Wingers, Empty Chairs and Shifting Demographics
I was doing some early morning reading on reaction from last night’s great start to the Democratic convention and came across this bit of delusional nonsense from a HotAir reader.
One HUGE contrast between these two conventions:
The conservative “bench” is full of up and coming superstars (like Rubio, Ryan, Mia Love, etc) which will carry us through the next decade or more.
The communist “bench” is full of… nothing. Empty chairs.
Wingers like this guy above are just not getting it. It doesn’t matter how many Rubios, Ryans or Mia Loves Republicans have. As long as they cling on to oppressive and draconian policies (Arizona immigration law, abortion and vaginal probes, defunding Planned Parenthood, privatizing Social Security…to name a few), they’re going to lose, if not in the short term than certainly down the road. And it all has to do with shifting demographics.
The only majority vote Republicans can currently count on is that of older white males and the 65+ segment of the population…both of which are shrinking as a share of the electorate. Every other demographic group – blacks, Hispanics, Asians, young people, women, LGBT – lean Democratic. And furthermore, each are increasing their share of the electorate.
Here are stats from the Pew Research Center (2011) which have conservatives like Jeb Bush warning Republicans to “stop acting stupid” and to start reaching out to Hispanics.
Hispanics are the largest minority group on the nation’s college campuses, a milestone first achieved last year. But as their growth among all college-age students continues to outpace other groups, Hispanics are now, for the first time, the largest minority group among the nation’s four-year college and university students. And for the first time, Hispanics made up one-quarter (25.2%) of 18- to 24-year-old students enrolled in two-year colleges.
In the nation’s public schools, Hispanics also reached new milestones. For the first time, one-in-four (24.7%) public elementary school students were Hispanic… Among all pre-K through 12th grade public school students, a record 23.9% were Hispanic in 2011.
Throw in a few U.S. Census numbers…
- there are 50.5 million Hispanics in the U.S
- Hispanics make up 16.3 percent of the U.S population
- the fastest growing minority group in the U.S. is the Hispanic population. Between 2000 and 2010 it grew at a rate of 43%
and this…
- by the year 2050, the Hispanic population in the U.S. will be at 132.8 million – 30 percent of the total population
Combine all of this with the knowledge that Democrats picked up 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008 and are currently favoring Obama to Romney at a 64 to 31 percent rate…and you understand why dumping a few truckloads of Rubio clones on to the political scene won’t help Republicans, no matter how many “empty chairs” wingers believe make up the “communist bench.”
Fox News Latino sums up the impending doom facing Republicans.
Romney also faces a challenge that the GOP will likely continue to face in coming years: shifting demographics.
Put simply, the groups that support President Barack Obama most strongly — blacks, Hispanics, young people, unmarried women — have been growing as a share of the electorate. Those who support Mitt Romney the most — white working men and older people — have not.
This demographic tide is so strong that some Democrats came away from their 2008 victory feeling that a political reordering was in the works that could be as important as the New Deal realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic strength after the Great Depression.
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