Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Politics :

All signs point to an enduring Democratic shift

Demographic trends ought to alarm GOP

Ruy Teixeira co-wrote a book published in 2002 called “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” When the Democrats got trounced in elections that year and again in 2004, the book seemed like one of those unfortunate bargain binners, like “Dow 36,000,” published in the months after the tech bubble burst.

But Teixeira’s book, rooted in demographic trends and Democrats’ burgeoning success with college-educated professionals, is looking more prescient today. The war-related elections of 2002 and 2004 now look like outliers, detours for a country otherwise moving left.

Teixeira is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he is co-directing a joint project between the liberal Brookings and the conservative American Enterprise Institute, exploring trends in political demography and geography.

His new report for the liberal Center for American Progress serves as a sort of valedictory coda, detailing the new Democratic majority and breaking down the 20-year trend in Nevada and other states.

It’s a striking document and a bracing jolt to Republicans.

The 2008 election was a mirror of 1988, with President Barack Obama winning 53 percent of the vote, matching that of George H.W. Bush. Here’s what happened: During those 20 years, the minority share of the vote increased by 11 percentage points and the white college-educated by 4. The white, working-class portion decreased by 15.

If you’re a Republican, these are “uh-oh” trends.

Other trends seem destined to exacerbate the Republican plight. Obama won the millennials — Americans born between 1978 and 2000 — by 66 percent to 32 percent. This generation is adding 4.5 million voters every year.

Single and professional women are fast-growing voter blocs and they favor Democrats by wide margins. And even though Obama did better with religious voters than his Democratic predecessors, it hardly matters. The country is becoming more secular, according to new data.

Nevada is a microcosm of these trends.

The state’s population grew 29 percent since 2000, while Las Vegas’ grew 33 percent.

Hispanics drove the growth. Their portion of the population rose 1 percentage point per year. The college-educated white portion grew 4 percentage points. The white working-class share of the total declined by a percentage point a year.

Obama won Clark County by 19 percent, some 35 points better than Michael Dukakis’ showing in 1988.

Not surprisingly, public attitudes about issues, which Teixeira culls from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, have moved in the same direction.

The public, by wide majorities, wants bold action on education, energy and health care. After years of war, diplomacy is viewed as an important policy option. Gay marriage, abortion and other cultural issues are losing resonance and have little sway over the fast-growing bloc of young voters.

Are we a center-left country? Maybe not. But Teixeira’s study shows, fairly convincingly, that the nation isn’t center-right anymore.

I’m always circumspect about the idea that demographics is political destiny, however.

Shortly after the 1988 election conservative columnist George Will wrote that Democrats were doomed by the country’s continuing suburbanization. Surely no suburbanite would vote Democratic.

But gradually, cities rebounded, and the new urban dwellers voted Democrat by large margins.

More significantly, a gifted politician named William Jefferson Clinton charmed suburban voters, not just because he was lovable Bubba, but also because he calmed their fears about Democrats.

He gave suburban, college-educated whites confidence in Democrats’ ability to be good stewards of the economy and persuaded them that his party stood for law and order and reforming welfare, which were traditional Republican issues.

As Clinton moved the party to the center and made government work, Republicans were becoming more ideologically strident and alienating America’s fastest growing demographics.

Republicans need a Bill Clinton.

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