The sluggish economy favors a Republican presidential win come
November, but some on the left argue that votes from a growing
minority population will put President Obama over the top in the
race for 270 electoral-college votes. Further, as the argument
goes, these long-term demographic shifts could usher in a permanent
left-of-center majority.
Exhibit one in this argument is the recent Center for American
Progress monograph, “The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics
in the 2012 Presidential Election.”
Authors Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin acknowledge that the Tea
Party wave in the 2010 elections suggests that the American people
reacted poorly to the explosion of spending, the loss of jobs, and
the extremely weak recovery under Obama. But they argue nonetheless
that the growing number of minority voters—and thus declining
percentage of white voters—will allow Obama to win re-election.
The study looks at national numbers, but also at the 50
state-by-state electoral-college contests. Teixeira and Halpin
write, “The heart of the Obama coalition is the minority vote. In
2008, Obama received 80 percent support from communities of color,
who made up 26 percent of all voters.” However, those numbers are
changing:
The 2010 minority share of the population was 36 percent, up
more than five percentage points over 2000. That’s a rate of
increase of around half a point a year over the decade. Applying
that rate to the four years between 2008 and 2012 indicates that
the minority share of voters should be about 28 percent in 2012, up
from 26 percent in 2008.
It’s true that some demographic changes are baked into the cake.
And just as one cannot step twice into the same stream, candidates
must be prepared to appeal to a new electorate every two, four, and
six years.
Republicans interested in winning elections have noticed that
Hispanics have grown from 3.8 percent of voters in 1992, to 5.4
percent in 2000, and 7.4 percent in 2008. Of the 4 million children
born in the United States last year, fully 25 percent were
Hispanic. (Which means that 17 years from now, a quarter of newly
eligible voters will be Hispanic.)
But the demographics that truly matter are those that drive
voting decisions, and, unlike race, many of them are mutable.
Indeed they can be changed by politicians changing laws. One can,
over time, recreate the electorate one faces each election
year.
Second Amendment Voters: Half of American
households own guns. Almost 20 million Americans hunt. Since 1987,
when Florida passed its “shall issue” concealed carry law, which
bars the government from withholding carry permits from individuals
who meet the requirements, fully 41 states have adopted similar
rules. As a result, an estimated 7 million Americans now have
concealed carry permits. Concealed carry laws have changed the
electorate and created more voters—gun voters—who are increasingly
sensitive of their Second Amendment rights.
The left understood this process years ago. They passed
restrictions on hunting that have driven a decline in the number of
hunters with each generation. The NRA response has been to push for
legislation making it easier for first time hunters and expanding
hunting opportunities. Each team understands it is struggling to
create an electorate in its image years and decades from now.
Home-Schoolers: Twenty years ago home-schooling
was illegal almost everywhere, but today it is legal and mainstream
in all 50 states. Mike Farris, who helped organize this grassroots
movement through the Home School Legal Defense Association and the
Parental Rights Organization, estimates there are 2.5 million
home-schooled children and 1.4 million home-schooling parents. Over
the past 20 years, about 4 million parents have home-schooled some
portion of their kids’ educations. Ten million voting adults were
home-schooled at some point.
Just like concealed carry, the home-schooling movement needed,
first, legal recognition and protection and, second, peer approval
to grow. The more Americans who know a friend or family member who
has home-schooled, the more likely they are to do so as well.
Charter Schoolers: The parents of the 10
percent of American students who attend private schools or charter
schools know that the Democrat party is owned by the public-school
teachers unions. No surprise then that one of President Obama’s
first acts was to destroy the fledgling school-choice voucher
system used by 3,000 students in Washington, D.C. While he sent his
two daughters to the fancy and expensive ($32,000 a year) Sidwell
Friends School, he crushed the law passed by Republicans that
allowed low-income, predominantly black parents in the district to
leave the failing—and expensive to taxpayers ($27,000 per
year)—public schools.
It is no coincidence, comrade, that states with Republican
governors and legislators are, step by step, expanding parental
choice. A handful of states have programs that allow businesses and
individuals to receive tax credits for funding school-choice
scholarships, which now benefit tens of thousands of students.
Direct vouchers are available, though limited in terms of family
eligibility, in 11 states. Last year, Indiana’s Mitch Daniels
signed into law the nation’s largest voucher program, making around
55 percent of Hoosiers eligible. The number of vouchers is limited
to 7,500 the first year, and 15,000 the second, but the limit is
completely removed in year three. Also last year, Wisconsin
increased the cap on its voucher program in Milwaukee and extended
it to Racine.
In March, the Arizona legislature approved the expansion of its
education savings accounts—currently available to special-needs
students—to those in failing public schools, children of U.S.
military members, and gifted students. Meanwhile, the Louisiana
House passed Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal establishing a voucher
program for low- and middle-income families in underperforming
public schools—fully 70 percent of all public schools. It is
expected to pass the Senate, and might have done so already by the
time you are reading this magazine.
School choice changes the interests of parents, teachers, and,
over time, young voters freed from state control. Every
private-school teacher hired is one fewer public-school teacher
forced to pay union dues and subject to political pressure every
day in the same direction.
Entrepreneurs and the Self-Employed: Obama and
the Democrats have intensified their efforts to reduce the number
of new small businesses and entrepreneurs. Yes, they demonize them
in word. But their teeth show in their tax increases on “the rich,”
which are deliberately targeted at the 30 million small businesses
that pay not the corporate income tax, but the personal income tax:
subchapter S corporations, partnerships, and the self-employed.
In June 2007, there were 10 million self-employed Americans.
That number was driven down to 8.6 million in July 2011. And things
are getting worse. The tsunami of new regulations, Obamacare, and
threatened tax hikes mean that Americans, per capita, are starting
new businesses with employees just half as fast as they did 30
years ago. Looking at raw numbers: Americans started 563,324
businesses with employees in 1977 and only 403,765 in 2009.
Fewer small businesses, fewer entrepreneurs…fewer Republicans.
This is no accident, comrade.
Government Workers: Rasmussen polling data show
government workers are more likely to vote Democrat, and as their
pay and length of tenure increase, so does that party loyalty. Not
surprisingly, the stimulus packages passed by Obama and Reid used
federal tax dollars to subsidize union-dues-paying,
Democrat-voting, state and local government employees.
Investors: Rasmussen polling also shows that Americans who have
at least $5,000 invested in the stock market through, for instance,
Individual Retirement Accounts or defined-benefit pension plans,
are 18 percent more likely to vote Republican. Utah’s state senator
Dan Liljenquist wrote and won passage of legislation that requires
all state and local government employees hired after July 1, 2011,
to have a defined-contribution plan. The state will contribute 10
percent of the employee’s income to a 401(k), or 12 percent for
police and firemen, and there will therefore be no newly created
unfunded liabilities. (And fewer newly created Democrats; personal
savings breeds Republicans.)
No surprise that Obama pushes higher taxes on saving and
investment, and the confiscation of half your estate through the
death tax.
Ineligible and Dead Voters: One can also change the electorate
by expanding it to include the departed: both those who have moved
to other jurisdictions but whose names remain on voter lists, and
those who have actually died and yet can cast ballots through the
living, if no one is watching. Republicans have enacted voter ID
laws in several states to limit opportunities for voter fraud, but
Obama’s “Justice Department” is working hard to overturn them.
Voter integrity efforts change the nature of the electorate in one
direction; voter fraud moves it in the other.
Following the ideologically embarrassing workers’ revolt against
the East German paradise in 1953, Bertolt Brecht recommended that
the Communists elect themselves a new people. In free societies,
over time elected officials can in fact create an electorate more
sympathetic to their views. The smart Republican and Democrat
leaders have been doing this for years.
The 2012 elections will determine not only the direction of
America, but the very nature of its people.
