White People

There have been a lot of articles discussing Republican problems with minority vote and how they've sunk the Republican party. There is, undoubtably, reason for concern and the GOP has work to do. The Republican party lost the House vote by 1% and Romney lost by less than 4%. Those are hardly one-sided results. For a very good season.

White people.

Nobody talks about it, but Whites dramatically abandoned the Democratic party in 2012. Since 2008 and 2012 were both years where Democrats nominated Barack Obama, we can dismiss any change as independent of racism. People didn't suddenly wake up in 2012 and realize Barack Obama was Black. Some people have dismissed the White vote, speculating that there's no way the Democrats can get any less of the White vote. That might be a valid theory if the percentage of the White vote were constant nationwide. It isn't. It's very high in the south.

Unfortunately there were a limited number of exit polls in the south. So we don't have numbers for Georgia, Louisiana, and several other southern states. John McCain got an enormous percentage of the White vote in the Deep South in 2008, so much that there was simply no room for Mitt Romney to grow. You can't get everyone. The southern states outside the Deep South, North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia, showed some movement, all ending up at 62.2% or above.

Those are Southern Whites. Urban Whites aren't going to be so quick to turn to the Republican party, are they? In heavily Democratic areas the increase wasn't dramatic but parts of the Northeast showed a sharp turn.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey were much closer in 2012 because Obama lost suburban and rural Whites more than he did in 2008. While Pennsylvania Whites aren't likely to vote Republican like Southern Whites there is room for growth.

The Midwest does contain more rural Whites than the Northeast but the change here overall is significant in every state but Iowa. McCain lost Whites in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Romney won them this time. Some states in the Northeast could easily grow to the percentage Ohio and Indiana have.

The West showed some dramatic changes. Arizona was supposedly trending Blue, but White voters turned sharply away from Obama. California, which supposedly has very progressive White voters, moved 7.1% toward Romney. California isn't exactly ready to flip to the GOP but there's no reason to think that these states have hit their ceilings with White voters. If Colorado can move 6%, why can't it move 5% more to hit 60% like in other states. What if Iowa and Wisconsin move to around 55% of the White vote going Republican?

Democrats don't seem to be worried about their share of the White vote. They should be.