Changing voting blocs - what happened?

This thread is twofold - first, a quick point about changing voting blocs. Second, a discussion about why they have changed thus far.

in 1992, Bill Clinton won the male vote 41-37. He won women 46-38. He lost whites narrowly, 39-41. He won nonwhites, 77-11. he won college educated 43-40.he won non college voters, especially those who had not completed high school. Now, I won't cite recent figures - everyone knows that Trump won whites, men, and particularly white men without a college degree.

1. First, what does this obviously tell us? Voting blocs change. And they can change quickly. Any future election predictions based on assuming race or gender voting patterns remain relatively stable is inherently dubious, because they do not remain stable. We know they don't.

2. Why have we seen these changes? A couple decades ago, Democrats were winning the white vote - even the vote of white men without college degrees. Now, they aren't.

The goto of many is to make a non sequitur - roughly that America is (increasingly) racist, and that the change in voting patterns is evidence of that. The problem is that, by any sane objective measure, the United States has become increasingly less and less racist. The rise of the Republican party in the South didn't coincide with rising racism, it coincided with dramatically falling racism beliefs - particularly in the South.

I expect some partisan answers to the question, but with at least the most common one out of the way, why do you think that these changes in voting patterns occurred?


http://www.gallup.com/poll/9466/election-polls-vote-groups-19921996.aspx

https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/09/bending-toward-justice

 

Some analysts think Democrats lose the White House if their candidate isn't photogenic enough, going by wins since JFK's. JFK, Carter, Bill C. , Obama, and it's merely the superficiality and shallowness of the Democratic Party's base.

 

Some analysts view Trump's campaign as another Barry Goldwater moment in America's election history. For those of you who may not remember, the Goldwater campaign preceded a great flip in party allegiances, that fully manifested itself 4 years later with the election of Nixon.

 

I kept hearing how the Democrats won the "college educated'' vote, as though we were to believe that the more educated people voted Democrat, and the less educated voted Republican.

What it told me is that the "education" being taught in today's colleges has degraded to a point where it is now well below the education level of those not attending college. And if you don't believe it, just listen to some of the mindless rhetoric coming out of today's college grads. What was once called a college education is now more like an indoctrination into leftist thinking.

 

I'm a Democrat and voted for Hillary Clinton in the election, but I was not as opposed to a Trump Presidency as that might seem. I actually went back and forth about who I was going to vote for, finally deciding on Hillary because I didn't like the conservative political positions Trump was running on.

I guess more people went with Trump because they were tired of hearing about Tranny bathroom politics. And I heard the democrat autopsy of the election reveals people REALLY don't like immigrants. Mexican immigrants obviously, but the straw that broke the camel's back was Muslim terrorist refugees from across the ME and Africa.

 

Well the Democratic Party seems to be doubling down on trannys and immigrants; illegal, Muslim, or whatever they can entice into the country.

 

I know! And they will win in the end, changing hearts and minds, but in the short term they are going to loose.

 

Well I agree that in the long run the Democrats win. But they'll win because of all the immigrants. Decades of demographic change are having their effect. But that just makes the trans stuff seem ridiculous. They are not winning votes with that.

 

They are already reeducating children in schools about the transgender issue.

 

You mean brainwashing.

The resentment over unintended consequences of half baked Leftist schemes maddens many of us.

That translates into fewer votes,.

 

1. Trump won college educated whites.
2. Trump won the top three income quintiles.

To the actual topic, I don't think the 1992 election is a good baseline because of the anomalous effects of Ross Perot. Had Perot not dropped out and then reentered the race, it's entirely possible he, and neither Bush nor Clinton would have won.

In my lifetime, especially since the advent of the net, the prevailing trend has been disgust with and distrust of the federal government. Anyone who can successfully paint themselves as more of an outsider... an outsider who can actually WIN, and both Clinton and Obama were able to do this too, has an advantage. If there is no outsider, the candidate less hooked into establishment Washington has the advantage. Note that no mainstream Democrat beltway lifer insider has won the Presidency since FDR. Successful Democrats are able to distance themselves in various ways from the beltway, Truman, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, and Obama all pulled this off in various ways.

So IMO, the answer to the thread question is that voting patterns reflect disgust with Washington, with Democrats perceived as insiders more than GOP, unless they can "folksy" or "charisma" their way out of the perception of association with Washington. This is one of the biggest reasons for Hillary Clinton's persistent failures. Her every word, speech, appearance screams out "Washington insider" or "DC politician."

The Trump Presidency has done IMMENSE damage to the credibility of the Democratic Party and their various blocs because never before have the American people been privy to the outright irrationality of the Democrat blocs as they are daily via social media and especially MSM bias. They can recover only through finding the most charismatic possible quasi outsider candidate who will out and out badmouth the Washington establishment AND the zany core of the Democratic Party. That puts them between the rock of a generally disgruntled American electorate and some of their most important "identity based" voting blocs. Can they recover in our lifetimes? Stay tuned.

 

IMHO democrats went far left.

 

Well the Democrats use to be the "worker's party", the "party of the common man". These are phrases I heard as a child from my dad. My dad and I usually disagreed on politics, but I find it very, very interesting - I think he's a snapshot of a certain group of voters. He was a lifelong Democrat until 2016. I remember defending some of Bush's policies, criticizing Obama's policies, and especially defending Romney's policies. He was anti-Romney more than he was any other candidate before, and Romney was the first politician I voted for that I really liked. But then suddenly Trump comes along, and me the lifelong Republican was going out to work on campaigns in Iowa and voting in primaries in hopes of stopping Trump, while my dad - the lifelong Democrat - was a die hard Trump supporter.

What strikes me most is that when he mocked Romney, it was always about Romney being a rich man - didn't give a damn about Trump the billionaire though. I still don't get it.

But as far as the Democrats going far left, they've always been left. Anyone remember "Hillarycare"? How Democrats have always been in lockstep with unions? The only thing that is really new and "far" is the SJW kind of stuff, which I agree with you on - I actually think that turned enough voters over for Trump's win.

1. Barely
2. Eh, interesting, but not really a stark change, is it?

I don't see outsiderness as a key factor. If it was, you'd expect to see some correlation between elections, but you just don't. You might as far as who won, but you wouldn't if you pay attention to the margins.

No, good lord, this was addressed in the OP and you had no response to it. We are discussing changing voting patterns - Bill Clinton won white males, now Trump won them by historic margins. Voting blocs aren't static. Any predictions about the role of immigrants in election in the distant future is based on the head-in-the-sand presumption that their voting patterns will not change.

So... Trumps was the more attractive candidate? That'd be sad haha

 

I think this kind of “voting bloc” idea is largely a myth, built up by the politicos and the media as tools for their own ends. There will be loads of different ways you could define voters and loads of different ways to divide those categories so it’s always possible to find (or manufacture) some pattern or other. I don’t think that actually means much in the real world though.

People don’t vote in blocs, they vote individually and while many will share relevant socio-economic characteristics that will influence their vote one way or another, every voter will have a unique combination of those characteristics, plus a whole load of personal factors that will influence their voting too.

Another element is that candidates are all individual too. Candidates of the same party can still be vastly different, appealing to different people for different reasons and while the characters commonly highlighted (age, gender, race etc.) will obviously influence many voters, that won’t necessarily be consistent or significant.

I don’t think it’s healthy for a society to obsess over categorising people into distinct and separate groups and treating anyone in those groups as if they’re the same and I have to say it seems the USA has a significant problem with that kind of attitude at the moment.

 

My main problem with Romney is that he came off as a conservative poser. Trump is just Trump.

 

Don't think that is what they meant. They meant those that tend toward Democrats turn out in higher numbers to vote if their candidate has those qualities. Obviously Republicans and indie moderates don't care about looks; I don't recall any that fit the 'photogenic' thing at all among their winners.

 

I didn't care one way or the other, until I watched the media itself lying so blatantly and openly beginning early on in the campaign. I never voted in a Party primary until after watching both Parties expose themselves for what they really are, and voted in the GOP Primary. I went to a Democratic Party primary back in the 1970's, and after seeing how corrupt the whole process was never went back, and have voted third party ever since, until last year.

 

My problem with Romney was his sleazy business tactics, taking sound companies over and looting them into bankruptcy.

 

Of course it's bad to do this. The part of Hillary's speech at the Dem convention where she pulled up various individuals as representatives of this or that group sickened me. The Dems created the current "race problem" so they could "solve"it. And now, the threatening actions in the BLM movement are resulting in underclass white males calling up the Nazi label to threaten back. All thanks to the clandestine leadership of moneyed troublemakers like George Soros who stand to gain from conflict, as Monsanto plans to in the Ukraine by stealing their farmland.

 

Apparently that is what some of our most recent Presidents have enabled for those wishing to loot our country itself.

 

But they're not allowed to think such things. It's verboten.

 

Not sure about that. At least, where I live it seems that they simply replaced unconditional regard for the 'poor man' (regardless of his politics) with bigotry. Now, they care far less about your poverty than they do about your politics, education, and lifestyle.

 

Ah, ya mean it's supposed to be for in their primaries?

Seems like maybe Hillary broke the mold then

 

It means they lose the White House in the general election.

 

O ok.