It’s no secret that the Republican Party is somewhat lacking in diversity. While it’s true that Republican voters are not all the same—there’s white evangelical Christians, white wealthy businessmen, and white neoconservatives, among others—they don’t exactly reflect the full spectrum of viewpoints and demographics among the populace of these here United States.
Heck, even the party itself has figured this out. In a painful bout of forced self-awareness, Republicans performed an “autopsy” on their 2012 election failure. From that document’s introduction:
Public perception of the Party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.
The report went on to cite five Republican governors as successful examples to emulate, including a trio of presidential losers—Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, and John Kasich—and one who is now presiding over the wreckage of what can only be described as a failed state, Kansas’ Sam Brownback. It also included dozens upon dozens of recommendations. Strangely, “Nominate a raging bigot with autocratic tendencies for president in 2016” seems to have been removed in an early draft.
But back to the topic at hand: Voters in Democratic primaries generally reflect the ethnic composition of the state they’re voting in. Voters in Republican primaries? They’re almost as white as a Leave It To Beaver episode. Join us below for a peek at all the states.
The 2016 data
The graph above compares the share of white votes in the exit polls with census numbers from 2014. If a primary has the exact same share of white voters as the census for the state as a whole, the point will be sitting on the green line.
It’s immediately clear that Democratic primaries more or less follow the green line. Republican primaries, on the other hand, seem magnetically attracted to the upper bound like a first-timer on the ice rink clinging to the wall.
To be fair, Republicans in some states are inching toward diversity. In Texas, for example, now a minority-majority state, only four out of five Republican primary voters were white!
A few of the blue Democratic points are well below the green line. These would be Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, states where the Democratic primary electorate is dominated by African Americans.
Wait, that math is funny …
Shouldn’t the share of white people in the general population be some sort of average of the shares in the Democratic and Republican primary electorates? How do these numbers add up?
Simply put, there’s another huge pool of residents not shown on the graph above who don’t vote in primaries, many of whom aren’t even eligible to vote, such as young people, non-citizens, and prisoners. The fact that the racial demographics of the Democratic primary electorate roughly approximate the population as a whole is coincidental—and, of course, it doesn’t always hit the mark, as in Alabama.
Coincidental or not, there’s a point to be made here: Democratic primaries benefit from the voices of people who look like America. Republican primaries do not.
About Iowa and New Hampshire
On the far right of the chart, where the Democratic electorate is exceptionally white, is where you find Iowa and New Hampshire. From right to left, the most white electorates are Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa. Remind us again why Iowa and New Hampshire get first shot at winnowing our candidates?
In any case, amazingly, Iowa’s Democratic primary electorate is less white than all but five Republican primary electorates for which exit poll data is available.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
How do things compare to eight years ago? Well, first of all, turnout is mostly down in Democratic primaries, but up in Republican primaries. It’s possible that turnout changed to a different extent among different racial groups. Bearing that in mind, the chart below compares the white share of both parties’ primary electorates between 2008 and 2016:
On average, Republican primary electorates have been unchanged over the past eight years. Democratic primary electorates have become less white, as has the country’s population as a whole. Calling their examination of their 2012 debacle an "autopsy” might have been even more on the nose than the GOP intended.