2016 US presidential election and race
Pew Research just released an interesting study on the racial composition of the 2016 US electorate.
Anyway, I found this overview of turnout and relative GOP/Democrat strength by race (I think I may have posted these before)
Sources:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... s-history/
http://www.brookings.edu/research/paper ... rnout-frey
Some key points:
- White Americans make up 71 percent of eligible voters in 2012, but only 30 percent of new voters in 2016.
- Hispanic Americans make up 11 percent of eligible voters in 2012, but 37 percent of new voters in 2016.
- Two thirds of the growth in the Hispanic electorate is from citizens reaching voting age, not from naturalization of immigrants. Conversely, 74 % of new Asian Americans voters are naturalized.
And some back-of-the-envelope calculations:
If we assume similar turnout as in 2012 (figure 2), similar party preference by race (figure 3), then the 10,697,000 new eligible voters from 2012 to 2016 will translate into the following *net gain* (Extra Democrat votes minus extra GOP votes) for the Democrats:
White: - 413,060
Black: + 949,725
Hispanic: + 839,098
Asian: + 278,777
Total: 1,654,539
Or, to put it otherwise: If everything else stays the same (yeah, right!), the Democrats stand to gain approx 1.7 million cast votes in the 2016 presidential election over the GOP due to the change in the racial makeup of the United States.
By comparison, Obama won the popular vote with the following margins:
2008: 9,550,193
2012: 4,982,296
So - based on these assumptions - the Democrats can afford to lose up to 6,636,835 voters to the GOP in 2016 compared to 2012 and still win the popular vote. Of course, the popular vote in itself does not guarantee a victory (as the 2000 presidential election demonstrated), but it does illustrate that the GOP needs to make substantial electoral gains in order to claim the White House in 2016.
Please discuss.
Jacoby
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Basically your making argument( that the Democrats will be able to maintain a permanent majority which predictions of have always and will always be wrong whenever it is predicted by either party which every time they achieve a majority or seem to gain some advantage. It's just posturing, all it is. Too many assumptions, things are always in flux. Voter intensity changes, party preferences changes, party platforms changes, more and more there is something of a rebellion going on in both parties right now as well that is impossible to predict.
Ultimately presidential elections come down to personality, how well the other side can brand their opponent, and what the national narrative is at that time. The means of the flow of information has so radically changed that the influence old power players that the establishment has so entrenched themselves in with big business which own the media and run these "think tanks" in Washington. What we have now with the internet is a democratization of information, the narrative cannot be control by this gatekeeper class people any longer. I don't think you can model elections, opinion polling is a joke and is merely a tool of the people administrating the poll want it to do, if I want a poll that says gun control is good then that's not hard and vise versa. This is part of how the narrative is created but now with people so interconnected, there has arisen a credibility gap because the narrative amongst the people is obviously not what corporate America or some browbeating media try to make it out to be.
androbot01
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