Young Voters, GOP, and Race

[ccharles000]

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/young_voters_gop_and_race.php

By Kristen Soltis

Last week, I took a look at two issues where young voters tend to diverge with older voters. Traditional Republican messaging about the gay marriage and the perils of big government is quite different from the ways young voters tend to look at the issues and if the Republican Party wants to prevent a generation of voters from becoming solidly Democratic, they should assess both the policies and messages that are used to reach out to younger voters.

But beyond these two topics, the Republican Party is facing changing demographic forces that present a challenge to its long term growth. This is not a new notion, and I am obliged to give credit where due: Ruy Teixeira and John Judis' 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority looked at political and population trends and predicted that in 2008 these trends would come together produce a Democratic majority.

While I haven't looked extensively at whether or not Teixeira and Judis' predictions have come to pass (2008 Democratic victory aside), I can certainly agree that the racial makeup of young voters supports their conclusion. In short, young voters are less likely to be white than voters overall and are becoming increasingly more diverse. While 77% of voters overall in 2004 were white, only 68% of voters under age 30 were white. By 2008, that number was only 62%. Both African-Americans and Hispanics were found in higher proportions among young voters. In 2004, African-Americans made up 15% of young voters while making up 11% of voters overall; 13% of voters 18-29 were Hispanic compared to 8% of voters overall. By 2008 those numbers had increased, with African-Americans comprising 18% of voters 18-29 and with Hispanics comprising 14%.

So what does this mean for a Republican Party that has been branded (fairly or unfairly) as a party of "old white guys"? Put simply, the party cannot survive with this label attached. The recent demographic changes in the United States have been extraordinary; between the 1990 and 2000 Censuses, the number of Hispanics in the United States increased from 22.4 million to 35.3 million, and increase of over 58%. In 1980, 80% of the population identified as white (non-Hispanic); by 2000, that number had fallen to 69% of the population. These changes have expressed themselves in the demographic makeup of the younger voting cohort. With future generations of voters less and less likely to be made up of overwhelming proportions white non-Hispanics, the issue of expanding the Republican Party's appeal to younger voters is inextricably linked with the issue of expanding the party's appeal to minority communities.