In 2013, Micah Cohen wrote an interesting analysis of the demographics, titlled “Can Democrats Turn Texas and Arizona Blue by 2016?”. I think it is an interesting assessment of the demographics of the country and how this plays into the 2016 election. The main point of the article is that demographics in the country show a shift away from the “non-hispanic white” voter. However, the impact of this is not as great as it should be as the non-hispanic white voters have traditionally had much higher turn-out rates
the turnout rate that year was 66 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 50 percent for Hispanics, 65 percent for blacks and 47 percent for Asian-Americans.
This in turn lessens the impact of a demographic shift.
For example, if a Democrat wins 70 percent of the Hispanic vote (roughly what Mr. Obama earned nationally in 2012) but just half of eligible Hispanics go to the polls, then a Democrat gains a net of only two votes over their Republican opponent for every 10 new eligible Hispanic voters.
In Cohen’s assessment he applied 2016 demographics to the 2012 election and found that North Carolina would shift blue barely and all other states would have the same result. Obviously this would be sufficient for a Clinton victory but Arizona would remain in the Red column 53R-47D vs. 55R-45D previously as would Texas (55R vs 45 D as opposed to 58% vs 42% previously)
The wild card to change the numbers quicker is turnout
Democrats could speed the rate at which Arizona and Texas become competitive if they could accelerate the rise of Hispanic turnout rates. So far, however, Hispanic turnout has increased incrementally.
Key point is election is always about turn-out. No election is a carbon copy of the previous.. there are always different factors such as candidate’s identity, home state, issues of importance at the time, etc. Will a Trump candidacy galvanize the Hispanic voter turnout to surge and tilt the game? That would be a clear game changer. But, as this article shows.. it is a hard game to change- a lot of work needs to be done. Words alone don’t get voters to turn out.. ground work and action is needed