Republicans Need to Come Up With New Schtick Because Their Base Is Dying
Republicans Need to Come Up With New Schtick Because Their Base Is Dying
Demographic Trends Are Republicans' Nightmare
While perusing Twitter on a flight, I saw a tweet from Emory Law School professor Darren Hutchinson that had some eye-opening CNN exit poll data from the 2020 election. Now, I’ve looked over this very same exit poll data before, but the purpose for which I had reviewed the data wasn’t the same as Hutchinson’s, so I didn’t take as deep a dive. Still, the data are very interesting.
We make assumptions about different voting blocs, and one of the assumptions is that Millennials and Generation Z are lost causes for the Republican Party. Efforts to reach out to these generations are hilariously terrible, but the Republican Party really has no choice because of two factors: 1) the Republican voting base is literally dying, which leads us to 2) slightly more than half the population was born in 1983 or after.
That brings me to Hutchinson’s tweet, which I’ve posted below.
Hutchinson isn’t wrong when he says “[i]t’s all race.” One can look at the data and draw the conclusion that there’s a clear difference in perceptions of the Republican Party between races. Here are the data that Hutchinson shared:
White Voters
Black Voters
Latino Voters
However, this is also only one election cycle. CNN’s 2018 exit poll shows that 56 percent of voters between the ages of 18 to 29 voted for Democrats in House races. Voters between 30 and 44 split at 48 percent between Democrats and Republicans while 59 percent and 56 percent of voters between 45 and 64 and 65 and older voted Republican. The data show that Republicans didn’t perform well in 2018 with anyone but white voters. However, their numbers with Black and Hispanic voters did improve in 2020, particularly with the latter. Even with 2018 added, we still have a limited data set, and the data for the 2016 cycle aren’t available.
Part of the reason that Republicans saw some increased success among Black and Hispanic voters was that the economy performed well heading into 2020 even though the response to the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States very hard. Even this increased success wasn’t enough to keep the presidency in Republican hands.
Being from Metro Atlanta, I wasn’t surprised when the Census found that the area, which is the population center of Georgia, is now a majority nonwhite. On the larger scale, the United States is projected to be a majority nonwhite in 2045. If the Republican Party doesn’t want to be relegated to permanent minority party status, it would behoove Republican leaders in Congress and in state legislatures to tailor their messages to attract support from Black and Hispanic voters. This means that Republicans have to stop letting the tail—far-right, aging, and rural voters—wag the dog in terms of the party’s agenda. The Republican Party simply will not win nonwhite voters by whining about and/or legislating against critical race theory, policing reform, and immigration.
Look, there are elements of what I understand critical race theory to be that I don’t like, but we do need to have conversations about race and the sins of our past, including slavery and Jim Crow. I don’t think defunding the police gets us anywhere, and it’s terrible messaging, but we’ve got to find a way to restore trust in communities of color. It used to be that Republicans were only anti-illegal immigration, but the party has increasingly become anti-immigration. The perceptions that Black and Hispanic voters have of Republicans won’t dissipate until there’s a genuine, concerted, and sustained effort to meet these voters where they are.