Every election cycle, Democrats are convinced that they are invincible and on an inevitable path toward a permanent majority. Supposedly, the majority of the country will vote for Democrats if they can just be turned out to vote. 2020 once again showed that idea is wrong.
It is the juvenile analysis you hear every year, often from both the Right and the Left. It goes something like this: Republicans are all old and white, so, as the country becomes less white and as the older population dies off, they are replaced with younger voters and minorities who will vote for Democrats. Thus, the argument is that “demographics is destiny.”
More amateurish pundits such as Jennifer Rubin are then to conclude that soon, Republicans will never win much of anything again. After all, voting preferences are inseparable from race and hard-wired into our genetics, at least in Rubin’s reality. But most people aren’t racially motivated robots, and the demographic doom facing the GOP has been greatly exaggerated.
Black men have been trending toward the Republican Party for years now. In 2008, 5% of black men voted for John McCain for president. Mitt Romney landed 11%, and Trump has increased that to 13% and now 18%. Trump won 40% of Hispanics in Texas, a state that is supposed to be the harbinger of the demographic wave that will sweep Democrats to their permanent majority. But Democrats lost in Texas the same as they have for years.
But what about the ascendant youth, those young liberal voters who will replace the older GOP voters as the years go by? In 2008, 18-29-year-old voters went for Barack Obama by 34 points. Now, that age group fits solidly into the 30-44 age group, which only broke for Biden by 7 points.
Democrats were supposed to own high turnout elections. Yet, this election had the most votes ever cast, and the most likely outcome is a narrow GOP Senate, a narrow Democratic House, and a narrow Biden victory, while Republicans cruised in elections for state legislatures.
This electoral fever dream is why Democrats complain about the system every time they lose an election. But, as this election has shown, there is no demographic tidal wave on the horizon. As the next round of lazy demographic takes are trotted out, Republicans will continue to make gains with the very groups that are supposed to consign them to a permanent minority, while Democrats complain that the pesky system is holding them back.
