Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton will officially enter the presidential race Saturday with a built-in victory edge from the increase in minority, “nonwhite,” voters and a drop in truly independent voters, according to top elections experts.
“Given a normal presidential election turnout pattern, the Democratic nominee should have a slight edge simply because voters who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party will probably outnumber voters who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party,” according to Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster, of Emory University.
Hillary Clinton speaking last week. AP Photo
“Moreover, the Democratic margin in ‘leaned’ party identification could be pushed up a bit by the expected increase in the nonwhite share of the electorate between 2014 and 2016,” they added in a report for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Their study finds that the nation has reached a partisan high, and voters on either side are not open to considering candidates from the other party.
“These exceptionally high levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting combined with increasing reluctance to openly identify oneself as a party supporter reflect a fundamental change in the way Americans relate to the Democratic and Republican parties — the rise of negative partisanship. A growing number of Americans have been voting against the opposing party rather than for their own party,” they found in studying recent voter behavior.
And the old effort to win the election by wooing pure independents won’t work, they add, because those voters are drying up.
“Pure independents, voters with no partisan preference at all, will probably make up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and if 2016 is like other recent elections, they will end up splitting their votes fairly evenly between the parties,” wrote Abramowitz and Webster.
The bottom line: It will be another close race, likely decided by the very same battleground states as the last four elections.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
