The Demographics That Sank The Democrats In The Midterm Elections

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Over the past five years, the Democratic Party has tried to add class warfare to its pre-existing focus on racial and gender grievances, and environmental angst. Shortly after his re-election in 2012, President Obama claimed to have “one mandate . . . to help middle-class families and families that are working hard to try to get into the middle class.”

Yet despite the economic recovery, it is precisely these voters, particularly the white middle and working classes, who, for now, have deserted the Democrats for the GOP, the assumed party of plutocracy. The key in the 2014 mid-term elections was concern about the economy; early exit polls Tuesday night showed that seven in 10 voters viewed the economy negatively, and this did not help the Democratic cause.

“The Democrats have committed political malpractice,” says Morley Winograd, a longtime party activist and a former top aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton years. “They have not discussed the economy and have no real program. They are offering the middle class nothing.”

Winograd believes that the depth of white middle- and working-class angst threatens the bold predictions in recent years about an “emerging Democratic majority” based on women, millennials, minorities and professionals. Non-college educated voters broke heavily for the GOP, according to the exit polling, including some 62% of white non-college voters. This reflects a growing trend: 20 years ago districts with white, working-class majorities tilted slightly Democratic; before the election they favored the GOP by a 5 to 1 margin, and several of the last white, Democratic congressional holdovers from the South, notably West Virginia’s Nick Rahall and Georgia’s John Barrow, went down to defeat Tuesday night.

Perhaps the biggest attrition for the Democrats has been among middle-class voters employed in the private sector, particularly small property and business owners. In the 1980s and 1990s, middle- and working-class people benefited from economic expansions, garnering about half the gains; in the current recovery almost all benefits have gone to the top one percent, particularly the wealthiest sliver of that rarified group.

Rather than the promise of “hope and change,” according to exit polls, 50% of voters said they lack confidence that their children will do better than they have, 10 points higher than in 2010. This is not surprisingly given that nearly 80% state that the recession has not ended, at least for them.

The effectiveness of the Democrats’ class warfare message has been further undermined by the nature of the recovery; while failing most Americans, the Obama era has been very kind to plutocrats of all kinds. Low interest rates have hurt middle-income retirees while helping to send the stock market soaring. Quantitative easing has helped boost the price of assets like high-end real estate; in contrast middle and working class people, as well as small businesses, find access to capital or mortgages still very difficult.

The Republicans made gains in states in New England and the upper Midwest where the vast majority of the population, including the working class, remains far whiter than the national norm of 64% Anglo, such as Massachusetts, where a Republican was elected governor, Michigan, Arkansas and Ohio. Anglos constitute 89% of the population in Iowa and 93% in the former working-class Democratic bastion of West Virginia, two states where the Republicans picked up Senate seats. In Colorado, another big Senate pickup for the GOP, some 80% of the electorate is white. In Kentucky, where Senator Mitch McConnell won a surprisingly easy re-election, only 11% of voters were non-white, down 4% from 2008.

A more intriguing danger sign for Democrats has been the surprisingly strong GOP performance among the educated professionals that embraced Obama early on. This can be seen in gubernatorial victories in deep blue Massachusetts and Maryland,  and a close race in Connecticut; in all three states concerns over taxes have shifted some voters to the GOP. Voters making over $100,000 annually broke 56 to 43 for the GOP, according to NBC’s exit polls. College graduates leaned slightly toward the Republicans, but among white college graduates the GOP led by a decisive 55 to 43 margin.

In Colorado, Senator-elect Cory Gardner, like many successful GOP candidates, also did well with middle-income voters (annual salaries between $50,000 and $100,000), who basically accounted for his margin of victory. These are voters that some Republicans are targeting to instigate a new “tax revolt,” like the one that helped catapult Ronald Reagan into the presidency. The potential may be there if the Republicans can wake up from their blind instinct to protect large corporations and big investors. Certainly Obama’s call for higher income taxes on the wealthy has alienated small business owners and professionals, though barely impacting tech oligarchs, whose wealth is taxed at far lower capital gains rates.

It can be argued that changing demographics will make this year’s blowout a temporary setback. Among Latinos, a key constituency for the Democrats’ future, economic hardships and disappointment at the Democrats’ failure to achieve immigration reform have blunted but hardly reversed voting trends. This year, according to exit polls, Latinos remained strongly Democratic, but down from the nearly three-quarters who supported President Obama in 2012 to something slightly less than two-thirds.

One encouraging sign for Republicans: Texas Governor-elect Abbott won 44% of the Hispanic vote.

Perhaps the more serious may be shifts among millennials, a generation that, for the most part, stands most in danger of proleterianization. Once solidly pro-Democratic, this generation has become increasingly alienated as the economy has failed to produce notable gains. In states across the country, the Republican share of millennial votes grew considerably. According to exit polls, their deficit with voters under 30 has shrunk to 13%. The Republicans actually won among white voters under 30, 53% to 44%, even as they lost 30- to 44-year-olds, 58 to 40. If these trends hold, the generation gap that many Democrats saw as their long-term political meal ticket may prove somewhat less compelling.

If they are losing the middle and working classes, and even some millennials, what are the Democrats left with? They did best in states like California and New York, where there is a high concentration of progressive post-graduates and non-whites, and where many of the sectors benefiting most from the recovery have thrived, notably tech, financial services, and high-end real estate.

Yet these areas of strength could also prove a problem for the Democrats. A party increasingly dominated by progressives in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Seattle may embrace the liberal social and environmental agenda that captivates party’s loyalists but is less appealing to the middle class. Unless the Democrats develop a compelling economic policy that promises better things for the majority, they may find their core constituencies too narrow to prevent the Republicans from enjoying an unexpected, albeit largely undeserved, resurgence.

This piece originally appeared at Forbes.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Illustration by Flickr user DonkeyHotey.



















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Took me time to read all the

Took me time to read all the comments, but I really enjoyed the article. It proved to be Very helpful to me and I am sure to all the commenters here! It’s always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained!
girlsdoporn

Michael

Michael Harrington
www.casinocap.wordpress.com

This is an insightful piece that points to the ideological/identity divisions in the overall partisan divide. The problem for Democrats illustrated here is the narrow limits of identity politics. At the national level, when things get bad enough, voters eventually prefer policies that expand the pie through growth rather than quibbling over shares of a diminishing pie. The white middle class is not interested in distinctions based on race, gender, or ethnicity when they see their own economic progress stall.

It would certainly be progress to see Hispanics, blacks, and other minority interests vote for policies that open up opportunity to their communities instead of partisan identity bloc voting. Immigration should not be an issue that divides one group of Americans from another. We are a nation of immigrants and we have the rule of law that secures our rights as citizens. Let's not lose sight of either.

Choosing not to vote

Hispanics disgusted with Obama's on and off perfunctory efforts for immigration reform were a large part of the missing electorate. After watching Obama postpone immigration reform in 2009, prioritizing instead boutique Left issues like climate change, it's not surprising if Hispanics did not vote.

It's like the girl repeatedly told by her boyfriend that he will take her to the prom and he keeps cancelling at the last minute, taking instead other girls named Climate Change or War on Women claiming unavoidable social obligations.

Gus Malanga

Choosing not to vote isn't Demographics.

The ridiculous belief by liberals that "if only we got our Demographic out to vote" amazes me. It's like saying, "if only we scored 30 more points, we'd have won."

Individuals make two choices at election time. The first, is who they want to vote for based on party and beliefs. The second, if that person has so let you down, made your life worse, can you bring yourself to go vote for the other guy? Or do you chose to simply stay home.

The Democrat demographic faithful didn't show up out of laziness en masse, but because they're incompetent failures that they forlorn faithful can't vote for.

Thanks for the arrogant and

Thanks for the arrogant and insulting viewpoint.

The potential may be there

  • The potential may be there if the Republicans can wake up from their blind instinct to protect large corporations and big investors.

Take a look at the voting breakdown of H.J.Res. 124 which included re-authorization of the Ex-Im Bank back in September. It had about equal support from both sides of the aisle in both houses. The GOP hardly has a monopoly on supporting crony capitalism. Comparing the parties' two firebrands, Rand Paul railed against the bank while supposed populist Elizabeth Warren supported it. At this point both parties exhibit a blind instinct to protect big corporations and big investors. At least the GOP's tent is big enough to include a vocal member eschewing crony capitalism. Not so much on the Dem side.

  • Unless the Democrats develop a compelling economic policy that promises better things for the majority, they may find their core constituencies too narrow to prevent the Republicans from enjoying an unexpected, albeit largely undeserved, resurgence.

Er, undeserved according to whom? Did the Democrats deserve to keep control of the Senate?

Immigration

Immigration is an issue Democrats ignore at their peril:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/05/what-schumer-wrought/

https://www.numbersusa.com/blog/live-election-night-blogging-what-result...

This is not going away.

Luke Lea

If your point is that

If your point is that Democrats should take a Republican Wide Stance on Immigration reform, you can keep it.

The GOP has been very successful at hate-mongering all Latinos as diseased, addicted, violent illegal immigrants on Welfare who do not deserve to vote. I was astounded to see the GOP pull out the "Illegals Are VOTING!!!!" card just a couple days ago, despite no serious reality-based facts to support their claim.

Latinos who came out to vote on Tuesday voted Democratic in about the same % but unfortunately not in the same numbers as 2012. It is Democrats who got Immigration Reform passed in the Senate, it is Democrats and the President who will lead on this issue, it is Democrats who will keep being rewarded by the country's largest minority and its fastest-growing.

See you in 2016.