New York Magazine (Opinion)
By Jonathan Chait
June 23, 2015
Only
a few years ago, the basic premise of the Emerging Democratic Majority —
the theory that Democratic-leaning constituencies were growing as a
share of the population
— was deeply controversial. Analysts like Sean Trende denied before the
2012 election that the nonwhite vote was likely to continue rising at
all. Now it is more or less a matter of general agreement, and the
dispute has moved on to what it means.
David
Wasserman crunches some numbers and predicts the level of demographic
change that will be brought to bear on the 2016 electorate. The white
vote is expected to drop
from 72 percent of the electorate to 70 percent. Wasserman calculates
that if every cohort votes the same way as in 2012, the Democratic
margin will grow from the 3.85 percent margin that separated Barack
Obama from Mitt Romney to 5.4 percent. Here is the
state-by-state breakdown:
Supporters
cheer as Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic
presidential candidate, bottom center, arrives to speak at her first
campaign rally
at Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York, U.S., on
Saturday, June 13, 2015.
Like
many neutral and even liberal analysts, Wasserman frames this finding
in a very cautious way. His headline is “Mapping the 2016 Electorate:
Demographics Don’t Guarantee
a Democratic White House.” And, of course, nobody thinks demographics
guarantee a Democratic White House. Maybe Republicans can do a much
better job of mobilizing their base than the Democrats this time, or
maybe a big event like a recession will darken the
skies for the Democrats. But in a closely divided electorate with
relatively few swing voters, one and a half percentage points is a lot.
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