The Demographics

Democrats were certain after 2008 that they'd overwhelmingly win every election for now on. After all, "demographics are in our favor." I'm sure they know this because they read it on dailykos. Now that it appears Democrats not only won't overwhelmingly win this election, they'll also get trounced, they've changed that for 2012 and beyond.

They use Obama's strong showing with Hispanics and the 18-29 group as evidence.

Hispanics
Hispanics aren't leaving the Republicans at all. Republicans took only 22% of Hispanics in 1996. This increased in 2000 and again in 2004 before dropping to 32% in 2008. I can give a lot of reasons why some Hispanics prefer the Republican Party, not the least of which is that the average Hispanic is MORE socially conservative than the average Republican. There are a number of economic reasons Hispanics could favor Republicans, but that's another debate.

There's no doubt that the current immigration debate favors the Democrats, but that's unlikely to be an issue long term. Eventually the border will be secured and immigration reform will happen. Puerto Rico can provide an excellent example of Hispanics when the immigration issue is removed. Puerto Rico has long been dominated by the NPP, most of whom are Republicans. The current governor, senate President, and House speaker are all NPP and all Republicans. If Puerto Rico gets statehood, the GOP is likely to take the majority of the seats. As Puerto Rico shows, if you remove the immigration issue Republicans will do just fine with Hispanics. Certainly Republicans will eventually have problems if they keep getting 32% of Hispanics. How Hispanics vote when they are a significant force is many years off.

Let's see how Republicans do with this group this year.

Youth Vote
Obama took 67% of the 18-29 vote. That's significant, but it's questionable if that's sustainable over time. When you include only Republican and Democratic votes Bill Clinton got 60% of the 18-29 year olds in 1996. In 2008 Obama got just 53% of this group, the same percentage overall. Some people, as they get older, become Republicans for a variety of reasons. There's no way to know how future generations will vote. People that came of age in the 60's and 70's were overwhelmingly Democrats. The generation that came of age in the 80's skewed Republican. In 1984 Reagan took 59% of the 18-29 vote. He took 59% of the vote overall. Of course, the young people who came of age in 1990s and 200s were a lot more Democratic.

The best way to correlate this is that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were popular with young people, while George Bush was unpopular. Young people are heavily influenced by the President who is there when they come of age. Long term there's no reason to think Republican Presidents will be unpopular or Democrats popular. Democrats had no charismatic leader from 1963-1993 and none between Clinton and Obama.

It's also questionable whether Obama's success with the youth vote will carry over to other Democrats. In the 2009 gubernatorial race, Creigh Deeds got 44% of 18-29, 44% of 30-44, and 41% of 45+. His skew was fairly flat.

Democrats took 56% of the 65+ vote in 1992, 53% in 1996, 52% in 2000, 48% in 2004, and 46% in 2008. It seems that more Democratic voters are dying and they are replaced by Republican voters. If this trend continues, the next 10 years look fairly rosy for the GOP.

It'll be interesting to see how the 18-29 age group and Hispanics vote this year. When Barack Obama is on the ballot again the electorate will surely be different, but he's only on the ballot one more time if he wins in 2012. Maybe he'll be on again if he loses, but if he loses the magic is likely gone. The 2008 vote might have been an outlier. I don't think we can make any assumptions on this year's electorate or the 2012 electorate.