I was having dinner with some friends this evening, one of whom is a Republican. I started explaining my theory of American politics which is that white voters are, as a group, very right-wing while non-white voters are liberal. He got a little miffed and told me I was generalizing and I told him “no, what I am saying is completely accurate — white voters are, as a group, extremely right-wing”. We got to talking and he told me how much Sarah Palin frightened him. I told him that, if Sarah Palin were the Republican nominee (something I agree is unlikely), she would most likely get the majority of the non-Latino white vote.
It’s really true: check out the 2008 exit polls, McCain won the white vote by 12%, with Palin as his VP. Christine O’Donnell won the white vote in Delaware by about 6%. I don’t want to lay the self-hating white voter thing on too thick, but how scary it that?
Suck It Up!
And they blacks only vote for black people.
Lolis
White people do suck.
Southern Beale
God I hate generalizations like this. I’m white, my husband is white, we all hate Sarah Palin. My white friends all hate Sarah Palin. What can you conclude from that?
Just because the majority of right wing conservatives are white doesn’t mean all whites are right wing conservatives. It has more to do with the GOP becoming a regional Southern political party, not a national party. People who identify with that regionalism and its identifiers are going to buy into that politics.
Bnut
I don’t think 12 and 6 are terribly frightening numbers.
DougJ
@Southern Beale:
I’m sorry but it’s scary to me.
arguingwithsignposts
I do think you have a point, DougJ, and it shows up particularly in the deep south, or if you travel outside the metropolitan areas in places like, say, Ill.
Shade Tail
@Southern Beale #2:
That we are the outliers. My husband and I are white also, and we’re some of the most liberal people you’re likely to meet. Like it or not, though, our racial group swings right. This is not an opinion or a value judgement, it’s a simple proven-by-the-numbers fact.
Southern Beale
@DougJ:
Right wingers are scary to me no matter WHO votes for them.
freelancer
ShortWhite People got no reasonWhite People got no reason
White People got no reason
To live
They got little hands
Little eyes
They walk around
Tellin’ great big lies
They got little noses
And tiny little teeth
They wear platform shoes
On their nasty little feet
Well, I don’t want no White People
Don’t want no White People
Don’t want no White People
`Round here
White People are just the same
As you and I
(A Fool Such As I)
All men are brothers
Until the day they die
(It’s A Wonderful World)
ed
Um, that the sample size is very, very small. And you are defensive about this quite observable generalization.
hildebrand
Region, urban v. rural, religious preference, age – I think these things add to the mix. Show me a small town, older evangelical in the South, Plains, or Midwestern states, who happens to be white – and bingo, you have a fairly typical Palin voter and Fox viewer. White alone doesn’t really get you there.
Nick
@Southern Beale:
As do me and my friends, but that doesn’t change the fact that almost everywhere in America, white people as a bloc are extremely right wing.
kommrade reproductive vigor
If ya’ll keep backing losers like McFailin & O’Donnell*, not scary at all.
*Anyone else think of the seafood restaurant when they hear her name?
Stillwater
I agree. Whenever Cole (or whoever) posts about how the media portray an election as proving, once again, that America is a center right nation, I never get the joke. America, in my view, is obviously center right. And white America is far right.
alex
Uh, but the facts remain, Southern Beale, that white US voters are overwhelmingly Republican, overwhelmingly vote for right wing candidates, overwhelmingly describe themselves as conservative, and that part of the reason the youth vote is more liberal is because it is substantially less white.
It isn’t a generalization. You are extrapolating it to see it as a comment on you. It is, in fact, accurate.
Dougj isn’t saying, “those white people, they’re all alike- right wing Republicans!” He’s saying, “If we take away all the non-white people, we’re left with an electorate that consistently votes Republican”. I daresay there are a handful of states where this is not the case- Vermont, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, maybe Oregon and Washington- but even most “blue” states have a Republican-leaning white population.
Why is this? Damned if I know, but it’s one of the things about this country that is the most puzzling.
Southern Beale
@Shade Tail:
I don’t think you can say that. You can say the people who showed up to vote in the midterms and voted republican were mostly white and old. You can say the Republican Party is a Southern regional political party and most of its members are white. You can say most of those who identify with the Tea Party are white, male and old.
There is no basis for saying most white people are Republican or that “our racial group swings right.” Those are different issues.
You make assumptions on people’s political ideology based on who shows up to vote. Lots of people don’t vote, can’t vote, won’t vote, are not registered to vote, etc. and therefore their political ideology is unknown.
Smith
This is similar to what Bill Maher said a few weeks ago. But he stated that he thinks that the vast chunk of Palin’s support comes from white males and that if she ran in 2012 she would lose the female vote (of all races).
I actually tend to agree with Maher a tad more. I know Palin has some female supporters, but most of the female Republicans I know can’t stand her while most of the male Republicans I know love her. Either way, her fanbase is 95% white Americans over 45/50.
hildebrand
@alex: I will take fear for 1 gazillion, Alex.
beltane
All I can say is that it’s a good thing the USA is becoming less and less white by the day, although I guess this will only make white voters all the more crazy and paranoid. Guilty conscience, anyone?
But a 6% advantage for Christine O’Donnell? Charles Murray might want to visit his Bell curve crap.
DougJ
@beltane:
Angle won the white vote by 12%, btw.
Stillwater
@Southern Beale: There is no basis for saying most white people are Republican or that our racial group swins right.
Did you read the OP? Towards the bottom?
Southern Beale
@alex:
Really? I thought it was cuz they liked to get stoned.
I’ve never heard young people are liberal because they are less white. What, do they bleach out as they get older?
Shade Tail
@Southern Beale #15:
So sorry, but you are mistaken. I can say that, and I am correct to say that. We have plenty of very solid numbers on this, both from voting patterns and from non-partisan polling.
Asshole
Bring back the unions, bring back the working-class white votes. Simple as that; without unions as educators and organizers, white people are only voting based on the archetypes and storylines presented by the Reagan Administration that killed the unions in the first place.
KG
I don’t think “right-wing” is necessarily the right word choice. There’s a difference between being conservative or center-right and being right-wing. It may be, that for some of these voters, they would prefer to vote for someone to their right than for someone to their left… especially if they perceive the person on the right to be “closer” to them than the person on the left.
beltane
@hildebrand: The numbers are far different for white churchgoers verses non-churchgoers. Only a tiny percentage of white churchgoers are not Republican. American-style evangelical Christianity is a weird sort of race-based nationalist identity cult that plays a very similar role to the Dutch Reformed Church in apartheid South Africa.
Chris
“Christine O’Donnell won the white vote in Delaware by about 6%”
The next time you hear some white person whine about partisan racial loyalty (i.e., blacks voting Democratic), you can mention this. If *that* doesn’t shut them up, you may have to tell them it means they need to (shut up about partisan racial loyalty).
DougJ
@Asshole:
I’m with you on that.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: You are correct that the majority of white people lean right, but what the other people are pointing is that, due to the large numbers of white people, a shit load of us don’t lean right. Of course, this leads to the Pauline Kael problem that some are exhibiting here. You know, “How did Nixon win? No one I know voted for him.” A lot of us don’t live around or know the masses of white people out there voting for the right wing candidate every time. They must be out there though. They scare me.
Gozer
It’s OK white people…we (non-white Americans) still love you.
But y’all have to explain Polka and Celtic dance to me.
Martin
@Suck It Up!: So Delaware black voters only voted for Coons 93% to 6% because of his name? Joke was on them, eh?
alex
That’s a quick and, I think, accurate take, hildebrand, but why? The white people in this country are further to the right, on average, than just about any other group of white people I can think of (maybe the Israeli electorate comes close). What do we have to fear that they don’t in Greece or France? I know left and right are relative, and contextual, but US white people are really anomalous for white people on this planet- more religious, more ideologically “individualistic”, less concerned with economic justice for the poor, etc.
It strikes me that a good chunk of it is that my racial group is heavily influenced by the most rancid aspects of the colonial culture of the US- the acceptance of a rigid class system, an obsession with property as a locus of worth, an authoritarian mindset. It doesn’t define US white people as a whole, but it is a constant influence on white culture in the US.
Diomedes
I’ve never heard young people are liberal because they are less white. What, do they bleach out as they get older?
Are you just being deliberately stupid now? We’re all busy people — do you really think we have time to sit around and read nonsense? Isn’t there enough of that around already without you adding to it?
Nick
@Asshole:
Serious question, has any Democratic president won the white vote since LBJ?
demimondian
I call shenanigans.
The State of Delaware was 74.8% white, non-Hispanic in 2000, and the demographics won’t have shifted much in the intervening decade. Even if whites showed up only in numbers proportional to their demographic prevalence in the popluation, that would give 38.4% of the vote to Witch Lady. She only got a total of 40.0% of the vote.
I think your numbers are horked, dude.
Matthew
@Southern Beale:
Of course there is a basis for saying that whites trend right. It’s the same basis people use for saying blacks and latinos trend left: repeated results. Whites vote majority Republican in election after election. Sorry if you don’t like it, I don’t either.
And if you don’t show up to vote, your political ideology does not fucking matter, period. Non-voters don’t count when you’re talking about election results.
gbear
@alex:
You haven’t seen the results in MN from the recent election, have you? The social conservatives won.
pattonbt
I would only take exception with “extremely”. I think whites see the Republican party as a “white” party (as in representing so-called white beliefs – WASPy stuff if you will) and are comfortable voting for the R party as they know that if push comes to shove they will be allowed in the lifeboat before the dreaded “other” if the ship starts sinking. For most of these people, voting for D means putting “the other’s” interests before their own and we can NOT have that.
Now, there are plenty of whites who arent driven primarily by fear, greed or need to belong who don’t need the security blanket of the “white” party. Yet even some of those will still vote R for various reasons.
With this it’s easy to see why people will vote R against all their best interests and why the R party grabs such a large part of the electorate even with candidates who are demonstrably horrid.
DougJ
@demimondian:
I linked to an exit poll and the figures are identical with what your demographic suggest.
She lost the black vote 22-2 (edit: really more like 20.5 – 1.5), the latino vote 2-1 (edit: really more like 2.8 to 1.2). What the fuck does that leave for white people, smart guy?
Capn America
Dude, pretty much every white person under the age of 30 hates Sarah Palin, and for every white person in that group who’s conservative I can name a non-white person who is as well. It’s mostly a generational thing at this point, and older populations are (historically) whiter.
alex
Uh, SB, the US has become somewhat more black, much more Hispanic, and substantially more Asian over the past 40 years. Most of that is younger people. No bleach necessary.
beltane
@Nick: I don’t think so, though it is possible that Carter came close. Bill Clinton most certainly did not, despite all the talk about his appeal to white voters.
Greenhouse Guy
No one is asking but, poll this… me? 35, white, single… very liberal… as is everyone else (liberal) in my family ~ 12 people or so. Anyhoo…
Martin
@beltane: White Christians have something to lose. They run this shit. They’re not going to give it up without a fight.
demimondian
@beltane: I hate to call you out, but…that’s just not true in general. Some evangelical denominations tend towards conservatism. Most mainline denominations don’t though — even the Catholic Church tends Dem, as do other Christian denominations (the Methodists, Lutherans, and Episcopalians, to some extent, and the Quakers and Mennonites even more so).
kommrade reproductive vigor
@DougJ: Could this instead be evidence that Republicans (as a group … which happens to be very Caucasian) are less likely to shift their vote?
Perhaps I’m being optimistic but I can’t believe everyone who voted for O’Donnell or Angle felt great about it. It’s just that they had an R after their name.
arguingwithsignposts
Alex:
Chuck Grassley, gbear? Ron Johnson?
ETA: corrected attribution on blockquote
alex
Maybe I’m off with MN, but it’s semi-reliably Blue in presidential years, and very white.
Brick Oven Bill
You should not use trademarked work without proper attribution DougJ. Stuff White People Like is the work of Christian Chander, a no kidding capitialized White Person, Ivy League and all that. He has strong book sales mocking his own (sell out). Among certain groups, this web-site has given rise to a new noun, ‘SWPL’, defining capitialized White People. Proper dogs and Farmers Markets.
I recommend that you capitialize ‘Stuff White People Like’. John now has connections with legal obligations.
‘white people’ of course, like hamburgers.
DonBoy
I have no idea where I read this, because it was in (I think) 1996, after the election, and it was a quote from a British newspaper, and it’s paraphrased, but here we go:
“If only men had voted, Bob Dole would have been elected President. This fact was mentioned in the second paragraph of the lead story in every American newspaper. It is also true that if only white people had voted, Bob Dole would have been elected President. This fact is not considered mentionable in the American press.”
alex
That was me, not gbear. And I meant the presidential electorate, not the midterm electorate. Midterm white people are even whiter than Presidential white people, and more conservative (because older, more religious, wealthier, etc.)
Martin
@demimondian: According to the exit poll, 6% of non-whites went for O’Donnell. Sounds about right. If you were black, would you vote for that crazy cracker?
And my bet is that blacks turned out at a much higher rate than whites did because she was so crazy.
Steve
Another data point: Carl Paladino, who is actually quite a bit crazier than Angle and O’Donnell, lost by 27 points but only lost white males by 2%. 46% of white males in New York thought Carl Paladino could govern a state. And this is the group that our Founders thought should be the only one to have the franchise!
Honestly, it’s sort of okay to vote for a crazy person in Congress because ultimately they’re just another vote in a parliamentary body. But putting a crazy person in charge of a state is incredible.
Matthew
@alex:
What we have to fear is the loss of structural privilege based on race. And, for men, gender. It’s not only fear that makes whites in this country so right-wing, of course. The accidents of history have contributed a good deal to that as well. But that’s just my way of saying I don’t know enough to give a more detailed explanation.
DougJ
@DonBoy:
That sounds about right.
ruemara
Look, leave white people alone.
Some of their older white persons, that they duly love, are crazy wingnuts. But there’s a huge amount that are fine upstanding people. It’s the older ones making them look bad, like all those young bucks buying t-bones.
gbear
@arguingwithsignposts: I was replying to Alex’s comment. MN voted heavily republican this election.
edit: and I am incredibly slow at making replies. I see that this has all been covered already.
beltane
@demimondian: Mainline protestants are a rapidly vanishing species in this country. The numbers of Catholics are holding steady only because of Latino immigration. The Catholic Church is hemorrhaging whites in the northeast partly due to the sex abuse scandal and partly due to their backwards ass position on social issues. Young white people tend to either attend an evangelical megachurch or not attend church at all.
CircleSquared
@Southern Beale: I didn’t know DougJ was Juan Williams for Halloween.
Martin
@beltane: Carter lost the white vote by 5%. Yes, he was close.
Mako
I was having dinner with some friends this evening, one of whom is a Republican. I started explaining my theory of American politics which is that white voters are, as a group, very right-wing while non-white voters are liberal…
I was having breakfast with a group of people, one of whom was a negro and i asked “How do you feel about Soul Train videos?”
Cuz aren’t we all missing something here?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B87snXgV7Pg
Martin
@Matthew: This. There’s a lot of residual privilege yet to tear down.
Brian J
Are these percentages just swung by some extreme difference in the Republican states, where the white voters are largely conservative ? I thought that might be the case, so I decided to look up some exit polling from 2008. Compare Georgia and Minnesota. In Georgia, McCain got 76 percent of the white vote, while in Minnesota, he got 46. In Kansas, he got 59 percent of the white vote, while in New York, McCain 46 percent. In Mississippi, McCain got 88 percent of the white vote, while in Pennsylvania, he got 51 percent. Maybe a deeper look at the numbers will reveal something different, but I bet that explains a lot of it.
In the case of O’Donnell v. Coons, they split white women, but men broke for O’Donnell by 12 points. Since they compose basically the same portion of the electorate, that explains that.
MikeJ
Pity none of them were cab drivers or you could replace the mustache of understanding.
Violet
Center-white nation.
GangOfOne
Do Jews count as white? Because in this country, we still seem to vote pretty consistently liberal, this election and last included. But if we don’t count, then you can’t say that Israel is the one other country with white voters as conservative as we are. Unless you’re referring to the non-Jewish white voters there.
Koz
Great. Pretty quick all the other races will vote Republican too, and we can all have a very Merry Christmas.
DougJ
@GangOfOne:
White christians are the real culprits here, yes.
Asshole
@Nick:
A very memorable line from p. 215 of Pearlstein’s “Before the Storm,” when in 1964 East Coast Republicans fretted about the prospect of losing black votes by appealing to segregationists in the South:
‘This isn’t South Africa,’ responded a conservative. ‘The white man outnumbers the Negro 9 to 1 in this country.'”
It’s been a winning strategy ever since, although the ratios are increasingly skewed against it.
I can’t help but think that in this economic climate, Americans would be ready for a seismic shift back to the left in support of a Democratic Party led by Bernie Sanders clones, or by modern FDR/Huey Long types. Sadly, no such party exists; but at least the marginalized groups aren’t as marginalized as they were back in 1964.
Asshole
@DougJ:
Hey! Leave the Unitarians alone!
General Stuck
I don’t mind folks pointing out relative statistical truths for being that, nor do I mind people pointing out that my home state of Kentucky is fucked in the head, though I have friends and family still living there. Some of them are wingnuts, some aren’t, but the state as a political whole and it’s effect politically on the nation at large, sucks purple donkey dicks. I would mind if folks painted the state I live in now NM, as a fucked up state for overall wingnuttery, I would object, because it would not be true.
There are plenty of us white liberals around, or at least reasonable democrats/or indies leaning left, though we are not in a majority as a voting block within that population of voters, and it is a waste of time to always note the percentages. The point is tribal identity by race, or whatever, only as it exists as a voting block and general pol ideology, or states as a political force on the national stage. I don’t consider it stereotyping in the negative sense, but simply a means to converse about politics without quantifying every single piece of info that is relevant.
El Cid
@Southern Beale: That’s true, and people should occasionally be more explicit that they’re discussing voters, unless general surveys happen to show pretty much the same things as exit polling.
I think in a blog like this it might be understandable to assume that the post is directed toward discussion of voters.
The exit poll data also shows that whites under 30 voted for Democrats 54-44. McCain still won the vote of white women, but by a much smaller margin (53-46), and I would assume that breaking women’s votes out by age would show a split trend as well.
And to learn a bit more, this poll should be broken out state by state. The polling data all averages in, but it might be more informative to compare the voting for, say, whites in different areas to note regional effects.
Georgia and Michigan have pretty much the same population size. Their economies are pretty much the same size.
In Georgia, McCain won the white vote (again, in this exit poll) 76-23, including all age groups (18-29 at 79%). Perhaps even more telling is that 83% of white respondents said that they ‘strongly approve[d]’ of Bush Jr’s job performance.
In Michigan, white men voted for McCain 50-47, while white women voted for Obama 54-44. Among white voters, Obama won the youngest age group (18-29) overwhelmingly 63-34, McCain won the next two (30-64) fairly closely, and the 65-up groups was tied.
Religion tells a lot. Among white exit poll respondents from Michigan, 24% overall were ‘born-again’ Protestants, and they were the only religious grouping voting for McCain. (Unfortunately Georgia had no similar questions.)
Income, too. In Michigan 19% of respondents earned $100K+, and that was the only income category McCain won. In Georgia, McCain won among those with $30-50K and among those $75K and up.
Break those figures out by race, though, and it becomes apparent that in Georgia you’re just seeing the weighting of those income groups by race: it goes right back to about 75% of whites of all incomes for McCain and 93% of blacks of all incomes. In Michigan, though, whites under $50K voted for Obama, while those over voted for McCain.
It’s like how you get the Obama presidential approval rating of, say, 54%, and when you break it out by region or state you see that the lowest levels of approval are throughout the South and Western states.
MikeJ
@GangOfOne: SEK at LGM states quite clearly that when he grew up in the south, he wasn’t considered white. I would guess in many parts of the US, that hasn’t changed much.
Martin
@Brian J: I think you need to factor in all the minority variables, not just race. DougJ left that out, but others above have mentioned it.
Women vote much more heavily Democratic. Atheists and minority religions tend to go Democrat, except for the more charismatic sects. Shift over gays.
But the folks that have no minority labels attached to them go very strongly Republican.
Cat Lady
I give you credit DougJ for still having a Republican friend. I’ve run mine all off.
grumpy realist
Same old same old. Go read Thomas Beer. We’ve had the “wicked city dwellers versus the virtuous poor farmers” trope since forever.
Right now we’ve also got a fight between those who think “those good old days” are something to go back to, and those of us who know enough about those supposed Good Old Days to know they really weren’t all that great after all and would prefer to put our efforts into going forward into something else.
Historical sentimentality is a normal bugaboo for the average American, who doesn’t like being reminded that he’s now in a world where he has to worry about competition from other countries, like India and China.
Me? I’m an old fart who has lived enough outside the US to know that no country has a God-given right to be at the top of the world and that if you aren’t continually honing your skills and abilities, you are soon dead meat. Which is why I’m learning Chinese….
...now I try to be amused
@beltane:
Interesting you should mention that, because it’s occurred to me that the white American tribe is more and more resembling the Afrikaner tribe. The Republican Party is their National Party.
Thank goodness for non-white American voters, or we would have a government that is completely insane.
DougJ
@Cat Lady:
Northeastern Republicans aren’t usually real Republicans. This guy hated Sarah Palin more than I did and when I tried to explain the U of Chicago “rational market” stuff to him, he refused to concede that it could be called conservative.
Elie
@Cat Lady:
LOL!
OT completely but worth celebrating…
BTW — Patty Murray of WA won her tight senate race with Dino Rossi — just declared and he conceded
lol
You’re looking for “white evangelical Christian” on page 2 of the CNN exit polls. That group went for McCain by a 3 to 1 margin and is really what’s propping up the Republican party.
Take them out of the pool and whites look a lot more friendly.
Chris
I think in any given country, the dominant (which usually but not always means majority) ethnic group is going to trend conservative. They’re the ones who have it best, and a lot of them’ll be damned if they’re going to give that up.
As for our electorate being unique, I don’t think it is. Europe can go pretty far right too when you bring up identity politics – look at the freakout that’s going on over immigration, especially Muslim immigration, right now.
lol
@Elie:
Surprised that Dino conceded. Thought he’d waste a couple million forcing a manual recount, throw around complaints of voter fraud because the count changed 200-300 votes and try to drag the affair into the courts for as long as possible.
DougJ
@lol:
That is a good point. But how many are there in Delaware? My guess is that even if you take them out, O’ Donnell damn near wins the Senate race in Delaware among whites.
EDIT: There are more than I thought, and my guess is that if you take them out, it’s roughly a tie, but Coons wins slightly.
MikeJ
@lol: The 5PM news led with Rossi gains 500 votes! The 6pm talked about a parental kidnapping and then mumbled something about Murray’s lead doubling. She was up 2.5% when she gave her victory speech.
Elie
@lol:
Me too but he did at 6:00 PM tonight.
third time he has gotten his butt beat by a woman in WA — tight races but they got his number and ran it down to him…
Nick
@Asshole:
but you just reasoned why that wouldn’t be the case.
race
Long and FDR were able to get away with it by basically punting on civil rights.
Why would white men support sharing their wealth with lazy welfare mothers who pop out kids and deadbeat dads.
Linda Featheringill
In any situation, people who belong to the dominant group are more likely to be conservative because they actually something to “conserve.” They have a stake in the status quo. So that isn’t strange at all.
People who don’t belong to the dominant group probably aren’t as interested in maintaining the way things currently are.
And yes, I am white and old and was raised in the South but I’m not conservative. But I’m only one person, not much of a sample.
ETA: The politics of my family is slightly to the left of Goehring, so I didn’t inherit my political stance from them.
Asshole
@DougJ:
South of the Canal- barring a few enclaves- Delaware is Dixieland. North of the Canal, Delaware is a college town (Newark) and a miniature Philadelphia (Wilmington).
The Dixieland part’s pretty Methodist/Baptist, good Protestant wingnut stomping grounds.
Chris
@El Cid:
Break those figures out by race, though, and it becomes apparent that in Georgia you’re just seeing the weighting of those income groups by race: it goes right back to about 75% of whites of all incomes for McCain and 93% of blacks of all incomes.
True. In most parts of the country, you can break things down into all kinds of different factors – age, gender, location, class, religion, etc. But when you get to the South, or at least the Deep South, it seems like race is still practically the only factor…
MikeJ
@Asshole: For DC residents, DE is Rehoboth and an Acela stop.
LesGS
@demimondian:
The CNN exit polls
White Protestant (44%): 69% Rep.
White Catholic (19%): 59% Rep.
White other religion (5%): 65% Dem.
White no religion (9%): 63% Dem.
Looking at just the 25% of Whites who identify as evangelical/born again: 78% Rep.
Non-whites (22%): 75% Dem.
So, yeah, white religious people tend to lean Republican.
El Cid
Good news!
The Supreme Court may finally relieve businesses from most all serious threats of class action lawsuits by consumers! Yay!
Tort reform! Finally!
Asshole
@Nick:
At some point, they’ll have to ask themselves, “What wealth?” Being white’s not a property right anymore, or at least not quite as valuable a one as it was when Plessy v. Ferguson came out.
Then again, I guess it’ll always be better to be white than non-white in some marginal, meaningless imaginary social mindset that lots of white people have, so maybe I’m engaging in wishful thinking.
Ailuridae
@DougJ:
Respectable NE Republicans are a weird lot. I grew up in a much more “they are taking everything away from poor whites and giving it to the ICPs” type Republican house so I only encountered them caddying as a kid.
People are also making some mistakes here with assigning the blame to Southern Whites when the issue is much more to do with rural whites. If you get south of Kankakee on i-57 or Merriville on i-65 you’re dealing with the same ass backwards fuckers I grew up with in rural upstate NY. The only difference in voting patterns is the unions
El Cid
@Chris: Well, it pretty much is statewide, although then again you start seeing more complex pattern as you examine particular areas like heavily urbanized areas, higher tech industries, university areas and the like.
But the point was that by beginning to break out the data a bit you can better judge where it makes more sense to speak generally of white voters and where it makes more sense to condition those generalizations.
morzer
One point – a lot of people simply don’t vote. You can argue, and have the statistics to back you, that white voters skew solidly GOP – but we don’t know what the non-voting population thinks about politics, or whether it thinks about them at all.
Cat Lady
@DougJ:
How does he feel about illegal or legal immigrants? I’ve found that Northeastern Republicans stay Republican based on taxes and their belief that “those people” are unfairly benefitting. They’re smart enough to have contempt for the uneducated joke that is Palin, but it’s still always all about their white privilege under assault.
Ailuridae
@MikeJ:
And Dogfish Head
Asshole
@MikeJ:
For Delaware residents, people coming from out of state anywhere are a swarm of locusts to be treated with all the welcome that Rome extended to the Visigoths.
Omnes Omnibus
@LesGS: It would be interesting to see how the White Protestant vote broke down by denomination. I would guess that Southern Baptist and Mega-Church goers broke very, very R. On the other hand, UU and Congregationalist types are probably less so. Lutherans and Episkies probably hew close to the average.
kommrade reproductive vigor
But a lot of people at the bottom of the heap regularly vote for the Party of Making Sure Your Ass Stays Poor.
To get a bit tangential, the GOP HAS to maintain the animosity between its lower class Caucasian voters and a selection of “Others.” God forbid The Base ever finds out they’ve got anything in common with the scary ACORN Mooslim kw33r lieberul scum.
[Edit – Or what Asshole @ 91 said.]
DougJ
@Cat Lady:
He doesn’t care about them. His parents came over from the Ukraine.
morzer
@Asshole:
Large payments of gold to do minimal damage, plus military commands and honors for the leadership?
MikeJ
@Ailuridae: I’ve been to their brewpub in Rehobeth.
LesGS
@Ailuridae:
Dogfish Head! I am tickled by their “archeological” brews. I had their “Midas’ Touch” a couple months ago, and it was yummy.
TVL
This has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve read on this site.
In 2008 people voted McCain vs Obama. Not Palin vs Obama. Of course Palin was a consideration, but nowhere near what it would be like if Palin were atop the ticket. She has favorably ratings in the 30s for fucks sake.
2010 was an election dominated by old white folks….who skew conservative. Of course O’Donnell is going to win white voters. If the non-baby boomer voted like they did in 2008, she would not.
Asshole
@morzer:
Large payments of sandy beaches and Dogfish Head and Grotto’s Pizza. Same basic principle. Also, the same general attitude of xenophobic resentment.
lol
@Elie:
Think he’ll run again in 2012 so he can lose to Inslee?
TVL
@LesGS:
Dogfish head is a (brewery) God among men. Santo Paulo is hands down one of the best beers ever.
Mako
Damn, my dog is really farting up the place.
Asshole
@TVL:
I’m curious how she did among the masturbating demographic. The ones that like to masturbate while thinking about females, that is.
General Stuck
@El Cid:
One of the great philosophers, I think once said, that total freedom is the ultimate prison. The supreme’s wingnuts seem hell bent on paving the way for total freedom of the corporate world to have it’s way with us, on a number of planes, such as the United case.
And the right wing ideology behind it also seems to no longer realize, or care, the simple truth that corporations do not prosper is a vacuum. They need us for their profits, and at some point a law of diminishing returns, of sorts will surely set in, when the Golden Egg finally finishes off the Goose.
LesGS
@Omnes Omnibus: That would be a very interesting break-down to see. I’m UU in fairly conservative San Diego county. I would be very surprised if any of my fellow congregants voted Republican here in California. (As a UU, I would listen with an open heart and open mind to any of those who confessed to doing so, and do my best to forgive them.)
phillygirl
@Steve:
Men shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Except for you, Steve.
Ron
@Bnut: 6% lead for O’Donnell? when she got crushed by 17%? I think that’s significant.
someguy
You know, if only we could make things better for everybody else by just fucking up white people.
Cat Lady
@DougJ:
OK, I give up. He hates Palin and doesn’t hate immigrants. Is he just by nature an authoritarian? Rich asshole? Religious kook?
Brian J
@Martin:
That’s true.
LesGS
@TVL: I’ll look for that then.
I live in the land of Stone, which if you’re into hops (which I am), has a wide range of tasty brews. But brewing beers based on archeological chemical analysis, wow! Two of my favorite geek-outs combined into one!
El Cid
@General Stuck:
That’s the long run. The super-rich say, ‘Fuck the long run — I want my god-damned money now!’
Why should they give a shit what will happen to their companies 10 or 20 years from now? There’s billions to get paid soon.
morzer
@someguy:
Given that the majority of white people who vote Republican do so against their own interest and that of their country, I am not sure why you think that fucking them up is necessary.
Chris
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
To get a bit tangential, the GOP HAS to maintain the animosity between its lower class Caucasian voters and a selection of “Others.” God forbid The Base ever finds out they’ve got anything in common with the scary ACORN Mooslim kw33r lieberul scum.
Zacktly. They did the same thing in the Gilded Age with rural WASPs versus urban Catholics and Jews.
Keep the poor fighting among themselves! A lot less people will notice you emptying the cash drawer if you do it in the middle of a bar brawl.
cthulhu
@alex: Yeah, while we certainly have a racial divide in this country it is highly intermingled with class. I’d like to see those cross-tabs. And for that matter, while SES is commonly comprised of education and income, I suspect these have separate effects when it comes to voting. Anybody have a ready reference? I’ve worked on enough datasets for the week.
Anya
@Cat Lady: My future parents in law are republicans. They are the endangered Rockefeller Republicans, we often hear about. They have the good sense to be disgusted with the current GOP, but not sensible enough not to admire Giuliani.
morzer
@cthulhu:
Your worshippers are going to be very pissed off when they discover that, despite the tentacles, you are just another math geek.
Martin
In CA-Gov, where we’re fairly diverse, Whitman won the white vote 50/46 (she lost by 12 overall). 52% of white men voted for Whitman (race beat gender.) Only 39% of women voted for Whitman. Some other interesting bits:
White no college degree went for Whitman 57/38.
Brown won among full-time workers (55/40). Whitman among part-time (46/43).
34% of voters had someone in the household lose a job in the last 2 years. Brown won them 56/38.
54% approve of Obama. 50% view Dems favorably. 33% view the GOP favorably (that’s lethal). 53% think that HCR should be expanded or kept as is. Same % want it expanded as repealed. 65% of voters think immigrants should get legal status. 59% of voters think that tax increases are necessary to eliminate the state deficit. Only 16% think cutting taxes is the highest priority of the next congress. 39% think spending to create jobs. Even the 39% who think reducing the deficit is most important went 48/47 for Brown.
I think quite a few GOP landslide narratives died in those statistics.
Cat Lady
@Anya:
My in laws are in that camp too, I guess. They’re both Tufts Univ. educated, but one month staying with friends in Arizona this spring, and they came back spouting the terror baby nonsense. Srsly. Fucking Fox. WTF?!
Martin
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Hey, I might be poor, but as long as I’m white they’ll keep me on top.
Martin
@morzer: Man, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that at work.
Martin
@morzer: Man, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that at work.
Anya
@Cat Lady: My in laws are socially very progressive and don’t hate immigrants. I figured they’re just greedy and want tax cuts and no interference from the government, or it’s ingrained in them that dems tax and spend party, so they operate from that mindset. For people who are smart, they are always arguing about how tax cuts will create jobs. On the plus side, my mother in-law hates Palin, as much as me, if not more.
greyjoy
Here’s my problem with the assumption stated in the opening post: saying that white people are a right-wing group because the majority of them vote conservatively doesn’t really paint a detailed picture. How much is a majority?
According to this post, in the 2008 election, 55% of white voters voted Republican, 43% voted Democrat, and 7% voted other. Okay, that’s a majority, but barely. That’s just over half of white voters. That means almost half of white voters did NOT vote Republican and apparently do NOT lean right.
Not much of a bloc IMHO. So, as a group, white voters are NOT very right-wing or very conservative or very anything. In fact they’re actually split just about down the middle.
Also, if you look at that same post, which tracks election demographics since 1972, all the various ethnic groups and genders have not changed their minds by more than a few points over the last 10 elections. So in almost 40 years, we’re still all pretty much just as demographically the same voter-wise as always, with notable exceptions being 1976 (end of Vietnam war) and 1992 (end of Cold War/Gulf War).
So, OP, I call bullshit.
As for MN, the state voted heavily Republican in this election and indeed seems to be leaning more to the red, thanks to our currently-Republican governor’s insistence on catering only to the Taxpayer’s League (a conservative group whose sole mantra is “we hate taxes”) and pretty much ignoring everyone else. However, the winner* (* pending recount, groan) of the governorship is Democratic. So.
Also consider we’re the same state who elected Jesse Ventura governor, and who simultaneously has as US representatives both Keith Ellison, the first Muslim Congressman, and Michele Bachmann. (Both of whom won their re-election bids with comfortable margins.) We also are the same state that elected Paul Wellstone (arguably the most liberal Senator in recent memory) and Rod Grams (a real RWNJ for his time, although he’d probably be considered a RINO today).
So we’re solidly purple at this point.
mai naem
@Anya: I think right or wrong Giuliani gets credit for decreasing crime in NYC and that’s what they remember him for. Personally for me, Giuliani looks like a rabid dog with those teeth but, hey, not being a NY’er I have no idea.
DougJ
@Cat Lady:
Rockefeller Republican. There are plenty of them up here. They hate hate hate to admit they’re the party of Palin now
I don’t blame them.
greyjoy
Er, excuse me–the post has the white demographic as 43% Democrat, 55% Republican, and “dash” as “other”. Didn’t mean to add up to 105% in my previous post.
Anya
@DougJ: Do you think Rockefeller Republicans are flip side of the Reagan Democrats?
Chris
@DougJ:
Rockefeller Republican. There are plenty of them up here. They hate hate hate to admit they’re the party of Palin now
I don’t blame them
Same – I talked to one last night who thought the teabaggers were going to run right into a wall, and said he actually wished there’d been a public option.
I kind of have to wonder, though, what people like that are doing in the GOP.
priscianus jr
@Shade Tail:
DougJ
@Anya:
Interesting question…sort of. I’m always surprised by how reasonable they are.
New Yorker
Shit like this is why the Jon Stewart rally was so big. White people like me want to know that we’re not all crazy, so we gathered in DC for a weekend rally.
Ailuridae
@Chris:
I kind of have to wonder, though, what people like that are doing in the GOP.
Taxes
cthulhu
@Southern Beale: You actually do have a point. It is very important to distinguish white voters from white people in general in the US. Every poll I’ve seen suggests that there is more support for gay marriage among whites compared to minority groups. Of course, by far the most support is in younger people and these are the same that, with rare exceptions, fail to represent on election days
PhoenixRising
I am biologically white…
No. White is not an objective reality. It’s a racial identity that was invented to make sure that your ancestors (assuming they were Americans) had someone to feel superior to.
Back to the topic: Why does that identity correlate with voting for insane bigots at rates exceeding chance? Hard to say.
priscianus jr
@greyjoy:
Martin
@PhoenixRising:
The insane bigots tell us we’re special. That’s really what American Exceptionalism is all about, isn’t it?
protected static
@TVL: [warning — anecdata ahead] I’d beg to differ… I live in Seattle and have in-laws and other extended family in Portland. Making that drive down I-5, particularly during an election cycle, will give you a pretty good insight into what passes for the wingnut psyche (and it’s all id, baby – or fear thereof). Prior to McCain announcing Palin as his running-mate, we only saw a few McCain signs – but after he picked our erstwhile Queen Esther, McCain/Palin signs sprouted like mushrooms… The difference was… startling. We were actually seeing far more Obama signs than McCain – until he picked Palin.
pattonbt
@DougJ:
My problem with the “Rockefeller Republicans” (which I grew up being one and surrounded by them), is their refusal to stand up against the insanity and stop supporting the new R party. Anybody who looks at facts (I know, I know) can see the modern D’s handle the economy better across the board than the R’s. Yet the Rockefeller Republicans still cling to the old notion that R means good economic foundation. They also refuse to admit what they really are deep down – selfish “I Got Mine FU” assholes. Some of my family still voted R in 2008 and when queried they pulled out the usual “yeah, I hate Palin and the religious right and their agenda scares me to death, and I hate the wars and the civil liberty abuses and the R’s suck for the economy, but TAXES you know”. These are supposedly “good” people. Fuck them.
My mom asked me recently when I became so strident in my liberal-ness (she being quite Liberal and the lone non-Rockefeller Republican in the family) and I said I’ve weighed the facts over my life and the conclusion is pretty obvious. Pretty obvious IF you have a conscience and are willing to pay a little to attempt to ensure all peoples equality and liberty, not just your own.
So these asshole Rockefeller Republicans, to salve their selfish hearts have to trot out trite shit like “the government always sucks” or “so and so takes advantage of the benefits” etc. Again, fuck them for supporting evil willingly just to save a few bucks.
pattonbt
@DougJ:
They are not “reasonable”. They speak reasonably about issues and have reasonable ideas. But they vote for the implementation of the opposite of reason.
Hunter Gathers
There are many reasons why a majority of whites vote GOP. The massive authoritarian streak most of us possess. Religion. Hatred/fear of brown people. Misogynous tendencies (not just on the male side, either). Privilege, or the mirage of such a thing. The embrace of all things ignorant. I could go on. It’s not just older whites either. The morons I went to high school with have a tendency to post racist/sexist/ignorant shit on Facebook on a daily basis. When something is pounded into your head day in, day out for decades, it tends to stick.
At my last job, working in a factory making school lockers, lunch breaks tended to resemble The O’Reilly Factor. Bitching about blacks, hispanics, women, and government spending. Never mind that government spending provided these people with a paycheck. Or the small town I live in (pop. 9000) has only a very small (less than 2 percent) percentage of minorities, and any women that tried to work there tended to leave after a week after getting treated like shit, all of those things were why their lives/jobs were so shitty. Thank God Goodwill hired me this week. I was getting really tired of assassination jokes.
JGabriel
@Southern Beale:
No, but when the majority of whites vote for Christine O’Donnell, then it means the majority of whites are either right wing conservatives, or have no qualms about voting with them.
.
greyjoy
Huh? Most white people’s ancestors are NOT Americans. America’s only 235 years old, and at best a small minority might be able to claim 7-8 generations of American residence. Most of the forebears of “white people” came over in the 1800s and early 1900s, were heavily identified with their pre-American nationalities (Irish, Polish, Italian, Scandinavian, Dutch, etc) and were often discriminated against accordingly, until fairly recently ( I dunno, 50 years ago? When did people stop equating “Polack” with dumb and “Irish” with poor/thief?).
Racial identity isn’t objective reality either, nor static. Saying that it was invented in America and covers everyone with a certain amount of melanin and above is no more accurate than saying that “white people” vote a certain way.
protected static
Hm. FYWP.
Xenos
@alex:
This is rather astute. Others who have been powerless longer than the typical overstretched American consumer have wrestling with this dilemma for a while now.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, ‘Decolonising the Mind‘ 1986
The international corporate plutocracy will make us all peasants if we let them. And an awful lot of older, white Americans are already peasants or debt-slaves (or their children are), and are incapable of admitting it without a severe psychological crisis presenting itself. So we get this retreat into irrationality and identification with their corporate masters.
greyjoy
So, statistically speaking, if white voters could be represented by 10 people, you could put them all in a room and say, “Okay, conservatives go to the right side and liberals go to the left.”
And then you would have 5 people standing on the right, 4 people standing on the left, and one in the middle saying, “Eh, I could go either way.”
I think the last thing you could possibly conclude from such an observation is that “white voters” do any one thing, except vote and be white. So it boggles my mind that people accept the original premise as true when it clearly is not. Of course white voters are not, as a group, right-wing, much less very right wing, and the numbers bear that out very clearly.
priscianus jr
@PhoenixRising:
Basilisc
Brian J up at #63 is getting at what I think is the key point here.
It isn’t so much that all whites across the country are conservative Republicans, it’s that Southern whites are overwhelmingly conservative Republicans. I remember seeing an exit poll saying that Obama won a majority of whites in the NE, MW, and West – if I wasn’t feeling lazy I’d check it out. I think that there are other issues where the South is responsible for much or all of the craziness that shows up in national polls, eg on Obama’s being a Kenyan Muslim etc.
Anne Laurie
@Gozer:
__
Well, Polka is outside my area. But the Riverdance stuff? You ever seen two dogs trying not to start fighting by… puffing up their chests & jigging up & down in place? We are a belligerent people, but there’s only so many fistfights per day one can survive.
Yeah, it’s supposed to look like that. Points off in Irish dancing for any movement above the waist. The joke is that Scottish dancers hold both hands in the air because otherwise they can’t be trusted not to knife each other (with the handy daggers in their costume socks) before the bagpiper runs out of breath. Irish dancers, on the other hand, hold their arms rigidly at their sides because any time we raise a hand above shoulder level, we’re seized with an irresistible impulse to throw a brick.
But of course, without Irish dancing, American tap would never have been invented.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
I blame you for making me post this link to the tap vs. Irish segment of “Riverdance.”
sherifffruitfly
(shrug) Everybody knows this. White folks prefer to pretend it’s not true though. It’s our little way of passive-aggressively helping to perpetuate the problem, by pretending it doesn’t exist.
But everybody knows it.
auntieeminaz
@demimondian:
“. . .the Quakers and Mennonites even more so.”
I’ll vouch for the Mennonites. Must be our pacifist beliefs that tend to make us Democrats. Oh. And the social justice part also, too.
d.s.
Every time you point out the obvious you get the endless “OMG I’M WHITE I’M NOT CONSERVATIVE DON’T BOX ME IN” posts.
Whites are very, very conservative in this country. If only white people voted in this election, we’d have senators Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, Ken Buck, Dino Rossi, and Christine O’Donnell.
It’s not just the South. Even in “blue states” whites tend to be Republican leaning.
Ever since civil rights came into place, white people just went completely, utterly, insane.
Suck It Up!
@Martin:
i’m sorry, what?
d.s.
@Suck It Up!: “Coon” = racial slur.
@New Yorker: Notice the white people at the Stewart rally were calling for moderation and compromise, not liberalism, and pushed the idea that there’s insanity on both sides.
And by all accounts, those were the white “liberals”! That’s what counts for liberalism among white people.
cthulhu
@d.s.: I feel I still need to point out that we are talking purely about whites that vote. I think that many of the whites that are apathetic about voting tend to be pretty socially liberal and supportive of the social safety net. The “whatever” crowd. I get the sense that they couldn’t even get motivated about Prop 19.
annamissed
Whiteness (and white privilege) has a lot to do with it, but in reality it is a revolt against modernity dating back to the 20’s. More HERE.
d.s.
@cthulhu: Nah. I think Nate Silver did an analysis and showed that if voter turnout was 100%, that wouldn’t necessarily help Democrats. It could make the electorate even more conservative.
There are a shit ton of apolitical people in this country with vaguely conservative beliefs and slogans.
There are also tons of social conservatives who don’t usually bother to turn out, but if they did vote, would vote Republican over the Democrat.
That’s why Karl Rove put a huge emphasis on putting gay marriage bans on the ballot. It was to bring out those people.
Mako
@d.s.:
I’m probably not the first to say this, but we should kill all the white people, don’t you think, just kill them all/
Woodrowfan
I confess that when another middle-aged or older white guy starts to talk politics with me I get a bit nervous as I assume they’re likely republican. Often, however, I am pleasantly surprised that they’re fellow Democrats. But then, I live in a Democratic area (northern Va).
matoko_chan
DougJ, you will hate this, but it isnt all white people.
at a minimum, 1/3 of white people vote democratic, Carter to Obama.
Obama got 43% of the white vote for example.
The aggregation of white people that vote conservative self-select by religio-culture, intellect (Douthat-Salam Stratification on Cognitive Ability), age and geography.
White people are no more monolithic than Latinos.
But conservatives are very monolithic. Non-hispanic cauc, older (over 35), christian, and southern.
Culturally, the intellectual elite (scientists, academics) and the cultural elite (hollywood and the arts, the MSM) have left the consertvative party. Now while their numbers are small, they have disproportionate influence.
The only elites remaining in the right are business class elites, and they have to pretend to be non-elite.
If you look at this preview of Murray’s book, you can see all the culture producers are extreme liberal…all the culture consumers are everyone else.
The problem for conservatives is the demographic timer and generational die off(base aging).
Woodrowfan
Um, I was there, and I saw a hell of a lot of liberal signs, stickers, etc. The assumption seemed to be that if we could move political discussion away from yelling towards rational discussion, then the left would win.
matoko_chan
Here a strongly evidential chart.
In the close election of 1968, Nixon got only 2% more of the white vote than Humphrey, and Nixon won.
In 1992, George HW Bush beat Clinton by 2% of the white vote, but lost to Clinton.
In 2004, George W Bush beat Kerry with a whopping 17% points.
Obama won the election despite getting only 43% of the white vote.
From 1968 to 2008, the percentage of registered voters who are white went from over 90% to 74%.
The trendline seem clear. Whites are making up a shrinking part of the population, but a more Republican part. At this rate, in another generation or so, whites will make up only about 60% of the electorate, but vote Republican almost 2:1.
medved on the white vote.
matoko_chan
So there is no chance Palin can win a presidential election.
I predict she will run, though.
Because she wants to, and she simply isnt smart enough to understand the math.
And because Rove cant kneecap her without alienating her fanatically loyal base.
medved again
Winning an electoral majority doesn’t require capturing, or even splitting, every ethnic group, but no candidate can prevail if he (or she) gets overwhelmed among all nonwhite voters.
It is impossible for Palin to achieve 65% of the white vote.
Youth hate her, the culturally elite hate her, and the intellectual elite (who do understand math) hate her.
The only way she gets into the white house is a Xorgon invasion while shes campaigning.
Lawnguylander
@greyjoy:
12 percentage points is not a bare majority. That’s a huge swing in comparison to the gap between the winners and losers in recent presidential elections. No Democrat would have a prayer of overcoming a tendency that pronounced if that were the way the electorate as a whole voted.
THE
Hi mtko_chn, howdtheelectiongo?
Jinchi
Sorry, DougJ, but that really was an asine thing to say.
Put it together with the idiotic newspaper columns about Catholics, who “as a group” are supposed to be very conservative, but in reality break as evenly as any group in the country. Or the women (do white women get a pass from you?). Or Hispanics (do Cubans count?). And why is Vermont the most liberal state in the country?
Why don’t you subtract off all of the white voters that came out for Democrats this year or in 2008 and figure out what the blowout would have looked like last Tuesday if your statement made any sense at all.
White voters aren’t a group. So talking about them as a group doesn’t mean anything at all.
cthulhu
@d.s.: I think it really depends on whether we are talking social or ecomomic liberalism. I would bet the numbers for the former are higher than for the latter. My social circle is almost entirely “liberal” but NIMBYism is a common occurrence and I often get strange looks when I suggest that our taxes really do need to be higher.
matoko_chan
@THE: went awesome on Colorado.
my tribe came out….Fetal Personhood went down by over 70%, just like 2008, and Tancredo and Buck LOST to combined youth/hispanic vote.
The Red Wave turned to beach break on the hidden reef of the Front Range cellphone demographic.
:)
matoko_chan
@Woodrowfan: if we could move political discussion away from yelling towards rational discussion, then the left would win.
Nah.
Because of Douthat-Salam Stratification on cognitive ability, the low information conservative base simply doesnt have the substrate to understand complicated issues like HCR.
Obama could simply never explain it so don’t fault him.
themann1086
Late to the party, but I think some broader facts might be useful. Via CNN, national exit poll! A few points worth examining.
Whites: 60-37 GOP
Blacks: 90-9 Dems
Latino: 64-34 Dems
Sadly, I don’t see numbers on Age & Race. I’ll post them if I find them elsewhere.
Oh, and 31% of gays lesbians and bisexuals voted Republican. Good job, guys and gals!
New favorite stat: when asked who they blamed for the economy, 35% said Wall Street. They voted Republican 56-42. WTF.
Frank
@Chris:
I just facebooked this Chris and thanks: Scary thought: “Christine O’Donnell won the white vote in Delaware by about 6%.” Damn, Elect people for competence not by race.
I’m going to catch some shit for it but I don’t care.
themann1086
Glancing around, the fine white people of Vermont voted for Leahy 64-32 (his topline was 64-31), so we’re not all bad
themann1086
Cuomo beat Paladino by a whole 7 points in the white vote, 51-44.
Trend I’m seeing is that outside of the lilly-white Northeastern states (Vermont, Conn, etc), white people vote much more conservatively than the rest of the state. I’m reminded of Sirota’s “race gap” theory (or whatever he called it) from the 08 election, where states with little minority presence had liberal whites, states with a significant but small minority presence had conservative whites carry them, while the states with a large minority population had a conservative white vote that could be balanced by a very liberal minority population.
matoko_chan
@themann1086:
Because of Douthat-Salam Stratification on cognitive ability.
Youth didnt vote, except in Colorado and Cali. :)
White youth votes liberal.
That 60% is likely an upper bound for white votes for republicans.
Because of white youth.
And they will never win another presidential election unless they can break 65% or attract minorities.
Frank
@matoko_chan:
Now my question is Obama vs Rubio?
Rubio is white enough to be white but hispanic enough to be Hispanic?
matoko_chan
New in Matoko’s Quantum Crystal Ball….
Republican elites begin Palin bashing.
They know she is unelectable.
Rove started before the midterms, but the rest will pile on now.
Douthat: the limits of Palinism
Noonan: Palin is a nincompoop
They only held fire until after the midterms, so’s not to piss off the teabaggers. The used her to drum up enthusiasm and now they are gunna try hard to kick her off the boat as soon as possible, inorder to regroup behind Romney for the election.
I don’t think it will work myself, but it will be highly entertaining.
matoko_chan
@Frank: trust meh, they already asked Rubio. He is too smart to run in 2012.
I think Rubio and Sandoval are hopeful signs actually.
The GOP is going to be forced to include minorities or go extinct.
That is a good thing for America.
:)
mak
As suggested above, it seems age is at least as important as race. In Del., the Olds were the only age group to vote majority O’Donnell – 55% to 44%. Those 65+ comprised 17% of those polled.
So the sooner we can get those death panels up and running, the sooner we can close that demographic gap, too.
themann1086
I’m sure everyone will be shocked to learn that Rasmussen’s polls had the most error (average of 5.9) this election cycle. Not quite the most biased (+3.9 GOP) though, that goes to Marist (+4.0 GOP). PPP was the least biased (+0.3 GOP) with an average error of 3.8; Quinnipiac, SUSA, and YouGov had lower errors of 3.3, 3.5, and 3.5 respectively (biased +0.7 GOP, +0.8 GOP, and +1.1 GOP).
CNN sucked, and Mason-Dixon had an off year (though a low bias, +0.4 Dem).
ETA: whoops, forgot the link. Via Nate Silver
cthulhu
One thing that it seems we need to get across to the young and new voters from 08 is that you’ve got to have just a tiny bit more commitment to the process. Sure voting in a Presidential is great but the midterms are equally important. We’re only asking for one trip to the polls every two years. Of course, to grow the progressive caucus, we could use some occasional help in the primaries, but baby steps, baby steps.
matoko_chan
@themann1086: its cell phone spoofing.
@cthulhu: put medical marijuana on every ballot.
:)
Bill Murray
Black people got a lot of problems
but they don’t mind throwin’ a brick
White people go to school where they teach you how to be thick
and everybody’s doin
just what they’re told
an’ nobody wants to go to jail
All the power’s in the hands
of people rich enough to buy it
while we walk the streets to chicken to even try it
THE
Think I’ve got a comment stuck in moderation DougJ.
Don’t know why. Sorry.
matoko_chan
now it begins.
get to the back of the bus, teabaggers.
THE
I’ll try reposting without the possibly troublesome link.
Matoko,
I was mainly watching the Fed and QE2
They are printing 600000000000 new bits of green paper.
Consequently for the first time ever
our $ is now worth more than yours.
But you still have more green paper.
Brachiator
@DougJ:
Very interesting thesis. I looked at the exit polls for the California Senate election, in a state where the Democrats dominated all the statewide offices.
Even here, Fiorina won 52% of the white vote. On the other hand, 80% of blacks, 65% of Latinos and 59% of Asians voted for Boxer.
Fiorina also got 50% of the 65 or over vote, 61% of the white/no college degree vote, and (just for fun) 61% of the vote of people who believe that illegal immigrants should be summarily deported instead of offered a chance at changing their status to legal.
matoko_chan
@Brachiator: like I pointed out above, YOUNG white voters are liberal.
matoko_chan
@THE: printing smack. delicious.
THE
matoko_chan:
Fortunately, we have a floating currency that isolates our monetary policy from yours.
And our official cash-rate has just been raised to 4.75%.
Seventh consecutive increase since the crash.
The world still looks very different on our side of the Pacific. (See Graph 1)
Robin Crane
I’ve long thought that black voters were smarter about voting that white voters, largely because they have had years of experience detecting cons and seeing through white pretense. When you are subjugated or threatened by a group with power, you learn to at least TRY to avoid the worst they can do to you and that often means learning what pleases and angers them. That alone requires seeing through their words to their emotions and their character.
If I had to put my fate in the hands of any voting group and I had a choice of voters, I’d choose a well-educated university community and/or a black community of almost any income level. They aren’t stupid voters, as the majority of white voters are, at least IMHO.