Use it or Lose it

A Tale of Two Parties Going in Opposite Directions

The United States is a dynamic country with a constantly changing population, culture, and economy. Throughout the nation's history this dynamism has forced the two political parties to either embrace or resist the changes occurring around them. Historically, neither party has had a monopoly on making wise choices. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, it was the Republican Party that better adapted to a fully industrialized country, one that had largely left its agrarian past behind. In the 1930s, it was the Democratic Party that endorsed activist government that enabled everyday Americans to better cope with the rough edges of an industrial economy.

But America-- as well as the two political parties-- does not stand still. Several recent surveys, including one commissioned by NDN, paint a picture of a Republican Party appealing to an ever more narrow and aging base and a Democratic Party developing a voter coalition that reflects the more diverse and progressive American electorate of the 21st Century.  

The Tea Party Movement Does Not Represent America

An early April New York Times/CBS News national survey contained a subsample of nearly 900 Tea Party supporters permitting a detailed comparison of those who endorse that movement with the American electorate as a whole. A number of observers have already commented on the poll. For example, in a balanced interpretation, Pew's Andrew Kohut suggests that an association with the Tea Party movement might provide short-term benefit to the Republican Party, but hurt it in the long run. In a strangely odd misreading of the data, former Bill Clinton pollster, Doug Schoen, who along with Jimmy Carter's pollster, Pat Caddell, advised congressional Democrats not to pass health care reform, described the Tea Partiers as politically "diverse" and "close to the demographics of the American people."

But even a cursory reading of the New York Times/CBS News poll clearly indicates that Tea Party supporters are distinctive demographically, have sharply different perceptions of and attitudes toward politics than most other voters and are strongly oriented to the Republican Party. Given the alacrity with which most Republican politicians (with the possible exception of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown) are rushing to get in front of Tea Party rallies and embrace Tea Party ideas, it's not too much to say that the Tea Party movement has literally become the face of the GOP.

  • Demographics. As the table below indicates both Tea Party supporters and Republican identifiers are disproportionately male, older, and white compared with the U.S. electorate overall. In fact, Doug Schoen to the contrary, Tea Partiers are, if anything, less diverse than even rank and file Republicans. Both groups are clearly much less diverse and reflective of the American electorate as it is now and as it will increasingly be than are Democratic identifiers.

 

U.S. Electorate^

Tea Party Supporters*

Republican Identifiers^

Democratic Identifiers^

Gender

 

 

 

 

Male

49%

59%

56%

45%

Female

51%

41%

44%

55%

Age

 

 

 

 

18-28

20%

7%

14%

21%

29-45

31%

16%

26%

32%

46-64

32%

46%

35%

32%

65+

17%

29%

25%

15%

Ethnicity

 

 

 

 

White

77%

89%

89%

69%

African-American

7%

1%

2%

14%

Hispanic

9%

3%

6%

11%

Asian

4%

1%

3%

5%

Sources: *=New York Times/CBS News survey, April 2010. ^=NDN survey, February 2010.

  • Party ID and Ideological Identification. According to the New York Times/CBS News poll a majority of Tea Partiers identifies as Republicans, while around a third say they are independents and a scant one in twenty claim to be Democrats. Tea Party supporters identify as Republicans at about twice the rate as the overall electorate (54% vs. 28%) while only a sixth as many (5% vs. 31%) say they are Democrats. And, while only a third of all registered voters (34%) label themselves as conservatives, nearly three-quarters (73%) of Tea Partiers do.
  • Perceptions of Political Figures. Given their partisan and ideological preferences it is not surprising that Tea Party supporters are far less positive about Democratic politicians and far more positive about Republicans than is the American electorate overall.

 

U.S. Electorate*

Tea Party Supporters*

Approve of Barack Obama job performance

50%

7%

Favorable opinion of Barack Obama

43%

7%

Obama understands needs and problems of people like you

58%

24%

Obama shares values most Americans try to live by

57%

20%

Favorable opinion of George W. Bush

27%

57%

Favorable opinion of Sarah Palin

30%

66%

Think Sarah Palin has ability to be effective President

26%

40%

* Source=New York Times/CBS News survey, April 2010.

  • Attitudes on Political Issues. Tea Party supporters differ substantially from the entire U.S. electorate across a range of issues. In particular, Tea Partiers are far more opposed to using government to confront and attempt to resolve the problems facing America. For example, while as the following table indicates, a majority of Americans favors the Federal Government spending money to create jobs, even if this increases the budget deficit, more than three-quarters of Tea Party supporters believe that the government should not spend money on jobs, but should instead focus on deficit reduction.

 

U.S. Electorate*

Tea Party Supporters*

Spend to create jobs even if increases deficit

50%

17%

Focus on reducing deficit rather than job creation

42%

76%

DK/NA

7%

7%

*Source=New York Times/CBS News survey, April 2010

Along these lines, a majority of the electorate believes that President Obama has expanded the role of government to about the right degree (36%) or even not enough (18%) to solve the economic problems facing the country. By contrast, virtually all Tea Party supporters (89%) believe that the president has expanded the government too much.

And, on the issue that has energized the Tea Party movement more than any other, a plurality of the electorate (49%) now agrees with the provision in the recently enacted health care reform legislation requiring all Americans to have health insurance as long as the federal government provides financial help to those who cannot afford it. In contrast, 85 percent of Tea Partiers are opposed. Similarly, a majority of all voters (54%) believes it is a good idea to raise income taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year to help provide health insurance for those who do not already have it. Eight in ten Tea Party supporters are against this.

  • Media Usage. Finally, to help shape their world view, Tea Partiers utilize very different sources for political information and have distinctive attitudes toward the media and media personalities than does the electorate overall.

 

U.S. Electorate*

Tea Party Supporters*

Watch Fox News Channel most for information about politics

23%

63%

Believe shows hosted by people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are more news than entertainment

24%

53%

Favorable attitude toward Glenn Beck

18%

59%

The Democrats are in Stronger Position Since Passage of Health Care Reform

While the GOP has been affixing itself ever more closely to the Tea Party movement, the position of the Democratic Party has actually strengthened since the passage of health care reform in late March, while that of the Tea Party movement and politicians associated with hit have actually softened somewhat as more people came to learn and form opinions about it.

A mid-April CNN Opinion Research poll (pdf) indicated that favorable evaluations of President Barack Obama held steady at 57 percent and those of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rose by eight and six percentage points respectively from what they had been about two months previously. By contrast, favorable ratings of Sarah Palin, the Republican perhaps most strongly identified with the Tea Party movement, dropped from 46 percent in December 2009 and 43 percent in January 2010 to 39 percent in April. Her unfavorable evaluations rose by nine points (from 46% to 55%) over the same period. In addition, while positive opinions of the Tea Party movement increased by five points (from 33% to 38%) since January, negative attitudes rose by 10 points (from 26% to 36%).

Obama Leads All Potential 2012 Republican Opponents

Also, according to the CNN survey, President Obama holds a clear lead among registered voters over four potential Republican challengers to his 2012 reelection bid-Mitt Romney (53% vs. 45%); Mike Huckabee (54% vs. 45%); Sarah Palin (55% vs. 42%); and, Newt Gingrich (55% vs. 43%). His margin against each Republican actually slightly exceeds his 2008 popular vote lead over John McCain (53% vs. 46%), indicating that in spite of all the turmoil and rancor of the first year of his presidency, Barack Obama retains as strong a position with the electorate as when he won the White House.

Democrats Lead in CNN Generic Ballot for First Time in 2010

But, the president's reelection campaign is still more than two years away. Of more immediate relevance, the Democratic Party leads among registered voters on the 2010 CNN/Opinion Research generic congressional ballot for the first time this year.

 

Democratic Candidate

Republican Candidate

Neither

No Opinion

April 9-11

50%

46%

4%

1%

March 25-28

45%

49%

4%

2%

March 19-21

45%

48%

5%

2%

February 12-15

45%

47%

6%

2%

January 8-10

45%

48%

6%

1%

"Enthusiasm Gap" Has Narrowed Since Passage of Health Care Reform

Even more important, after languishing for months, as indicated in the following table drawn from the Daily Kos weekly tracking survey, the political enthusiasm and intensity of Democratic identifiers and the groups that together comprise the emerging 21st Century Democratic coalition rose sharply in the wake of the enactment of health care and student loan reform legislation.

 

Definitely/likely to vote

March 8-11

Definitely/likely to vote

April 5-8

Percentage Point Increase

Democratic identifiers

40%

61%

21%

Women

41%

59%

18%

18-29 year olds

34%

46%

12%

African-Americans

29%

46%

17%

Hispanics

32%

47%

15%

Residents of Northeast

41%

60%

19%

Residents of West

42%

62%

20%

In early March, Republican identifiers were far more likely to vote than Democrats (51% vs. 40%). On month later, what had been an 11-percentage point "enthusiasm gap" separating Republican from Democratic identifiers had narrowed to four points (63% vs. 59%). In the most recent Daily Kos poll it widened again to eight points (69% vs. 61%). Still, the increased intensity of Democratic voters coupled with the Democratic Party's party identification advantage over the Republicans (47% vs. 34% in the NDN survey) puts the Democrats in better position to compete effectively this November than they were just a month ago.

The lesson from this is clear. Like any majority political party, the Democratic Party will be rewarded by those who identify with and vote for it when it governs like the majority party that it is. The next step for congressional Democrats is to adopt financial institution reform over the persistent opposition of the GOP leadership and its Tea Party base. By so doing, the Democrats will continue to turn on its head the admonition that has so often been a part of these blogs: "if you use it, you won't lose it."

If You Don’t Use It, You Lose It Part III

As the first article in this series pointed out, the two chief demographic components of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition that enabled the Democratic Party to dominate American national politics from the early 1930s to the mid-1960s-the white South and the northern white working class-have been drifting away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans for the past four decades. But, America is a dynamic country with a growing, changing, and increasingly diverse population. And, the Democratic Party is in position to once again dominate U.S. politics around the same core values, but now with a far different voter coalition than the one assembled by FDR eight decades ago.

Recent Gallup and Pew polls indicate that the Democratic Party has a national party identification advantage of about ten percentage points over the Republicans.

 The voter coalition that underpins the Democratic Party's current party identification advantage-and which also elected Barack Obama President of the United States in 2008-reflects the America of today fully as much as FDR's coalition reflected the America of its era. While some of the components of the emerging Democratic coalition were a part of the New Deal coalition, others are brand new. If the white South and white working class have left the Democrats, other groups, some of which were decades from birth and others of which comprised only a negligible portion of the American electorate during the previous era of Democratic dominance, have joined. The major components of the new 21st Century Democratic coalition are:

  • Young voters. Political scientists have long maintained that political realignments result from the emergence of new large generations of young Americans. The coming of age of the GI Generation (born 1901-1924) produced the New Deal realignment in the 1930s. The emergence of the sharply divided Baby Boomer Generation (born 1946-1964) ended that Democratic era in 1968 leading to forty years during which the Republican Party won the presidency in seven of ten elections. Today it is the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003) and, to a lesser extent, younger members of Generation X (born 1965-1981) that are bringing about major political change. In 2008, Millennials voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%). Millennials also preferred Democratic congressional candidates to Republicans by about the same ratio (63% vs. 34%). A narrower majority of Gen-Xers (52% vs. 46%) also voted for Obama. By contrast, the forever-divided Boomers split their votes almost evenly between Obama and McCain, while the Silent Generation (born 1925-1945) opted for the Republican nominee (53% vs. 45%). The Democratic loyalties of America's youngest voters have persisted since Obama's election: in a mid-November 2009 Pew survey, Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by 58% to 19%. Gen-Xers did so by 51% to 38%. And, unlike older generations, Millennials are not sharply divided by gender and race: most male and white Millennials say they are Democrats, as do an overwhelming majority of the female and minority group members of the cohort.
  • African-Americans. Blacks became charter members of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition after seven decades of solid loyalty to the party of Lincoln. Black support for the Democrats became virtually unanimous in 1964, when the GOP nominated Senator Barry Goldwater, who earlier that year had voted against a civil rights bill that opened public accommodations to people of all races, as its presidential nominee. In 2008, not surprisingly, virtually all blacks (95%) voted for Barack Obama. But this was not much higher than black support for white Democratic presidential candidates had been in every election since the mid-1960s. Pew also indicates that African-Americans identify as Democrats over Republicans by an overwhelming 78% to 9% margin.
  • Hispanics. Except for scattered regional pockets in places like Tampa, along the Rio Grande border, and New Mexico, Latinos were a negligible component of the American population both when FDR assembled the New Deal coalition and during the forty years afterward when the Democratic Party dominated U.S. politics. That is no longer the case. Hispanics now comprise 15% of the American population, a percentage expected to double within forty years. Latinos are now an increasingly crucial component of the new Democratic coalition. While a majority of them have voted for Democratic presidential candidates in every election since 1972, more than two-thirds (67%) voted for Barack Obama in 2008. With one exception (Bill Clinton's reelection in 1996), this was the largest percentage in any election since Latinos became a large enough component in the U.S. population to tabulate separately in presidential election exit polls. The support of Latinos for the Democratic Party is likely to be of long duration, a matter of increasing importance as the Latino share of the American electorate grows. According to Pew, more than six in ten Latinos (62%) identify as or lean to the Democrats; only 15% are Republicans.
  • Women. Women gained the vote in 1920 and, for most of the time since then, there was virtually no difference in the partisanship of men and women. Most people married and most husbands and wives voted alike. However, as the divided Baby Boomer Generation became an increasing share of the electorate, a partisan "gender gap" developed in U.S. politics. Starting in 1980, the Democratic presidential vote of women was, on average, eight percentage points higher than that of men. The gap has only grown in recent elections as older, less divided, generations pass from the scene. Starting in 1996, a majority of women voted for Democratic presidential candidates while at least a plurality of men voted for Republicans. In 2008, Barack Obama enjoyed a 13-percentage point advantage among women (56% vs. 43%). Men divided their votes evenly between Obama and John McCain. This difference is reflected in party identification. Overall, according to Pew a clear majority of women are self-perceived Democrats (55% vs. 39% who claim to be Republican). By contrast, males are about evenly divided between the parties (41% Democrats and 38% Republicans). The narrow Democratic advantage among men is entirely a function of minority group males: a clear plurality of white males is Republican (44%, as compared to 38% who say they are Democrats). White women, by contrast, identify as Democrats over Republicans by ten percentage points (49% vs. 39%).
  • The Northeast and West. American party coalitions have always contained a distinct regional component. Throughout most of U.S. history it was the Republican (or Whig) Northeast opposing the Democratic South. Today, as always, the South and Northeast continue to be pitted against one another, but the partisan leanings of each region have been reversed. The South has not given even a plurality of its presidential votes to a Democratic candidate since 1976 and white Southerners have not done so since at least 1964. By contrast, in 1984 the Northeast became the most Democratic region in presidential elections. It has given Democratic presidential candidates at least a plurality of its votes since 1992 and a majority since 1996. The West follows the Northeast in its Democratic loyalties. Since 1992 the West has given at least a plurality to Democratic candidates and in 2008 preferred Barack Obama against John McCain by 57% vs. 40%. The Northeast (56%) and West (47%) also contain the greatest percentages of Democratic party identifiers according to Pew.
  • Highly educated Americans. In 1930, on the eve of the creation of the New Deal coalition, not even 5-percent of American adults were college graduates and an infinitesimal number had received any postgraduate education. By 1960, as that coalition entered its final years, the percentage of U.S. college graduates had crept up to nearly 8-percent. During the 1932-1968 era of Democratic dominance most of America's relatively few college graduates voted for and identified as Republicans. As recently as 1964, Gallup showed that a plurality (38%) of college graduates identified as Republicans, well above the percentages of those with high school (22%) or grade school (20%) education who did so. But things have changed. Now more than a quarter of Americans are college graduates and the New York Times exit poll indicated that 45% of those who voted for president in 2008 were college graduates, with 17% having at least some postgraduate education. More and more of these college graduates are Democrats. The percentage of college grads voting for a Democratic presidential candidate has steadily increased in each election since 1988 (from 37% to 50% in 2008) and those with postgraduate training have become the most strongly Democratic educational component in the electorate save for the now tiny number with less than a high school education. In 2008 college postgraduates voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by 58% to 40% and have remained Obama's strongest supporters during his presidency. In addition, a majority of college grads (51%) now identify with or lean to the Democratic Party in contrast to 37% who call themselves Republicans.

America is a much different nation now than it was 80 years ago when the New Deal coalition was first assembled. The Democratic Party has changed along with America and has put together a new voter coalition, one that is very different from the New Deal coalition, but also one with the potential to become the dominant force in U.S. politics just as FDR's coalition did so many decades ago.

The groups within the emerging Democratic coalition have clear political values. Most crucially they all favor an activist government that moves forcefully to resolve economic and societal problems in a way that protects and advances middle class Americans. These core Democratic values energized and held together the groups that comprised FDR's New Deal coalition. These same values will energize and bond the disparate groups that now comprise a new 21st century Democratic coalition.

But while a new coalition that can underpin renewed Democratic dominance has come into place, Democratic success in using it is by no means guaranteed. To do that, Democrats will have to have both the vision and the courage to see things as they are now and as they will be in the years ahead, not as they once were. If DC Democratic leaders and Democratic candidates across the nation are timid and fail to inspire and mobilize the emerging Democratic coalition by appealing to core Democratic values, the Democratic Party will manage to lose elections even in solidly Democratic places like Massachusetts. Democrats have a choice. They can either use their new majority coalition or they will lose it.

If You Don’t Use It, You Lose It Part II

In spite of incorrect explanations like those of New York Times political columnist Matt Bai that the election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate resulted from the actions of a fickle electorate dominated by political independents, the loss by Democrats of a long-held Senate seat is really a clear example of the old adage, "If you don't use it, you lose it." That is the lesson that Democrats should draw from last week's special election. The admittedly shocking event in Massachusetts notwithstanding, during the past decade the Democratic Party has assembled a new, and potentially majority, voter coalition. If the Democrats have the awareness and courage to use that coalition in New England and elsewhere across the United States they could dominate American politics and policy making for decades to come.

According to Bai, the American electorate, represented most recently by Massachusetts voters, seems to suffer from political ADD, flitting between "the latest offer" or "the newest best deal" in a society that is constantly "hitting the reset button." But, the victory of Scott Brown was not a matter of a fickle electorate alternating between the two parties in search of something new and different, or even a change in voting preference by Massachusetts independents. Rather, the outcome of last week's special election in Massachusetts stemmed primarily from reduced voter turnout among the state's Democrats. Bai and the Washington punditry might have known this had they even briefly reviewed the survey and election data that is freely and easily available on the Internet.

Brown CoakleyA posting by Charles Franklin on Pollster.com demonstrated the likelihood that reduced turnout among Massachusetts Democrats led to the victory of Republican Scott Brown and the defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley. Franklin indicates that Brown matched or exceeded John McCain's 2008 vote total in every jurisdiction while Coakley fell below Barack Obama's vote everywhere in the state. Overall, Brown's 1.17 million votes were 106% greater than McCain's 1.1 million in 2008. By contrast, Coakley's 1.06 million votes were only 56% of Obama's nearly 1.9 million votes in 2008. Franklin summarizes what happened this way: "... this doesn't mean that Brown got exactly McCain's voters since lots of individual switching could add up to these totals. But in the aggregate, Massachusetts looks exactly like it did in 2008 on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, a whole lot fewer voters."

Franklin is properly cautious about over-interpreting the aggregate election data. But a post-election poll (pdf) conducted by Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health confirms Franklin's aggregate level conclusions. The Post survey makes clear that the Massachusetts outcome was not the result of a wholesale flow of voters between the parties. The large majority of voters preferred the Senate candidate of the party for which they had voted in the 2008 presidential election. Virtually all Coakley voters (96%) chose Barack Obama and nearly seven in ten Brown supporters (68%) voted for John McCain in 2008.

But, the most unique and interesting aspect of the Post survey is that it interviewed a subsample of Senate race non-voters. While the non-voters fell between the Brown and Coakley voters in their attitudes, they were consistently much closer to the latter than the former on all items. Most tellingly, a large majority of non-voters who had voted in the 2008 presidential election (70%) voted for Barack Obama. Their attitudes toward the president have not declined significantly since his election. A large majority of non-voters (69%) approves of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. A majority (54%) also said they were either enthusiastic or satisfied with the policies of the Obama administration. By contrast, a majority of non-voters (56%) were dissatisfied or angry with the policies offered by congressional Republicans.

A clear majority of non-voters prefer a government that does more to solve problems rather than believing government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals (58% vs. 37%). This preference for activist government is reflected in the attitudes of non-voters about the proposed health care reforms developed by Congress and the Obama administration: a plurality of them supported rather than opposed that legislation (49% vs. 39%). Solid majorities of non-voters believed that the health care reform proposals would either leave themselves and their families, Massachusetts, and the country as a whole either better off or, at least, in the same condition as they are now. Only about one in five non-voters felt that the proposed health care reform program would hurt any of those groups.

The Post survey did not release demographic information and there were no media-sponsored exit polls last week in Massachusetts. Consequently, there is no foolproof empirical way to determine the exact demographic and political composition of those who voted in the special Senate election. But, a survey of likely voters (pdf) taken by Public Policy Polling (PPP) in the last weekend before the election provides a reasonable surrogate.

Of all pre-election surveys, the PPP poll most closely forecast the election outcome. It clearly indicated that the Massachusetts electorate last week contained significantly fewer young voters, minorities, Democratic identifiers and self-perceived liberals than it did in November 2008. All of these were groups that underpinned the president's 62% majority in Massachusetts.

In 2008, according to CNN's exit poll, 17% of the electorate was 18-29 years old and an additional 26% were 30-44. In the 2010 special election those numbers dropped to 8% and 20% respectively. In 2008, more than one in five Massachusetts voters (21%) were minority; last week only 13% were. In the 2008 presidential election, Democrats comprised a plurality of voters (43%). In 2010, just 39% of the electorate identified as Democrats. Finally, in 2008 about one in three voters (32%) was a self-perceived liberal; in 2010 less than a quarter (23%) were.

In reporting on its poll, PPP realized the difficulty that these numbers presented to Democratic candidate Martha Coakley: "Brown has a small advantage right now but special elections are volatile and Martha Coakley is still in this. She just needs to get more Democrats out to the polls." She didn't, and Scott Brown is now a Senator-elect.

What happened in Massachusetts has clear implications for Democrats across the United States. Martha Coakley and her out-of-touch strategists lost touch with what Barack Obama and his creative campaign did to rally a new winning coalition in 2008 and, as a result, lost an election in a state Democrats believed they could not possibly lose. Coakley lost not because the groups in that coalition turned against Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, but because turnout among those groups fell precipitously. If you don't use it, you lose it.

If You Don’t Use It, You Lose It Part I

Update: This is the first in a three part series. You can find parts 2 and 3 here and here

If there is any single theme that has run through this column since its inception last June it is that the Democratic Party is America’s majority political party and that President Barack Obama and his Democratic congressional colleagues need to summon the courage to use that majority. Pew Research Center national surveys conducted since 1990 indicate that the Democrats’ party identification advantage over the Republicans grew exponentially, especially during the past decade. During the 1990s, the Democratic lead over the GOP was always less than ten percentage points. In 1994, the year in which Newt Gingrich’s revolution took control of Congress for his party, and in 2002, a year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Democrats’ lead vanished entirely. During the last six years of the George W. Bush administration and into the first year Barack Obama’s the Democratic advantage grew to 16 percentage points. By May 2009, a majority of the U.S. electorate identified with or leaned to the Democrats (52%) and only a third (36%) said they were Republicans.

But despite their legislative victories in passing the economic stimulus and health care reform in the Senate and House, recent polling now suggests that the Democratic majority may be on shaky ground. According to Gallup, by the end of 2009 the percentage of the electorate identifying with or leaning to the Democratic Party nationally fell below 50% for the first time since 2005. The most recent Pew national survey conducted early this month gives the Democrats a 49% to 39% edge in party ID. It certainly seemed that, as in physiology, by failing to use their strength, the Democrats may be on their way to losing it.

If so, it is in large part because D.C. Democrats, who came of age and learned the political lessons of an earlier era, have a very outdated perception of the electorate that continues to cloud their approach to policymaking. They seem unaware of or unwilling to use the new voter alignments that have given the Democratic Party the opportunity to dominate U.S. politics as it did for nearly 40 years after Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency in 1932. While the Democrats do have an opportunity to assemble a dominant majority just as they did nearly eight decades ago, that majority will be based on a very different voter coalition than the one that elected FDR and later Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.

FDR’s New Deal coalition was diverse for its day. Catholic and Jewish Eastern, Central, and Southern European immigrants, and their children, were an important segment of the New Deal coalition, as were African-Americans in the big cities of the Northeast and Midwest. But, the coalition’s major components were Southern whites and the Northern white working class. The former had been the core of the Democratic Party since the times of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. The latter had been primarily Republican since at least the election of William McKinley in 1896, if not Abraham Lincoln in 1860. But the Great Depression provided the opportunity for Democrats to enlist white workers as the second large building block of the New Deal coalition.

Both Southern whites and the Northern white working class have been slipping away from the Democratic Party for decades and, yet since at least the late 1960s, Democrats have focused much attention on somehow recreating the New Deal coalition. Among other things, this led to the truism that the only way the Democrats can, or at least could, win the presidency is by nominating a moderate Southerner. It is true that Barack Obama is the first Northern Democrat to win the White House since John F. Kennedy in 1960 and that, until Obama’s win in 2008, Southerners Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore ran the strongest Democratic presidential campaigns in the previous four decades. However, the fact that Carter, Clinton, and Gore were all from the South and were Democrats is just about the only thing similar about the results of their campaigns.

Carter’s victory in 1976 came closest to reconstructing the New Deal coalition. Although a racial moderate, Carter, a self-professed born-again Christian, was certainly culturally Southern. He carried all of the former Confederate states except Virginia and he won the Border States of Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware as well. At the same time, in a clear harbinger of things to come, Carter’s Republican opponent, Gerald Ford, actually won a majority of Southern white votes (52%). It was the votes of blacks that ultimately put Carter across the top in the South.

Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 while winning only four old Confederate states—Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, his home state, and Tennessee, that of his running mate. Clinton won only a third of Southern white votes (34%). Four years later, when Clinton swamped Bob Dole nationally, he carried only Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Florida in the South and again received barely a third of the Southern white vote (36%).

In 2000, Al Gore received a popular vote plurality nationally against George W. Bush, but he won no Confederate states, including his own Tennessee, and lost the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia as well. In spite of his Southern roots, Gore won less than a third of the Southern white vote (31%), barely above John Kerry in 2004 (29%) and Barack Obama in 2008 (30%).

The white South has clearly not returned to the Democratic fold in the first year of the Obama presidency. Quite the contrary. In the most recent Daily Kos weekly tracking survey only a quarter of Southerners (27%) have a favorable attitude toward the president in contrast to 56% of the national electorate. Even fewer are positive about the Democratic Party (24%) as compared with 42% of all Americans. By contrast, a majority of Southerners (59%) have a favorable perception of the GOP in contrast with 30% nationally.

Just as the white South has been drifting away from the Democratic Party for decades, so has the white working class. Alan Abramowitz points out that the contribution of white manual workers to the electorate has declined from nearly half (47%) in the 1950s to a quarter (24%) in the first decade of the 21st century. These numbers are reflected in the Democratic Party’s presidential vote. During the 1950s a majority of the Democratic presidential vote (52%) were white manual workers, a number that fell to 23% in the decade that just ended. And, of crucial importance to the long-term composition of the Democratic voter coalition, the percentage of white manual workers who identified as Democrats declined from more than 60% in the 1950s and 1960s to barely 40% currently.

And, yet, the United States is a dynamic country with a changing population. Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 and the Democrats became America’s majority political party in spite of declining support from the two key elements of the New Deal coalition—the white South and the white working class. Like Humpty Dumpty, the old alignment cannot be reassembled. But a new and different majority Democratic voter coalition is being formed. While it doesn’t have the same composition as the voter alignment that Franklin Roosevelt put together, it has the potential to dominate American politics just like FDR’s coalition did. To do that, today’s Democrats will have to have the vision and courage to appeal to and use the new coalition. We’ll detail the elements of the new Democratic alignment and how to appeal to them in the next edition of this column.

 

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