Sunday, November 5, 2017

Almost one in four of Pres. Obama’s 2012 white working-class supporters defected from the Democrats in 2016-NY Times, March 28, 2017, Nate Cohn...If Republicans can't make gains among white Northerners...it just really won't matter-NY Times, Nov. 20, 2014, Nate Cohn

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Nov. 2014, NY Times analysis by Nate Cohn: "If the Republicans can't make gains among white Northerners...it just won’t really matter."...


 
 

"Improving among white Northern voters is the core of the GOP route to victory, regardless of whether the party makes gains with Hispanic voters....

If the Republicans can't make gains among white Northerners...it just won’t really matter.... 

The Hispanic vote cannot single-handedly determine the presidency, as one could be forgiven for believing based on post-2012 election commentary."...


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"Almost one in four of President Obama’s 2012 white working-class supporters defected from the Democrats in 2016."

Added: 3/28/17, "A 2016 Review: Turnout Wasn’t the Driver of Clinton’s Defeat," NY Times, Nate Cohn
 
"It’s clear that large numbers of white, working-class voters shifted from the Democrats to Mr. Trump. Over all, almost one in four of President Obama’s 2012 white working-class supporters defected from the Democrats in 2016, either supporting Mr. Trump or voting for a third-party candidate." 

Additional NY Times links on this topic: 

12/23/2016, "How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump,"

How Did Donald Trump Win Over So Many Obama Voters?" NY Times

From Washington Post:

11/9/2016 "Donald Trump delivered on his promise to flip the Democrats' electoral stronghold on the industrial midwest....Across swing states--and others previously thought to be safe for Democrats--Trump colored dozens of counties red that hadn’t gone Republican in decades."  

Related on Pennsylvania: 

3/28/17: NY Times analysis wonders how Trump made such big gains in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, beating Hillary 69-26. A clue: "Schuylkill County is located in the heart of the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania." Subhead in article, "The Trump-Obama Vote"]

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Added: Michael Moore says many Trump voters elected Obama twice so can't be racist:

11/11/2016, "Michael Moore: They Voted For A Guy Named ‘Hussein’ Twice, Trump Voters Are Not Racist," Daily Caller, Rachel Stoltzfoos

"Michael Moore disputed the notion that all the people who voted for President-elect Donald Trump are racist Friday, reiterating the fact that millions of them voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

“They’re not racist,” Moore said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein. That’s the America you live in.”

Moore was pushing back against another panelist who said “deep racial animus” at the heart of the country was behind Trump’s win.

“What I’m trying to get at, is at the heart of this country is some deep racial animus that animates the very communities we’re trying to lift up,” Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the African American department at Princeton University told the panel.

“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough replied: “I have to repeat it again because it’s maddening. People who live by data should die by data, and the data according to Nate Cohn of the New York Times says this, and let those who have ears to hear, hear: The very people who helped elect Barack Obama president of the United States twice just elected in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Donald J. Trump. It’s the data.

Moore took it from there.You have to accept that millions of people who voted for Barack Obama, some of them once, some of them twice, changed their minds this time. They’re not racist. They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein. That’s the America you live in.”

Rammesh Ponnuru echoed Moore and Scarborough’s sentiment in a Bloomberg piece, taking issue with the notion that Trump won because White Americans are racist.

“Against that theory, I’d note, first, that Trump won several states that voted twice for our first black president,” he wrote. The early exit polls suggest Trump won a tenth of voters who approved of President Barack Obama’s job performance. If that’s close to true, it means he wouldn’t have won without those voters.”

He continued:..."Claims that bigotry are a major motivation for Trump voters have a thin evidentiary basis: They classify conservative views that aren’t necessarily rooted in racial hostility as ‘racial resentment,’ they ignore the decline in bigotry over time, and they overgeneralize about a very large and in some ways diverse group of people.”"


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Added: NY Times, 11/20/2016: After 2012 election Republicans mistakenly concluded that they had maximized their support from white voters and needed to reach out to Hispanics to win in 2016. The theory that "missing white voters" hurt Romney isn't supported by data: "The white voters who stayed home in 2012 were much more likely to be registered Democrats."...

6/9/2016, "There Are More White Voters Than People Think. That’s Good News for Trump." NY Times, Upshot, Nate Cohn 

"Even if the missing  white voters [in 2012] were disproportionately Republican, a return to previous turnout levels wouldn’t have been anywhere near enough to get Mr. Romney over the top. There were far fewer missing white voters in the battleground states than there were nationally.

There weren’t close to enough of them to flip the outcome in key states.... 

The Democratic Dependence on White Working-Class Voters 

The larger number of white working-class voters implies that Democrats are far more dependent on winning white working-class voters, and therefore more vulnerable to a populist candidate like Mr. Trump. 

Over all, 34 percent of Mr. Obama’s supporters were white voters without a college degree, compared with 25 percent in the exit polls, according to an Upshot statistical model that integrated census data, actual results and 15,000 interviews from various pre-election surveys. The model yields a full alternative to the exit polls that assume an older, whiter electorate like the one depicted by the census. (For those interested in the details about our estimates, we’ve written a technical sidebar.)... 

Mr. Obama’s dependence among white voters might seem surprising in light of the 2012 postelection consensus. But it won’t be surprising if you think just a little further back — to the pre-election story line. Mr. Obama’s advantage heading into the election was thought to be a “Midwestern Firewall” — a big edge in Midwestern battlegrounds where white working-class voters supported the auto bailout and were skeptical of Mr. Romney, who was criticized for his time at Bain Capital.... 

In most Northern states, white voters shifted left. In the South, the opposite happened. 

Outside the South, he [Obama] won 46 percent of white voters, even running ahead of Mr. Kerry and Al Gore in earlier elections.... 

In counties with mostly white residents across the North, President Obama improved on John Kerry’s 2004 performance.... 

The data implies that demographic shifts played a somewhat smaller role in Mr. Obama’s re-election than the post-election narrative suggested.. Even if the electorate were as old and as white as it was in 2004, Mr. Obama would have won, because of the gains he made among white voters in states like New Mexico, Colorado and Iowa. 

Hispanic voters played only a modest role in Mr. Romney’s defeat. They cost him Florida--a must-win state for Republicans, but also the closest contest. Elsewhere, Mr. Obama would have easily survived even if Mr. Romney had equaled George W. Bush’s 2004 share of Hispanic voters. 

All of this is good news for a Republican who intends to win with greater strength among white working-class voters, like Mr. Trump. 

There is a downside for him....Mr. Obama’s strength among Northern white voters raises doubts about whether the Republicans, including Mr. Trump, can assume that white working-class voters are receptive to conservative candidates. ...........

The best case for Mr. Trump is that white Northerners reluctantly backed Mr. Obama because Mr. Romney was successfully caricatured as a rapacious plutocrat.... 

The Missing-White-Voter Theory. There has long been a notion that Mr. Romney was hurt by “missing white voters,” those who voted in 2008 but skipped the 2012 presidential election. And the G.O.P.’s hope is that Mr. Trump could benefit with a surge of those Republican-leaning voters. But that view of 2012 is largely unsupported by the data. 

The decline in white turnout in 2012 was particularly marked among registered Democrats, according to data from Catalist. Republican turnout dropped a bit as well, but it was less than the drop among Democrats across every age cohort. And among voters over age 60, Republican turnout increased.... 

The missing white voters were far more likely to be registered Democrats, or to have participated in Democratic primaries, than the white voters who actually did turn out. 

Is it possible that some of these Democrats are actually ready to vote for Mr. Trump? Yes. But it’s a stretch to argue that a huge share of them would have voted for Mr. Romney or would vote for Mr. Trump, especially considering how young they are.... 

Even if the missing white voters were disproportionately Republican, a return to previous turnout levels wouldn’t have been anywhere near enough to get Mr. Romney over the top. There were far fewer missing white voters in the battleground states than there were nationally. There weren’t close to enough of them to flip the outcome in key states.... 

Can Trump Pull It Off? 

To win, Mr. Trump will need to make gains among white working-class voters. The earliest evidence, and polling this early can be quite inaccurate, suggests that he is doing that handily. So far, Mr. Trump leads Mrs. Clinton by 27 points among white voters without a degree, 58 percent to 31 percent, in the last six national surveys from major news organizations. In the final 2012 polls, Mr. Romney led by just 19 points among such voters, 58 percent to 39 percent, over Mr. Obama.
One of the big questions for Mr. Trump is whether his polling gains among that group, should they hold, will manifest themselves in battleground states. Mr. Romney’s national gains over Mr. Bush did him relatively little good: They were concentrated in the South and Appalachia, where they had little influence on the Electoral College. For now, it’s an open question whether Mr. Trump will make outsize gains in important states like Iowa, Ohio or Wisconsin, where he struggled in the primary season."...

He did:

Iowa: Trump 800,893, Hillary 653,669 (Trump +147,224)
Ohio: Trump 2,841,005, Hillary 2,394,164 (Trump +446,841)
Wisconsin: Trump 1,405,284, Hillary 1,382,536 (Trump +22,748) 

(continuing): "But the diversity of the country in itself does not rule out a victory for Mr. Trump."


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