Many respected conservative analysts point to the nearly six million mostly working-class white voters who stayed home in 2012 because they were unenthusiastic about the plutocratic Mitt Romney. Some propose that Republicans build on their already high level of support and use populist and nationalist appeals to raise their support and turnout to compete nationally. They are calling on Republicans to find a missing six million new white working-class voters, as they found the missing six million Evangelicals during the culture war.43
Democratic and Republican strategists have highlighted the potential strengths of a Governor Scott Walker strategy, precisely because he has the chance to compete for white working-class voters in the old industrial Midwest. “Scott Walker’s 2016 strategy is simple,” Bob Burnett writes in the Daily Kos. “He will seek to defeat Hillary Clinton by mobilizing the resentment of working-class white voters, male and female. Walker will take his adversarial message to swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin; and hope to mobilize a massive turnout by angry white voters. Walker is dangerous.”44
There is no more oft-repeated statistic than the fact that Barack Obama won just 39 percent of white voters in 2012. “This much is undisputed,” Ron Brownstein declared: “In 2012, President Obama lost white voters by a larger margin than any winning presidential candidate in U.S. history.” Obama was noticeably weak with a number of groups, though particularly with blue-collar and non-college-educated white men—which Brownstein describes as “once the brawny backbone of the New Deal–era Democratic coalition.” Mitt Romney ran as well as Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush with these key groups, yet Romney did not get close to the White House.45
Many analysts and even many Democratic strategists believe the Democrats’ weak performance with the white working class is the inevitable result of Democrats embracing the country’s growing racial and ethnic diversity, Millennials, and college-educated pro-choice women. Maybe Democrats just did not have to compete for the white working class, brawny or otherwise.
That is misguided, as we have seen in this book. Democrats have every reason to battle for these voters. They cannot tackle the deep problems facing the country unless they are working to change an economy that marginalizes so many lower-wage and middle-class workers and leaves so many working women and working men on their own. It also means battling the corruption of Wall Street and Washington that angers so many working-class Americans.
Even without that turn by Democrats, it is doubtful the disaffected white working class will save the Republican Party from its national misfortune. They have already given at the office.
White working-class voters played the leading role in helping the Republicans hold on in the face of national trends. They were in full revolt against Obama, the elites, and an economy that failed them and led the 2010 and 2014 wave elections. That grim result was part of a broad electoral falloff from 2012, with the Democrats’ white non-college vote dropping 7 points, according to Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin.46
In the GOP conservative heartland states, the white working class gave Obama just 25 percent of their votes. That gets your attention.47
That is the result of a period of polarization and culture war that has shifted partisan loyalties even further. During the 2000 election between Gore and Bush, white non-college voters in the South identified Republican by 10 points, but that margin doubled to 21 points in the polarizing 2004 gay-marriage election, stood at that margin in 2008 when Obama was elected, and surged to a 33-point advantage for Republicans in the 2012 election. By then, just 29 percent of white non-college voters in the South identified with the Democratic Party and produced exactly that vote. In the Mountain West, Republicans were always stronger, starting with a 29-point advantage among white working-class voters in 2000. That slipped marginally to a 27-point advantage in 2004 and to 19 in 2008 before surging to a 35-point advantage in party identification under President Obama. Democratic support sank to only 29 percent of white workers in the western part of the GOP conservative heartland.48
That suggests the strategy may be up against its limits. The white working class away from the most religiously observant, Evangelical, and rural areas and deeply race-conscious South is very much in play.
Based on combined data from national surveys conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Democracy Corps, 2012.
In all of the other regions, the Republicans’ advantage among white working-class voters over time is relatively small or looks very unstable and trending Democratic. At the end of the day, the Democrats had a 3-point advantage among white workers in the East and the Republicans enjoyed just a 5-point advantage in the whole of the Midwest in 2012. The Republicans’ strongest advantage, of 13 points, was among the white noncollege voters on the West Coast, a region being transformed by ethnic diversity and a growing white educated population.49
The hurdles to reaching the white working class look so daunting because of the success of Republicans in building up huge margins with those voters in the South, Plains, and Rocky Mountain regions. Obama won only 25 percent of white noncollege voters in the South and 33 percent in the Mountain West. And Democrats have been losing ground in political support and party identification with the most religiously observant, racially conscious, and rural white working-class voters in those regions. Voter attitudes there pose very different challenges that do indeed put most of these voters out of reach.50
It is important to remember, however, that three-fourths of American voters live outside this GOP conservative heartland. In the rest of the country, the battle for the swing white working class and downscale voters is very much alive. In the East and Midwest, about equal numbers of white working-class voters identify with the two parties, and since 2000, this identification with the two parties has remained very stable. On Election Day 2012, Obama won 40 percent of the white noncollege voters outside the Republicans’ regional base. That number still poses a problem, though it would not take major gains with these voters to change the Democrats fortunes in these areas.51
The white working-class voter has the chance to play in the Democrats’ game because the working class itself is being profoundly changed by America’s economic and cultural transformations, and they are among the voters waiting for the political class to step up and address the emerging problems. To start, the white working class comprises just about a third of the presidential electorate—and more than half are women.52
Based on the white non-college respondents in a combined national run of 2,379 likely 2016 voters nationwide conducted in November 2014–January 2015. Republican candidates were split between Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush
America’s job growth we know is concentrated among registered nurses, teachers, truck drivers, customer service, retail, and sales clerks, home health aides, and fast-food workers—and the average wage for those jobs is dramatically below the country’s median income. These workers struggle with jobs that don’t pay enough to live on, managing work and kids without help, the pay gap for women, and piecing together multiple jobs to get to a decent income. And at the same time, they live with the social consequences of more unmarried households and more children being raised by single parents—without much help from government. They noticed that things have gone differently for the 1 percent, which gets a lot of help.
If Democrats are championing a reform agenda, today’s new working class is as likely to give the Democrats a second look as to turn to the Republicans.
THE FORBIDDING ELECTORAL COLLEGE MAP
The economic and social transformations, the counterrevolution, and the battle over America’s values come together to produce this stark red-blue Electoral College map. That map means Democrats are very likely to elect future presidents and govern nationally in the coming period—and thus they may be able to shift the balance in the U.S. courts and advance a reform agenda nationally. The Electoral College map also poses forbidding odds for a Republican Party
that must elect a president to block the Democrats’ “liberal agenda” and to hold their own coalition of voters. At the moment, the strategies of enflaming culture war, building up the base in the GOP conservative heartland, and stoking emotions to push off-year turnout are turning the Electoral College map bluer.
At some point, the Republican Party will implode, fracture, or get reformed, as the Democratic Party did between 1984 and 2000. For the moment, however, this is still an inside game for the Republicans, as we will see in the next chapter.
This is the result. If the Democrats’ presidential nominee did no more than carry the states that Democrats won in all of the past six elections, they would garner 242 Electoral College votes—just 28 short of a majority. Florida brings 29 votes to the table—securing victory for the Democrats before you even count the states that have moved into the Democrats’ Electoral College count in more recent elections as a result of the demographic trends and the metropolitan revolution.
One serious analyst puts the probability of Democrats winning the Electoral College after the next general election at 83 to 89 percent. That is based on 10,000 simulations where there is an evenly divided national vote—and Democrats have only failed to win the most votes once since 1988.53
Since 1992, Ron Brownstein points out, no Democrat has won fewer than 251 Electoral College votes—when 270 are needed to win. That is daunting. And two Democratic candidates have reached 365. George W. Bush topped all other Republican presidential nominees when he arguably reached 271 votes in 2000 and 286 in his reelection, “the smallest share of the available electoral votes won by any reelected president since 1804, except Woodrow Wilson,” as Brownstein describes it.54
Map made using 270towin.com.
Map made using 270towin.com.
Brownstein described the Democrats’ “blue wall”—the states that voted Democratic in five consecutive elections that are now six—but that now seems outdated given the trends on racial diversity, immigration, changes in the family, the Millennials, urban and metropolitan area growth, the mobility of the best-educated, and the vast changes in the suburbs.
Obviously, Republicans are focused on the blue-wall states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. They do in every election.
The real issue is whether the economic and social trends in the purple states of Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire are going to add them to the blue wall. North Carolina and Ohio are likely to remain on the front line.
Ben Highton modeled the trend line for Nevada, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin and compares the Democratic candidates’ state margins with the national vote margin for every presidential election since 1992. The model predicts the Democratic president would carry these purple states in the conservative scenario where Democrats and Republicans split the national vote evenly. In Virginia, for example, where Democrats used to perform dramatically below their national vote, there is an 85 percent chance of Democrats taking the state as the trends rapidly push the state vote margin above the national one.55
Ben Highton, “A Big Electoral College Advantage for Democrats Is Looming,” The Washington Post, April 28, 2014.
Obama’s 0.9-point victory in Florida in 2012 was surprising to many, though get used to it. If the Democratic candidate simply maintains the same coalition of supporters and is aided by projecting population trends, the Democratic candidate wins Florida by 4 points in 2016. But even that is probably too cautious. Nate Cohn points to the explosive Hispanic growth, driven almost entirely by immigrants from Puerto Rico and Central and South America who are much more Democratic than the Cuban immigrants of the past, and Cubans themselves are now evenly divided in their partisan loyalties. Romney was kept in the game by the aversion of white seniors and the Panhandle to Barack Obama, though that could readily edge back. If the Democratic candidate for president wins whites with the same margin as Kerry did in 2004, for example, he or she would win Florida by 9 points. Think of the implications of the Democrats winning Florida by 9 points.56
The Republican Party can barely compete in a national presidential election because of the inexorable trends in the country, and the odds in the Electoral College look more and more foreboding. That is very real for the Republican establishment and its supporters in the business community.
We shall see in the next chapter that the Republican base voters are very aware they are losing the country and any prospect of governing nationally. They are scared to death. That is precisely why the Evangelicals, observant Catholics, and Tea Party supporters have rallied to the counterrevolution and to help Republicans entrench themselves in the GOP conservative heartland and the U.S. Congress. It is showtime.
8 THE END OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AS WE KNOW IT
At the heart of the Republican Party’s intensified struggle against the current trends in the country are the one-third of the national electorate who say, “I’m a Republican,” and the one in five who vote in Republican primaries and caucuses. To understand America’s increasingly polarized politics since 2000, you need a scorecard to know who is really calling the shots.1
The Republican Party establishment and the allied business elites are focused on how to marginalize the Tea Party, libertarian rebels who shut down the government and defeated establishment U.S. Senate candidates. The national media also thinks the Tea Party is the defining and dominant conservative force in today’s Republican Party. They are very wrong, and miss what really drives the Republicans’ public agenda.
The religiously devout are the biggest bloc and encompass nearly half of the Republican base voters. That bloc is dominated by Evangelicals who are 29 percent, and observant Catholics, 16 percent of the base. The Republican Party establishment has not dared to challenge their agenda, as they form a fervent plurality and more than three-quarters of Evangelicals vote straight tickets in general elections. Republicans remain resolute and united in their opposition to abortion, Obamacare, and immigration and in their defense of the traditional family.
The Tea Party is also a powerful force in the party, comprising 25 percent of the base, though that understates the strength of these voters. Almost four in ten Evangelical Republicans are also strong Tea Party supporters—and together, Evangelicals and the Tea Party form 55 percent of the Republican base. The Evangelicals cheer the Tea Party because they are the ones fighting hardest against the trends in the country and against President Obama’s agenda.
The Evangelicals and the Tea Party are the heart of the Republican Party. About seven in ten strongly identify with the Republican Party, and they are the base segments most likely to vote straight Republican on Election Day.
They do not look like the new American majority. The Evangelical, observant Catholic, and Tea Party base voters are nearly 90 percent white, and two-thirds are married—in stark contrast to a country that is growing more racially diverse and increasingly single.
There is a “moderate” bloc among Republicans—voters who are ideologically or religiously moderate—who are pretty alienated from what they see as the mainstream of the party. They form 25 percent of the GOP base, though they self-consciously split their general election votes between the parties (22 percent of them split fairly evenly, and only 44 percent say they vote mostly for Republicans). The moderates are buttressed by the 5 percent of Republican base voters whom I label the “GOP establishment.” They are very conservative, pro–small government general election Republican voters, though they are not so enamored of the Tea Party. They would probably rally to a candidate backed by the party’s established leaders.
This is a party where Evangelicals, observant Catholics, and the Tea Party are rallying the troops into battle.
Based on 7,004 interviews conducted for Democracy Corps, July 2013–January, 2015.
In the summer of 2013, Democracy Corps organized focus group discussions with people from the different parts of the Republican base, and we quickly came to appreciate how much they feel they are losing politically�
��losing control of the country and increasingly powerless to change course. When asked about the direction of the country, their starting reactions were “worried,” “discouraged,” “scared,” and “concerned.” While many voters and even some Democrats doubt that Obama is succeeding and accomplishing his agenda, Republicans think he has won. To them, Obama imposed his agenda, and Republicans in Washington let him get away with it. The country is sure that gridlock has won the day, but Republicans see a president who has lied, fooled, and manipulated the public to pass a secret socialist agenda.2
This is based on findings from the first phase of research for Democracy Corps’ Republican Party Project. We conducted six focus groups among Republican partisans—divided into Evangelicals, Tea Party adherents, and Moderates—between July 30 and August 1, 2013. All participants indicated that they voted only or mostly for Republican candidates and were screened on a battery of ideological and political indicators. The groups were conducted in Raleigh, North Carolina (Moderate and Tea Party), Roanoke, Virginia (Tea Party and Evangelical), and Colorado Springs, Colorado (Moderate and Evangelical).
The Republican base thinks they face a victorious Democratic Party that is intent on expanding government to increase dependence and therefore electoral support. It starts with food stamps and unemployment benefits, and expands further if you legalize illegal immigrants; insuring the uninsured through the Affordable Care Act will dramatically expand the number of those dependent on the government. They believe these policies are part of an electoral strategy—not just a political ideology or an economic philosophy. If Obamacare is fully implemented, they fear the Republican Party may be lost forever.
While few explicitly talk about Obama in racial terms, the base supporters are very conscious of being white in a country with a growing minority population. Their party is losing to a Democratic Party whose goal is to expand government programs that mainly benefit minorities. Race remains very much alive in the politics of the Republican Party.
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