Who are the White Amercian voters that Democrats can grow with?
The 2016 election provides a number of significant and historically proportionate surprises. In addition to the victory by Donald Trump in the Electoral College and the significant margin achieved by Hillary Clinton in winning the popular vote, was the surprising margin of defeat that Hillary Clinton suffered with white voters. While Democratic Presidential candidates have continued to lose voter share with White voters since last winning white voters with LBJ’s 1964 campaign. The NEP exit polling project started conducting post-election voter surveys in 1976, President elect Jimmy Carter won 48% of the white vote during that election. Ever since, Democratic vote share has declined significantly. Walter Mondale had the lowest white voter share of any Democratic candidate prior to this election, receiving only 34% of the vote in 1984. Democrats rebounded significantly twice, with Bill Clinton winning 44% of the white vote in 1996 and President Obama winning 43% of the white vote in 2008.
Hillary Clinton, however, performed at a level even lower than Walter Mondale, receiving 32% of the white vote (in spite of the NEP exit poll data that suggested Hillary Clinton won 37%, that high of a voter share would equal 70,015,004 total votes when factoring in the minority voting percentages for the candidates, which is 4,170,394 votes over her actual total. Statistical modeling adjustments for the variance reflect her actual voter share as 32%, equaling 29,275,777 white voters.
Even with this reduced share of white voters, Hillary Clinton still won the overall popular vote by 2.1% and 2.864 million votes over Donald Trump. She also was within 77,000 votes of winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in spite of the significant white voter rejection (Trump won 61% of the white vote, second to Ronald Reagan’s winning 66% of the white vote in the 1984 landslide over Walter Mondale and the combined 68% of the white vote not selecting the Democratic candidate is the highest level of white voter rejection in modern political history). So what does this tell us about the impact of Hillary’s defeat and the path forward for Democrats and the white American voting consumer audience:
1. Donald Trump’s near record victory margin with white voters and the overall record white vote against the Democratic candidate was only enough to win the Presidency by a narrow margin of 77,000 votes in three key states (Michigan 0.22%, Wisconsin 0.76% and Pennsylvania 0.72%), while losing key electoral battleground states of Virginia (-5.32%), Colorado (-4.91%), Nevada (-2.42%), while closing the margin of defeat in tradition Republican states (Texas 9%, Arizona 3.5% and Georgia 5.1%) to single digits. Clinton also only lost Florida by 1.14% and North Carolina by 3.66% of the votes cast. This is a razor thin margin for Trump going forward, requiring an even bigger share of the white voting population to shift to Trump in 2020.
2. The anti-President elect voting coalition — Can Democrats build through their current voting consumer base and regain some of the voter share that went to third party candidates? Candidates not named Donald Trump won 73,982,422 votes, equaling 54.02% of the total ballots cast for President. That’s significant rejection of the current President elect but needs to be harnessed immediately into tangible state level momentum for 2018 and 2020. This is especially important in the 30 states that Donald Trump won, in which 47.32% of the ballots were cast against Trump, even though Hillary Clinton only won 41.89% of those votes. Conversely, in the 20 states and District of Columbia won by Hillary Clinton, the rejection of Trump was more pronounced, with 62.79% of the voters voting for non-Trump candidates and Hillary Clinton winning 56.04%.
3. What will and should the Democratic Party do with white voters? This election has produced significant angst among Democratic party leaders about the rejection that they received from white voters. The worse part for Democratic leaders and what’s making Republican leaders excited is the shift among blue collar labor whites, non-college educated whites, rural whites and white men over the age of 30. While this shift has been trending over the past 10 Presidential elections, there was a greater flight of these white voters than expected, especially when considering the fact that they were voting for a white candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket for the first time since the 2004 Presidential election. So, the current narrative is that the Democratic Party must work to rebuild and win these voters back to not only take back the White House, but regain state governments and Congressional seats. While there is logic and value in this argument, there is something missing in this story, the 29 million white voters who did select Hillary Clinton. Who are they, why did they vote for her and can you build with these voter consumer groups more effectively than those that have rejected your brand?
4. What about the faith based voter? Much is made about the white voter faith based coalition that helped Donald Trump and has fueled the Republican voter base over the past 32 years, Evangelical Christians, Catholics and Mormons have grown in their support with the Republican Party. In this past election, their support of Donald Trump reached record levels, 81% of Evangelical whites and 60% of white Catholics, while achieving 61% of the Mormon vote. The stereotype is that the Republican Party is the party of faith and the Democratic Party is the part of the faithless. This is very inaccurate depiction. The Democratic Party’s faith based voter consist of white Christians (Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and other Protestant non-evangelical religions) Jewish American voters along with Americans of color & faith
a. (African American voters of faith (70% are Christian, 7% are Muslim and 8% are of other faiths), Asian voters of faith (majority of the overall voter population are either Christian or Muslim), Latino voters of faith (over 86% are Christian), Arabic voters (over 90% are Muslim or Christian). Spirituality is also important and significant among Democratic majorities in the Native American and Pacific Islander voting consumer groups.
This coalition of Christians of color, white non-Evangelical Christians, Jewish, Muslim and other faiths provides a significant spiritual counterbalance for Democrats to build upon and for Republicans to determine why these voters reject their message in such overwhelming terms.
The Democratic Party’s new white voter coalition
In looking at these four takeaways, I keep coming back to an interesting path, who are the white Democratic voters that chose Hillary Clinton, the share of her overall coalition and does the Democratic Party need to reach out to the white voters that they lost. My analysis shows the following:
1. Who are the 29 million white voters that supported Hillary Clinton? There are some key characteristics about the Democrats new white voter coalition.
a. 64% of them are women,
b. 44% are ages 44 and younger,
c. 67% have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
d. They live in urban cities or counties with an urban central city
e. they are white non-Evangelical Christians (Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and other Protestant non-evangelical religions) or not religious
f. They primarily live in the either the Far West, New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.
g. Among the white women Democrats, they are likely to be unmarried, not have children, be from the late edge of the Boomer generation (born between 1960–1964), Generation X or Millennial, and have a bachelor’s degree or higher
h. Among white male Democratic voters, they are likely to have a Master’s degree or higher, be unmarried and live in urban cities/counties
i. They are not married, live with a partner and/or not likely to have children
j. Within the white LGBTQ community, the majority are Democratic voters
So, the question begs to be asked, can you win future elections as Democrats with this base, combined their non-white voter community, which went overwhelming anti-Donald Trump with a combined 82.9% of the ballots cast by voters in this election to 17.1% for Donald Trump.
I believe the answer is yes, they can and yes they must. America is continuing to make an evolutionary shift and the shift within the Democratic Party is one that demonstrates inclusion, uniqueness and continual growth opportunities. The New White Democratic voter base is emblematic of this. They have embraced living in diverse communities and returning from the rural lands of America to the urban cores. They are more willing to openly partner with, live on the same block, be active in PTO’s and engage in community activities with persons of color and persons of spiritual faiths that aren’t white Evangelical Christians. This base is younger (only 16% are older than the age of 65) and more educated then their Republican white voter counterparts (Only 11% are non-college educated white males).
They are also better equip to engage and thrive in the current and future economic expansion that has been a part of the current economic recovery, which correlates with their geographical living preference and the counties that Hillary Clinton won, which generate 65% of the economic activity in the country. Additionally, there are another 6,956,933 younger white voters who will be aging into the voting population by 2020 versus an expected 7,048,854 white eligible voters who may die prior to the next election (via trending mortality rates by ethnicity). Those lost voters due to mortality typically are in the age clusters of 50 and older and live in rural, exburbs and non-urban counties, which will dampen the white Republican voting base numbers. One additional dynamic about this voting base, the younger white voting generation is trending back to the Democratic Party, while their older counterparts have moved away.
While the white voting community has The Democratic Party has an opportunity to embrace and grow through this new voting consumer model. A couple of reasons why include:
k. By the 2020 election cycle, the overall white Non-Hispanic, Jewish, Arabic, Some Other ethnicity ID adult population, will decrease to 60.4% of the overall adult population (66.25% if you add the Jewish and Some Other ethnicity ID adults back into the white adult total). By 2020, the combined potential of the white Democratic coalition voters could comprise 58.6 million white adults (primarily from the demographic groups mentioned above and equally 37.6% of the potential white Non-Hispanic, Jewish, Arabic, Some Other ethnicity ID adult population).
Looking at things from an objective and dispassionate perspective, the Democratic Party has a question to answer, who is our white voter base, blue collar, older, rural, non-college educated or urban, college educated, female voters? While all of the current narrative is pushing towards a need to regain the blue collar white voter base, the data reflects a different path for Democrats with a new coalition of white voters who also have a greatly likelihood to embrace the nonwhite Democratic voter base and the new American economy.