Seeking Single Women

I am working my way through Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin's "The Path To 270" and wanted to do a quick post on a fascinating bit of data.  Teixeira, co-author of "The Emerging Democratic Majority," is the primary influence on how I tend to approach election analysis given his emphasis on demographic change and political geography.

In "The Path To 270" Teixeira and Halpin delve into the major components of the coalition that elected President Obama with an eye to how these groups have increased or decreased in number and how they will approach the 2012 election.  Beyond their focus on minority voters and college educated whites (topics which I'll try to cover in future posts), I was struck by the data they present on single women.  To quote...

Unmarried women were also strong Obama supporters in 2008, favoring him by a 70-29 margin.  Unmarried women now make up almost half, 47 percent, of adult women, up from 38 percent in 1970.  Their current share of the voter pool--a quarter of eligible voters--is nearly the size of white evangelical protestants, the GOP's largest base group.  And since the growth rate of unmarried women is so fast (double that of married women) the proportion of unmarried women in the voting pool will continue to increase.

Teixeira and Halpin's analysis draws upon an earlier study of unmarried voters, "A New America," produced by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research in 2007.  Further putting the numbers in context, they note "there are over 53 unmarried women of voting age, a number that dwarfs the percentage of seniors, people of color and even union members."  In comparing marital status with other variables, they find that "marital status is a powerful predictor of the vote within other voting blocks; unmarried women tend to vote like other unmarried women, regardless of other powerful demographic variables such as age, income, and education."

To connect these demographic trends with policy, Greenberg and his co-authors make a strong case that unmarried women, in particular, have been strong proponents of health care reform, reduced American military involvement overseas, and economic parity in the workplace.  Given what Obama has achieved in these areas, it will be interesting to see how his campaign messaging targets unmarried women.  While health care reform, specifically, has been a subject that Obama has been hesitant to discuss with broad audiences, I would bet that there will be a great deal of "microtargeting" directed at unmarried women.

If we were to extend our analysis to include unmarried men as well (who also favored Obama in 2008 but to a lesser degree than women), the numbers are even more staggering.  As this recent piece notes (and the visual at top shows) not only are single people becoming more numerous, but they tend to be concentrated in certain geographic areas.  Again, from Greenberg...

From 1960 to 2006, the percentage of the voting age population that was unmarried grew from 27 to 45 percent.  Between the 2002 and 2006 elections, the growth rate of unmarried Americans was double that of married Americans.  If this trend continues, the unmarried will be a majority of the population within 15 years.

So, moving forward it will be worth paying attention to this dimension of the voting public.  While there seems to be little discussion of how marital status affects policy beliefs and voting preferences--at least in more mainstream venues--the data on single Americans is pretty compelling, especially as their numbers increase so dramatically.  In this regard, it would seem as if the recent economic downturn would have been felt particularly hard by single Americans.  A married couple is better able to absorb a loss or decline in income than a single individual.  Thus, how these folks perceive the past four years--and assign responsibility for the downturn--will be crucial to both parties in November.

A Short Take on Florida, Including Ominous Turnout Numbers

Mitt Romney's victory yesterday in Florida is obviously a shot in the arm to his campaign, especially after the shock of South Carolina.  Above, I've posted a map of the primary results, courtesy of Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas.  The counties highlighted in Green were won by Romney; Blue were Gingrich victories.  To make some sense of the map, I'd refer back to a post I wrote in the weeks leading up to the 2008 election.

Florida's political geography is extremely fascinating.  The northern part of the state, including the panhandle, more closely resembles the neighboring states of Georgia and Alabama than it does the rest of the state.  More rural and with a large military presence, these counties have a stronger "Deep South" flavor--more Evangelicals and social conservatives.  Though less populous than other regions in the state, it favored Gingrich.  Exit polling from yesterday's vote confirms Gingrich's (and Santorum's) appeal to these voters and serves to confirm that Romney has still not sold this important GOP bloc on his candidacy.

On the turnout front, some more troubling news for the GOP.  As I wrote recently, turnout in New Hampshire, while up compared to 2008, did not increase at the rate we might expect for a party energized and positioned to recapture the White House.  I did some quick calculations on the most recent contests.  South Carolina saw an impressive 36% increase in Republican primary turnout over 2008 (603,856 votes vs. 445,677).  In Florida, however--a much more important state in November--turnout was actually down 14% compared to four years ago (1,669,585 votes vs. 1,949,498).

Here's some Florida turnout analysis (including an interesting graph of county data) from Michael McDonald, one of the foremost scholars of voter participation.

Does President Obama Have A "Cushion" In 2012???

As we get more and more polling data about how President Obama stacks up against his potential Republican rivals, it's important to remember that in many ways the national percentages are irrelevant.  Presidential contests are really state by state races.  The ultimate goal is to compile the 270 electoral votes necessary to win.  Because of the vast differences across states and regions--something that this site aspires to capture--neither Obama or Romney/Gingrich will have the same level of support everywhere.

Thus, as we begin to look to November, it's useful to look back at recent elections, especially 2008, and see how the candidates varied across the states.  This will give us the opportunity to see how likely it is that either candidate will be able to bring new states into their coalition. 

Another way to state this is: how much ground must the Republican nominee make up based upon what happened in 2008?  How much of a "cushion" does Obama have?  Does he have any realistic opportunity to build upon his 2008 margin?

To help answer this, I decided to look at how many states were actually closely decided in 2008.  These would be the main targets for both candidates, especially the Republican nominee who needs to improve dramatically on John McCain's 173 electoral votes.  I produced the following table that lists each state based upon the winning candidate's margin of victory.

What we see is that, beyond the 7% national spread between Obama and McCain, the state by state results are even more impressive for the Presdident.  If we use a spread of 5% as an arbitrary definition of a "close" outcome, we see (highlighted in yellow) that only six states were decided by such a margin in 2008.  Of these, Barack Obama won 4 (NC, FL, IN, OH) while McCain won 2 (MO, MT).  If we wanted to be a bit more generous in our definition of "close" to include states decided by 10% or less, we get an additional nine states, 4 won by Obama (VA, CO, IA, NH) and 5 won by McCain (GA, SD, AZ, ND, SC). 

In the final column of the table, I've listed the number of electoral votes that will be awarded by these states in 2012.  Here is where we can get a real sense of the magnitude of the task for the Republican nominee.  If we assume that states in 2012 will vote roughly as they did four years ago, the GOP nominee must win every state they won in 2008, plus North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, AND Iowa in order to caputre the White House.

When we look at previous presidential elections, we see that there were many more "close" states than we saw in 2008.  For example, in 2004 we saw twelve states decided by 5% or less and twenty one with a 10% or less margin:

In 2000 there was a similar bunching of states, also with twelve decided by 5% or less.  Twenty two had a 10% or less margin:

When we look at the data on a state by state basis, the magnitude of each party's win over these past three cycles becomes magnified.   This is especially true, it seems, for 2008.  While Obama's 52.9% of the popular vote was the highest of any Democratic nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, it is also true that he managed to win a lot of states by a large margin.  One might miss this if they were concerned only with the national numbers.







The Dramatic Diversification of America: Census 2010

Up until this point I've been reporting on the release of Census data in a piecemeal way.  In fact, it's actually quite overwhelming to try and keep up with each new batch of numbers.  The directions that one could take their analysis is unending.  Nonetheless, a new story by Ronald Brownstein over at National Journal does an excellent job of putting into context just what the Census is now telling us about America.

The take away...the pace of diversification in the U.S. over the past decade has been staggering.  This will have consequences not just for how we view ourselves, but for our politics as well.  Consider some of the following:

• The minority share of the population increased in every state between 2000 and 2010
• The percentage of non-Hispanic whites is 5.4% less than it was in 2000
• Minorities now make up 46.5% of the under 18 population (up from 39.1% in 2000)
• Four states are now majority minority--Hawaii, New Mexico, California, and Texas.  In eight other states, minorities comprise between 40 and 50% of the population

This growth has been overwhelmingly driven by Hispanics.  As Brownsein writes:

On the national level, Latinos now represent one in six Americans, or nearly 50.5 million in all.  That's up from one in eight, about 35.3 million, in 2000.   The Hispanic share of the population increased over the past decade in every state, with dramatic gains recorded not only in Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas but also in Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, and Rhode Island.  Latinos accounted for a majority of the population growth in 18 states, at least 40 percent of the growth in seven more, and at least 30 percent in five others.  In sum, Hispanics fueled about a third or more of the population growth in 30 states.

So what does this mean electorally???  The premise of this site from its beginning was that demography matters...a lot.  While I never want to discount other factors that shape elections--candidate quality, campaign organization, rhetorical skill, underlying fundamentals like the state of the economy, money, etc.--the driving set of variables for me has always been those that describe who the voters are.  Furthermore, we know that so much of our demographic profile is wrapped up in a historical and cultural narrative as well--look no further than our history with race in this country.  Thus, if you tell me who the voters are and where they are I'm pretty confident that I can tell you what they're going to do.

Which gets us to the second part of Brownstein's article.  Given what we know about how the minority vote has broken down over recent cycles, these numbers are very good news for the Democrats not only in the short term but especially long term.  Republican success in 2010 was built upon 1) decreased turnout among minority and new voters and 2) overwhelming support from whites.  In 2008, Barack Obama received 43% of the white vote yet won the largest share of the popular vote of any Democrat since LBJ.  National Journal ran a series of scenarios based on a further erosion of white support for Obama in 2012 and found, nonetheless, little reason to bet against him.  Consider:

Obama, for instance, won Florida last time with 42 percent of the white vote; under this scenario, if he maintains his minority support he could win the Sunshine State with just under 40 percent of the white vote.  With equal minority support in Nevada, the president could win with only 35 percent of the white vote, down from the 45 percent he garnered in 2008.  Likewise, under these conditions, Obama could take Virginia with just 33.5 percent of whites, well down from the 39 percent he captured last time.  In New Jersey, his winning number amon whites would fall to just over 41 percent (compaerd with the 52 percent he won in 2008).  In Pennsylvania, under these circumstances, 41% of white votes would be enough to put the state in Obama's column, down from the 48% he won in 2008.

All of this takes place even though minority turnout, especially among Hispanics, lags behind that of whites (African American turnout was up substantially in 2008).  If, going forward, mobilization and turnout among Latinos were to approach that seen among African Americans, the situation for Republicans would get even more dire.  If I were going into politics today as a young progressive and wanted to find a niche for myself that guaranteed I'd have meaningful work for the rest of my career, I'd focus on Latino mobilization and turnout. 

This all assumes, of course, that minorities' allegiances stay firmly in the Democratic camp.  For the party's sake, one would hope that Republicans would figure out a strategy to cope with these numbers.  Watching the current crop of GOP presidential candidates as well as those on Capitol Hill, it's clear that they haven't figured this out yet.  Pointing to Marco Rubio as a reason to believe you can win Hispanics is not a strategy.  Party allegiances and loyalties are formed over time and require an understanding of why voters evaluate the parties the way they do.  For Latino and African American voters, the Democrats have had this understanding--and a willingness to seek it--for much longer.  These new numbers seem to suggest that they are in position to reap the benefits for years to come.