New Face of America – Democratic Shift Changing Electorate

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - It’s not just the economy, stupid. It’s the demographics — the changing face of America.

The 2012 elections drove home trends that have been embedded in the fine print of birth and death rates, immigrationstatistics and census charts for years.  America is rapidly getting more diverse, and, more gradually, so is its electorate.

People of color made up 28 percent of the electorate this year, compared with 20 percent in 2000. The trend has worked to the advantage of President Obama for two elections in a row now, and is not lost on Republicans poring over the details of the Nov. 6 results.

Virginia is a prime example of the impact of diversity and demographics on the election outcome. President Obama once again won Virginia based on strong support from communities of color. In majority-black cities like Richmond and Petersburg, the president racked up huge margins. In Richmond, the president won by a nearly 4-1 margin and in Petersburg by an 8-1 margin over Republican Mitt Romney.

But President Obama also won in Virginia's suburban counties like Henrico and Fairfax, where the populations of people of color have surged in the past two decades. The vote results strongly suggest that the president would have had no shot in Virginia without strong backing from populations of nonwhite voters.

According to exit polls in Virginia, where the population is still 70 percent White, only 37 percent of White voters supported President Obama. He overcame that disadvantage by capturing 94 percent of the Black vote, 64 percent of the Latino vote and 66 percent of the Asian-American vote, the polls indicate.

Black voters were definitely a key to the Obama victory in Virginia. The exit polls indicate that this group of Virginia voters came out in even larger numbers than in 2008 when the President became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in 44 years.

Nationally, President Obama captured a commanding 80 percent of the growing ranks of nonwhite voters in 2012, just as he did in 2008. Mr. Romney couldn’t win even though he dominated among White men and outperformed 2008 nominee John McCain with that group. It’s an ever-shrinking slice of the electorate and of America writ large. White men made up 34 percent of the electorate this year, down from 46 percent in 1972.

“The new electorate is a lagging indicator of the next America,” says Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Center. “We are midpassage in a century-long journey from the middle of the last century, when we were nearly a 90 percent white nation, to the middle of this coming century, when we will be a majority minority nation.”

Another trend that will be shaping the future electorate is the stronger influence of single women. They vote differently from men and from women who are married. Fifty-four percent of single women call themselves Democrats; 36 percent of married women do.

With women marrying later and divorcing more, single women made up 23 percent of voters in the 2012 election, compared with 19 percent in 2000. The changing electorate has huge implications for public policy and politics.

Howard University sociologist Roderick Harrison, former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau, said Obama’s campaign strategists proved themselves to be “excellent demographers.”

“They have put together a coalition of populations that will eventually become the majority or are marching toward majority status in the population, and populations without whom it will be very difficult to win national elections and some statewide elections, particularly in states with large Black and Hispanic populations,” Harrison said.

In the past year, minority babies outnumbered White newborns for the first time in U.S. history. By midcentury, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians and multiracial people combined will become the majority of the U.S.

Since 2000, the Hispanic and Asian populations have grown by more than 40 percent, fueled by the increased immigration of younger people as well as more births.

Currently, Hispanics are the largest minority group and make up 17 percent of the U.S. population, compared with 12 percent for Black people and 5 percent for Asians. Together minorities now make up more than 36 percent of the population. Hispanics will make up roughly 30 percent of the U.S. by mid-century, while the African-American share is expected to remain unchanged at 12 percent. Asian-Americans will grow to roughly 8 percent of the U.S.

“The minorities will vote,” said demographer Frey. “The question is will their vote be split more across the two parties than it was this time?”

For both Republicans and Democrats, he said, the 2012 election is a wake-up call that will echo through the decades.