Race, Youth, Even ‘Burbs Go Against Republicans: Albert R. Hunt

Commentary by Albert R. Hunt

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Republicans running under the deadly drags of a financial crisis, an unpopular president and the political cycle didn’t do as poorly in the U.S. elections as some had feared.

Barack Obama won by about seven percentage points, more than Bill Clinton in his first victory, about the same as George H.W. Bush in 1988, and less than Ronald Reagan in 1980. The party lost almost two-dozen House seats and seven or eight Senate seats, severe setbacks but short of devastating.

A deeper look at the changing shape of the electorate suggests more fundamental problems for Republicans. Their core constituencies are shrinking, and the wedge issues that used to plague Democrats are now more divisive for Republicans.

If the racial and generational composition on Nov. 4 had been identical to four years ago, John McCain might have won.

Non-whites comprised 26 percent of the electorate, up from 23 percent in 2004. Obama carried 80 percent of these voters. African-Americans turned out in record numbers, and almost all of them voted for the first black president.

Republicans once hoped to score well among Hispanics, the fastest-growing slice of the population. They were 9 percent of the electorate last month, with almost three times as many Latino voters as just 16 years ago.

Obama carried Hispanics, 67 percent to 31 percent, according to exit polls. That gave him a cushion in heavily Hispanic-populated states like New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado -- all of which were in the Republican column four years before -- and in places like Iowa and North Carolina, which have growing Latino populations.

Hispanics Decisive

Obama won North Carolina by 13,000 votes as Hispanics, who comprised 3 percent of the voters, provided the margin. In eight years, that vote in North Carolina may double.

What killed McCain, who has a consistently pro-Latino and pro-immigration record, was the Republican Party’s not-so- subtle Hispanic-bashing in scuttling immigration reform in Congress last year.

This creates a considerable wedge-issue dilemma for Republicans: In primaries, many of the party’s core voters believe these “aliens” are debasing American values; that’s why politicians like Mitt Romney flipped into immigration- bashers this year.

Yet as long as that persists, this portion of the American electorate will vote more and more Democratic. The argument some Republicans advance, that they can oppose “illegal” immigration and woo Latinos on traditional values, assumes these voters can be duped. This election demonstrated that’s a canard.

Youth Movement

Next, voters ages 18 to 29, almost one-fifth of the electorate, went better than 2-to-1 for Obama.

Here, too, the trends in the past couple of elections have been all Democratic. Some of that is because there are more minorities among younger voters; some of it is the lousy economy, and some the opposition to the Iraq War.

But interviews and survey data suggest that another reason is tolerance, and the feeling that on matters like gay rights and race relations, Republicans are out of step. Most young people have no trouble with gay relationships.

Cultural conservatives celebrated that three states, California, Arizona and Florida, voted last month to ban gay marriage. They will learn these were pyrrhic victories much like the anti-immigration measure California Republicans rode to electoral success in 1994, where they won an election and lost a generation.

Research suggests that once young people cast a few votes for one political party, it’s often a lifetime habit.

The ‘Burbs

The third and overlapping signature political trend this year were the suburbs and rapidly growing exurbs, previously Republican strongholds. Two states tell this story. One is Virginia, particularly Prince William and Loudoun counties, about an hour from Washington.

In 2000, George W. Bush carried these counties comfortably. This time, Obama carried one with almost 58 percent of the vote, and the other with 54 percent, as he became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Virginia in 44 years.

Fueled by places like these exurbs, the political dynamics of this formerly sleepy state (once described as a hotbed of social rest) are changing, and not just in this election. When Bush was first elected president, Republicans held the Virginia governorship, both U.S. Senate seats and eight of the 11 House districts. In January, the picture will look quite different: Democrats will hold the state house, both Senate seats and six of the 11 House districts.

Then There’s Pennsylvania

The other is Pennsylvania, the one traditionally Democratic state the Republicans contested this time. The rationale was the Democrats would win large majorities in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as usual, while the Republicans would carry the smaller, more rural and more working-class areas. The battleground would then be the big Philadelphia suburbs. These used to be the base of the Republican Party in the state, though Bush narrowly lost them in 2004.

This time, Obama carried all four of these counties -- Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery -- by a combined 200,000 votes. These suburbs now comprise more than a fifth of the electorate, about the same as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh combined. Without carrying them, a Republican has little chance statewide.

More Minorities

There are more minorities in the suburbs than during the Republicans’ salad days, and the voters are younger. But these suburbs are also full of moderate swing voters, whose disenchantment with Republicans extend well beyond 2008. Any of the other Republican presidential candidates this year would have lost these suburbs and the state by more than McCain.

If Pennsylvania is gone and Virginia is turning into a Democratic-leaning -- or “purple-blue” -- state, the Obama coalition of minorities, young people and moderate suburbanites could dominate American politics for a generation.

To be sure, if the economy craters and the Obama administration fails, Republicans will come back and win elections. To avoid being a minority party for the next generation, however, they’re going to have to crack this coalition.

It’s a task for which the Republican Party currently seems ill-suited.

(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Albert R. Hunt in Washington at ahunt1@bloomberg.net