keep sliding away from people that even remember the Fifties, and that Hispanic vote is going to keep growing. By 2016, the current Republican politics won't be viable on a national level, no matter who the Party runs. They've spent four years ginning up their base that Obama is Satan Himself, and the economy is probably only to improve by 2016. If they can't win now, then this whole conservative nightmare goes down in flames. Sure, there would be States that could keep the whole "conservative Agenda" going, but it would be over nationally.
The Republicans not only have to increase the number of whites casting ballots, but also make sure that those white voters are casting ballots for them. It will do them no good to increase white turnout of Democrats, of course. Generally this is done during voter registration drives conducted in the primaries. But this is not really being done, or only sporadically. The Republicans seem to be abandoning the idea of bringing in new voters, and are instead concentrating on 100% turnout of the ones that they already have. The "low-hanging fruit" for the Republicans is long gone. To get higher turnout, the hyperbole, fear, and outrage must be kept constantly maintained, and an entire generation of Republican candidates is going on record with crazy and extreme positions and statements. And Republican voters are becoming more alienated from the general populace by constantly spewing out toxic vitriol and irrational views. Everyone outside of the Republican base has learned to quietly nod at the wingnuts they come into contact with, lest the wingnut unleash spittle-flecked fury upon them. The wingnuts mistake this as agreement, rather than recognition that no discourse is possible with them.
