Gunny
08-02-2023, 12:58 PM
The great realignment (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/03/us-midterm-election-results-tea-party)of American politics, which began with the House of Representatives’ Republican freshman class in 2010 — and was boosted by the candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016 — has given us critical new data points about American voters. The tectonic polarization (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/politics/how-college-graduates-vote.html) of the electorate along education, income and geographic lines isn’t just reshaping the parties, it is also reshaping voter turnout models.
The new, or perhaps still emerging Republican coalition (https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/house/0) has more blue-collar, non-college educated and rural voters — similar to the expansive coalition that former President Ronald Regan built (https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/07/politics/reagan-wins-by-a-landslide-sweeping-at-least-48-states-gop-gains.html) in the 1980s. It has more voters (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/09/new-data-makes-it-clear-nonvoters-handed-trump-the-presidency/) who didn’t take part in many previous elections because they didn’t believe anyone cared about them or that their vote made a difference.
In fact, we now have enough election data to confidently say many of them are more likely to stay home in a midterm election and more likely to participate in a presidential election — upending decades of political science orthodoxy.
Further exacerbating this phenomenon is the Democratic Party’s move toward a much higher-income, White coastal (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/31/yes-democrats-are-in-real-danger-of-becoming-a-regional-party-just-look-at-these-2-maps/) voter base, and with it, a more left-wing progressivism that is alienating significant segments of Hispanic (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/13/latino-voters-midterm-elections-republicans-00066618#:~:text=Democrats%20won%20among%20Black%2 C%20Hispanic,major%20networks%20and%20Edison%20Res earch) and Black (https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-brian-p-kemp-stacey-abrams-politics-us-democratic-party-53d31c9c8a87231d00784b6effa8d59e) voters.
The upshot is, to paraphrase Berra (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/07/25/fork-road/), when Republicans come to a fork in the road, they should take it. GOP candidates considering a run for political office in 2024 should not fear presidential turnout; they should embrace it.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/31/opinions/2024-presidential-election-republican-voter-turnout-shields/index.html
The new, or perhaps still emerging Republican coalition (https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/house/0) has more blue-collar, non-college educated and rural voters — similar to the expansive coalition that former President Ronald Regan built (https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/07/politics/reagan-wins-by-a-landslide-sweeping-at-least-48-states-gop-gains.html) in the 1980s. It has more voters (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/09/new-data-makes-it-clear-nonvoters-handed-trump-the-presidency/) who didn’t take part in many previous elections because they didn’t believe anyone cared about them or that their vote made a difference.
In fact, we now have enough election data to confidently say many of them are more likely to stay home in a midterm election and more likely to participate in a presidential election — upending decades of political science orthodoxy.
Further exacerbating this phenomenon is the Democratic Party’s move toward a much higher-income, White coastal (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/31/yes-democrats-are-in-real-danger-of-becoming-a-regional-party-just-look-at-these-2-maps/) voter base, and with it, a more left-wing progressivism that is alienating significant segments of Hispanic (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/13/latino-voters-midterm-elections-republicans-00066618#:~:text=Democrats%20won%20among%20Black%2 C%20Hispanic,major%20networks%20and%20Edison%20Res earch) and Black (https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-brian-p-kemp-stacey-abrams-politics-us-democratic-party-53d31c9c8a87231d00784b6effa8d59e) voters.
The upshot is, to paraphrase Berra (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/07/25/fork-road/), when Republicans come to a fork in the road, they should take it. GOP candidates considering a run for political office in 2024 should not fear presidential turnout; they should embrace it.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/31/opinions/2024-presidential-election-republican-voter-turnout-shields/index.html