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Daniel McGraw writes that based on their demographic characteristics the Democratic and Republican parties face two very different futures. There’s been much written about how millennials are becoming a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, but there’s been much less attention paid to one of the biggest get-out-the-vote challenges for the Republican Party heading into the next presidential election: The Republican Party voter is old—and getting older and far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections. By combining presidential election exit polls with mortality rates per age group from the U.S. Census Bureau, McGraw calculated that, of the 61 million who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, about 2.75 million will be dead by the 2016 election. About 2.3 million of President Barack Obama’s voters have died too but that leaves a big gap in between, a difference of roughly 453,000 in favor of the Democrats. “I’ve never seen anyone doing any studies on how many dead people can’t vote,” laughs William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in demographic studies. “I’ve seen studies on how many dead people do vote. The old Daley Administration in Chicago was very good at that.”
Frey points out that, since Republicans are getting whiter and older, replacing the voters that leave this earth with young ones is essential for them to be competitive in presidential elections. "Millennials (born 1981 to 1997) now are larger in numbers than baby boomers ([born] 1946 to 1964), and how they vote will make the big difference. And the data says that if Republicans focus on economic issues and stay away from social ones like gay marriage, they can make serious inroads with millennials.” Exit polling indicates that millennials have split about 65-35 in favor of the Dems in the past two elections. If that split holds true in 2016, Democrats will have picked up a two million vote advantage among first-time voters. These numbers combined with the voter death data puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage going into 2016.
(Score: 1) by albert on Thursday May 21 2015, @05:16AM
It is a given that first-past-the-post voting will result in exactly two significant parties with near-equal power.
Suppose one party moves away from the center. The other party can move in the same direction, thus winning all elections. Obviously no party would be dumb enough to allow this, so as we see today there are two parties with little room between them.
Suppose the demographics change, moving the center away from the parties. The winning party can now safely afford to move in the direction of that shift. They will do so because most of their people are way over on that side, and the other party will follow. Very rarely, they don't move fast enough or well enough, causing massive upheaval, but the end result is the same: two parties in the middle. By "massive upheaval" I mean something like the losing party (or a replacing successor) jumping right over the party that initially benefits from the demographic changes. This is very possible because political concerns aren't really 1-axis; both parties are doomed to have internal ideological stress that helps to make these rare realignments possible.
So no, the Republican party isn't doomed. The current platform may well be doomed, as was the Democrat's old pro-slavery platform. Someday you might find yourself an enthusiastic Republican.