LITTLE ROCK — Mitt Romney apparently got a larger percentage of the white vote than any presidential candidate since 1984. The problem was that the white vote in 1984 was 88 percent of the electorate. It is now only 72 percent.
Thus, in the most basic sense (a demographic sense), Barack Obama won because, although he got less than 40 percent of the white vote, he received unprecedented support from everyone else (the other 28 percent). The black, Hispanic and Asian share of the electorate is growing, and its tilt toward the Democratic Party is growing, too.
The black vote has been a lock for Democrats for decades now, but the alarming news for Republicans was that Obama did better among Hispanics and Asians (the two-fastest growing minority groups) than any previous candidate. Other groups that are increasing in electoral importance also went Obama’s way-single women, young voters (Romney would have won if only the votes of people over the age of 30 had been counted), and the “religiously unaffiliated” bloc,which supported the president by a striking 7-1 margin.
All of which leaves the Republicans with, for the most part, white married folks who go to church regularly, a demographic that is vastly smaller than even a few decades ago. Every other group is increasing in number and becoming more Democratic as it grows, in many cases by huge margins.
A hunch: The Democrats aren’t so much winning those voters as Republicans are scaring them away, in droves. There is, in short, something about the Republican Party which makes it unattractive to people who aren’t white and married.
Some of this can be attributed to growing government dependency-as many have noted, black citizens are uniquely dependent upon the welfare state (the new “liberal plantation”), to the extent that there is little in the limited government/free-enterprise message of the GOP that will appeal. The work ethic among Hispanics is seldom questioned, but they, too, in various survey results, see government social programs and assistance as important.
But that the Republican Party’s problems go further than the limited appeal of its limited-government philosophy to Hispanics and blacks becomes apparent, however, when we turn to the other groups that it is now consistently losing-single women, youth, Asians and the religiously unaffiliated. There is a certain logic that can be followed for all four of those voting blocs, because in each the primary source of resistance to the GOP is cultural, not economic; more specifically, the perception that Republicans are simply too “Christian” and “Southern.”
Single women are, for instance, strongly influenced by the abortion issue, and the GOP position on abortion, which obviously tilts the wrong way for such voters, has for some time now been dictated and locked in place by its Christian conservative base.
Survey research likewise reveals that Asians, who in terms of income and work ethic are often said to be “natural” Republicans, resist the GOP for the same reason; more specifically, the perception that it is too “conservative” on cultural/social issues (with that conservatism coming, again, from religious sources). The bloc most concerned about cultural/social issues and most liberal regarding them tends to be 18- to 29-year-olds; they are, consequently, the group least likely to be religiously affiliated and therefore most likely to be repulsed by a party dominated by evangelical Christians.
Finally, the cultural dimension even explains why Republicans losestates like Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, places where the minority vote is almost nonexistent, but where large numbers of white voters, fairly or unfairly, write off Republicans as nativist, Bible-thumping yahoos without teeth or indoor plumbing. Even for married white voters, the GOP appeal declines the further one moves away from Dixie.
The Republican Party thus finds itself in something of a conundrum-the source of much of its fervor and energy comes from its social-conservative (read Christian) base, but it is that same base that, ultimately, repulses single women, Asians, the nonreligious and young voters. In short, the reasons it does so well in the South are the same reasons it does so poorly just about everywhere else.
Which is sad, because one suspects, particularly at a time of national fiscal crisis stemming from trilliondollar deficits, that the Republican philosophy of fiscal prudence, limited taxation, and free enterprise is still a winning one (particularly in comparison to the stale and fiscally disastrous Democratic alternative of “tax and spend”).
There are, consequently, probably lots of voters out there, including educated single women in large urban areas, Asian professionals living in the Pacific Northwest, and even married white folks in Minnesota or Ohio who share Republican economic values but who won’t vote Republican because of perceptions that the party is socially and culturally intolerant and bigoted (a “club for Christians”).
There is, adding all this up, a solution which just might make sense for a nation that is essentially conservative on economic issues but increasingly liberal on social/cultural ones. It is called “libertarianism,” and theremight never be a better time for a libertarian movement than now, or for the GOP to move closer to such an orientation.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 12/24/2012