With just two weeks left until the 2012 election and with the race extremely tight turnout and demographics will be the determining factors of who will be President in 2012. In the 2004 election the demographics were white voters making up 77 percent of the electorate, black voters 11, Hispanic 8, and all others 4. A total of 122,349,000 people voted in that election and of course George Bush won by 3 percent of the vote.
The next election 2008 the demographics had changed dramatically with only 74 percent of the electorate being white, 13 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent other nationalities. In that election with over 80 percent of the non white vote and 43 percent of the white vote going for Barack Obama he won easily with 365 electoral votes and almost a ten million advantage in the popular vote. It was a definite fact that demographic support by the President led to his landslide victory. The fact that the demographics had shifted by three percent or a total of over 3 million vote advantage for the President was the huge determining factor. 131,407,000 people participated in the 2012 election and increase of 6.8 percent from 2004. This election was the turning point in American history of how demographics will then and forever play a huge role in how elections and American policy will be determined.
Now comes 2012 and how much demographics have changed since 2008 and who votes will again determine who will be President of the United States. Will the demographics again shift three points? There is no reason to believe they want and for the assumptions to be made in the last part of this article we are gonna believe that they will. The reasons are there are now 24 millions Latinos registered to vote in this nation. This makes up about 12 percent of the electorate eligible to vote. Latino turnout will be huge in determining the winner in 2012 and there is plenty of justification that the Latino population is energized to vote in this election. There is also no reason to believe that the black vote will fall from levels of 2012 so with these two groups energized it is hard to see where there will be any type of lack of enthusiasm which many polls seem to want to suggest today.
So now let us determine how this election might play out and what the actual popular vote totals will be for the candidates. In 2004 the white percentage of the electorate was 77 percent, In 2008 it dropped to 74 percent, so there is no reason especially with the Hispanic voting age population growing by 50 thousand a month that it will not drop again. We are determining in this exercise that it will drop three percent again and be about 71 percent of the total voting population. The black voting population grew from 11 percent to 13 percent from 2004 to 2008 so it seems logical that it could jump two percent again to 15 percent. The Latino vote only grew from 8 to 9 percent in the years 2004 to 2008 so we'll only let it grow one more point to 10 percent which may or may not turn out to be a huge mistake in this hypothesis. There is plenty of evidence that it could grow to 11 or 12 but there is no mistake that the total will be ten percent.
The people who actually voted in 2004 increased by 6.8 percent in 2008. We'll assume that it will grow that much again and thus we should pass the 140 million mark in actual voters this 2012 election. The total with the same increase from 2008 until today would give us 140,342,000 participating voters. Of this electorate 99,642,820 of the voters would be white or 71 percent of the electorate. 21,051,300 will be black voters, 14,034,200 will be Latino voters, and 5,613,680 will be other ethnic groups. We will now use the actual percentages for each candidate that the polls of today indicate for each candidate. This will give us a hypothetical popular vote which of course will all be determined if the demographic percentages prove to be correct when the final vote is cast.
Mitt Romney seems to be polling about 58 percent of the white vote and were gonna give him 62 percent not even considering all the other candidates that could take a few percent of those votes away. If Mitt Romney gets 62 percent of the white vote his total will be 61,778,548 votes. The polls say he is getting less than five percent of the black vote but we will give him five percent. His vote total for black voters is 1,052,565. Some Latino polls have shown Obama getting 75 percent of the Latino vote but were gonna cut that to seventy percent. If Romney gets 30 percent of the Latino vote his total is 4,210,260 votes. In the other groups Democrats in the past have polled about 64 percent overall but we'll make it 60 to 40 in this voting analysis. If Mitt Romney gets 40 percent of the other vote his total is 2,245,472. This brings us to a Mitt Romney total vote of 69,286,845.
President Barack Obama has in most polls getting about 38 percent of the white vote. I have seem polls as high as 40 and others as low as 36 so we'll say 38 percent which is the average and certainly a number he must have to win the popular vote. The white vote for President Obama would be 37,864,271 total votes. He is polling 95 percent of the black votes although I have seem polls that give him 90 and some that give him slightly more than 95. I think 95 was the number in 2008 and believe it will be that high again. This gives the President 19,998,735 total votes to his total. The Latino vote has been polling high sixties up to 75 percent and were settling on 70 percent or 9,823,940 total votes. The other ethnic groups in the past two elections have went to Democrats by about 63 percent of the vote and were giving President Obama 60 percent or 3,368,208 total votes. This would bring the President's final vote total to 71,055,154 total votes.
If these demographic percentage hold true then President Obama wins the popular vote by 1,295,224 votes and the percentages would be 50.62 percent for the President and 49.38 percent for Mitt Romney. If the demographics change as in the past two elections and voter participation stays the same then Obama wins a close popular vote. If they increase even more his way and there is more minority voter participation then that goes way up. If white voters claim the same percentages as in 2008 of the total vote and the minority vote is less it goes the other way.
One thing is for certain this is a very close election and turnout will determine the outcome. If Latino participation rises to 60 percent of registered voters and black voters still reach 65 percent of registered voters. It is very hard to see how Mitt Romney wins the popular vote or the election. Turnout is the key factor and in two weeks we'll see how that goes.
