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Sunday, November 18, 2018

The 2018 election, a postscript

I decided to take another look at this week's post and do some research on the 2016 election to see what had changed.  The results are very interesting and seem to show that the whole country is moving in the same direction--but a huge X factor remains. The first thing the 2016 figures confirm is the high turnout.  133 million people voted for President, and 113 million voted last year.  That is unprecedented in recent history.

I will put off a thorough demographic analysis until later, but let's just look at basic race and gender breakdowns.  In 2016 Trump beat Clinton  52-41% among men (a full 7% of voters either voted for third parties or refused to answer), and Clinton won 54%-41% among women.   This year men favored Republicans by 51-47, and women favored them 59-40.  Essentially, Democrats picked up the entire third party or didn't answer vote among men, gaining a full 6% of them, while adding 5% of women.  In other words, Democratic gains among men and women were about equal.

As for race, whites voted for Trump, 57%-37%, while nonwhites voted for Clinton, 74%-21%.  (I'll provide a fuller breakdown later.)  This year  whites voted Republican by 54%-44% and nonwhites voted for Democrats by 76%-22%.  Democrats gained a full 7% among whites--71% of the electorate--and 2% among nonwhites, 29%.  Whether you were white or nonwhite, male or female, the odds that you would vote Democratic went up.  There isn't much reason to think that that will change during the next two years.

2 comments:

Bozon said...

Professor
Thanks for this more technical breakdown. it keeps a lot of people focussed on these issues and statistics.

My own view is this:

Unfortunately, how Americans vote, re white black, or white latino, or male female, will matter less and less and less to how politics acts on domestic matters or on international relations, going forward.

How Americans vote, and how their votes break down, frankly, already matters very little anymore to the parties' deep pocket sponsors, because they have already won, and will matter even less soon.

Under what I have called liberal convergolescence, these distinctions in American electoral demographics and politics, whether federal, state, or local, are already now irrelevant. If Democrats were to win big soon, the direction of global convergolescence would not change a jot or a tittle. If Republicans stay in power, the exact same situation and trends will continue unabated.

All the best

CrocodileChuck said...

What Bozon said.