Polarization and the Slow Death of the Republican Party

You’d never guess that the GOP is dying in the United States, but hard demographic realities say otherwise, at least from the broadest aggregated national perspective. Yet the presidency, both houses of Congress and most state legislatures and governorships are controlled by Republicans, as the above graphic suggests. Some of this is as a result of voter restrictions and gerrymandering, a fact easily seen by the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote by over three million votes yet succeeded to the presidency based on voting districts. Further, this nation was founded based on a notion of United STATES, where land mass was protected (two U.S. Senators per state regardless of population) as opposed to CITIES, which reflect population density.

 

The reality that the GOP is losing traction with younger and better-educated voters, women, non-traditional white Christians and first generation Americans is not lost on Party leadership. They are terrified of the upcoming U.S. Census (which determines voting districts, budgetary allocations, etc.) with efforts afoot to defund the effort to reach all statically relevant residents and other leadership restrictions that could result in an accurate tally of “minority” voters. For a detailed discussion of how the Trump administration is attempting to limit the potential of a fully-accurate count, please me my January 25th blog, GOP Public Enemy No 2 – The Census.

 

It’s no secret that the United States hasn’t been this sharply divided politically since the Civil War. The old assumptions that our citizenry, all exposed to basically the same general information, would base their political judgments on the same set of “facts,” one of most essential underpinnings of democracy, has all but vaporized. Divergent constituencies today “pick their facts and filter out what they do not want to hear” in the cacophony of what we call “media” today. Polarization just gets worse.

 

So it becomes particularly valuable to ask the question, seeking truly detailed answers, of “who are we as Americans?” if we no longer resonate with a single voice with nuanced political direction. The non-partisan Pew Research Center, conducted one of their legendary polls to find out, and the results of that survey were released on March 20th under the title, Wide Gender Gap, Growing Educational Divide in Voters’ Party Identification. The results have to be terrible news to the GOP, facts that will only spur them on to game the system to force their increasingly minority views on the remainder of voting America.

 

Simply put, the country has changed against the GOP retrograde of white, rural, older, lesser-educated male-skewed Christian voters. Here, then is the methodology and some of the results from that Pew Report:

 

A new analysis of party identification, based on more than 10,000 interviews of registered voters conducted by Pew Research Center in 2017, finds that 37% of registered voters identify as independents, 33% are Democrats and 26% are Republicans.

 

Most independents lean toward one of the major parties; when their partisan leanings are taken into account, 50% of registered voters identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 42% identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP. While the overall balance of leaned party affiliation has not changed much in recent years, this is the first time since 2009 that as many as half of registered voters have affiliated with or leaned toward the Democratic Party…

 

Persistent gender gap. For decades, women have been more likely than men to identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. But today, a 56% majority of women identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, while 37% affiliate with or lean toward the GOP. The share of women identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic is up 4 percentage points since 2015 and is at one of its highest points since 1992. Among men, there has been less recent change: 48% identify with the Republican Party or lean Republican, while 44% are Democrats or lean Democratic. That is comparable to the balance of leaned party identification since 2014.

 

Record share of college graduates align with Democrats. Voters who have completed college make up a third of all registered voters. And a majority of all voters with at least a four-year college degree (58%) now identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, the highest share dating back to 1992. Just 36% affiliate with the Republican Party or lean toward the GOP. The much larger group of voters who do not have a four-year degree is more evenly divided in partisan affiliation. And voters with no college experience have been moving toward the GOP: 47% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 42% in 2014.

 

Continued racial divisions in partisan identification. About half of white voters (51%) identify with the GOP or lean Republican, while 43% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. These figures are little changed from recent years. By contrast, African American voters continue to affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic by an overwhelming margin (84% Democrat to 8% Republican). Hispanic voters align with the Democrats by greater than two-to-one (63% to 28%), while Asian American voters also largely identify as Democrats or lean Democratic (65% Democrat, 27% Republican)… While a majority of voters (69%) are white non-Hispanics, nonwhite voters now make up an increasing share of all voters: 29% of registered voters are African American, Hispanic or Asian American or belong to another race, up from 16% in 1997. Nonwhites constitute nearly four-in-ten Democratic voters (39%), compared with 24% two decades ago. The GOP coalition also has become more racially and ethnically diverse, but nonwhites make up only 14% of Republican voters, up from 8% in 1997…

 

Larger differences among whites by education. Most white voters with at least a four-year college degree (53%) affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic; 42% identify as Republicans or lean Republican. As recently as two years ago, leaned partisan identification among white college graduates was split (47% Democrat, 47% Republican). Majorities of white voters with some college experience but who do not have a degree (55%) and those with no college experience (58%) continue to identify as Republicans or lean Republican.

 

Millennials, especially Millennial women, tilt more Democratic. As noted in our recent report on generations and politics, Millennial voters are more likely than older generations to affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic. Nearly six-in-ten Millennials (59%) affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with about half of Gen Xers and Boomers (48% each) and 43% of voters in the Silent Generation. A growing majority of Millennial women (70%) affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic; four years ago, 56% of Millennial women did so. About half of Millennial men (49%) align with the Democratic Party, little changed in recent years. The gender gap in leaned party identification among Millennials is wider than among older generations.

 

But this doesn’t mean that the Democrats have a cohesive response or that the nation might not soon find itself with new political parties; those possibilities loom large. What all of this does mean, however, that that core constituency of the GOP is dying off and is increasingly marginalized. Do they grab their massive stash of weapons and fight? Do they fade away as angry populists? Or does this nation face its polarization, seek commonality for all segments, and vote to move forward… together?

 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the question of our future as a nation is very much in doubt.