GOP blues

Last week’s election brought about a victory for incumbent President Barack Obama.

Congress largely kept the same partisan make up it had before the election, with Republicans dominating in the House and Democrats controlling the Senate.

But the election also brought some troubling results for the GOP. The more interesting implications of the election come down to voter demographics.

Despite GOP hopes that Obama’s demographic successes in 2008 were a fluke, key elements of his base returned in even higher numbers to vote for him this time around, primarily young people and minorities. African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans all backed Obama with overwhelming majorities.

Nationally, nonwhite voters made up 28 percent of all voters, a two percent increase from 2008.

Of these voters, Obama won 80 percent. This was especially significant in several battleground states, such as Ohio and Florida, where there are sizable minority populations that helped bring about an Obama victory.

The long term gender gap among voters also assisted Obama. In the swing states of Florida, Virginia and Ohio, he kept or improved his 2008 margins among women. 

Although all of these results fit into established voter trends, seeing the exit polling demographics is somewhat staggering.

Now, the GOP needs to admit they have a problem on their hands.

Part of the problem seems to be their refusal to budge from a particularly insular media bubble.

Liberals obviously have their own slanted media sources, but there is a segment of the Republican Party that seems particularly skilled at ignoring the reality of their situation.

No example comes to mind better than the GOP reaction to Nate Silver’s ultimately correct predictions. Rather than admit that Silver’s polling was accurate, far right conservatives rejected his model, even creating a doppelganger website that predicted huge Romney victories.

Because it predicted an Obama victory almost perfectly accurately, they dismissed his polling data.

Republican media seem to reward niche pundits, who identify with a segment of the American population that is quickly shrinking. Even Bill O’Reilly admitted after the election that “the white establishment is now the minority.”

Republicans can no longer count on support among older, white men to offset their lack of popularity among huge minority group, especially among the fast-expanding Hispanic-American population.

The Christian far right population, which helped sweep former president George W. Bush into victory, increasingly seems out of date and harmful to Republican success.
There is currently a huge rift in conservative media not only about how to address this problem, but if the problem exists at all.

The ways Republicans can broaden their appeal — doubling down on core economic beliefs while moving away from some of the more stringent social values that have shown to just not work with younger generations — is unpopular with much of the conservative entertainment complex.

At the GOP convention, there seemed to be some efforts to address their demographic problems.

Keynote speakers included some of the most prominent minority Republicans. Romney’s campaign set a high goal for increases in Latino voters, a goal they ultimately failed to accomplish.

But this is a deep-rooted conflict that will take more than one campaign cycle or convention to fix, even if it helps bring to light the severity of this issue.

After this election, Republicans need to do a serious self-examination of the institutions and culture that have created this huge divide in the country.

The first step to fixing a problem? Admitting you have one. And the GOP most certainly does.
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— gwinslow@indiana.edu