The Republican Party is watching in horror as Donald Trump hastens its electoral doom in the Western United States.
Republicans in Western states fear that Donald J. Trump could imperil their party for years to come in the country’s fastest-growing region as he repels a generation of Hispanics, Asians and younger voters who have been altering the electoral map.
Mr. Trump, with his insult-laden, culturally insensitive style of campaigning, is providing fuel for the demographic trends that are already reshaping the political composition of this once-heavily Republican territory. And now many Republicans are contemplating the possibility that states like Colorado or Nevada could soon become the next California: once competitive but now unwinnable in presidential contests.
The percentage of nonwhite voters is growing faster in the Western U.S. than in the rest of the country, with minorities such as Hispanics and Asians now accounting for 30 percent of the voting-age population in Arizona, Nevada and recently, Colorado. As was widely reported at the time, the GOP’s own post-mortem after the 2012 Election expressly singled out the party’s failure to reach out to Hispanic and Latino and other minority voters (as well as younger voters) as potentially fatal to its existential future.
Predictably, the Republican Party instead opted to double down on its race-baiting, fielding primary candidates who desperately sought to outdo each other with their attacks on Latinos and Hispanics, the fastest growing voting demographic in the country. Ultimately they settled on Donald Trump, who had the audacity to propose what the other GOP stalwarts had only hinted at—mass deportations and internal Gestapo-like roundups which would result in the profiling of all Hispanics and Latinos (regardless of their citizenship status), and the construction of a massive physical barrier to block the entry of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Along the way Trump encouraged his supporters at rallies to voice their hatred of brown people, egged on by “guest speakers” who testified to the murder of family members by undocumented immigrants. Many of Trump’s “nativist” supporters responded to his invitation not only by expressing their hatred of brown people, but of all minority populations, including African-Americans, Muslims, and Jews.
According to the Times article, Republicans in these Western states are now blaming Trump for accelerating the flight of Hispanics, Latinos and other racial minority voting blocs, as well as young voters in general, towards the Democratic Party, far earlier and far faster than the GOP had anticipated would occur. As the article points out:
Every month for the next two decades, 50,000 Hispanics turn 18 and become eligible to vote, according to Resurgent Republic, a Republican research group.
Democratic voter registration in states like Arizona and Colorado is outpacing the efforts of the GOP, (although in Arizona, registered Republicans still outnumber Democrats). Colorado has become so Democratic the Clinton campaign recently called off it advertising in the state. And while Democratic hopes of winning Arizona may yet prove to be a pipe dream for 2016, the demographic trend is unmistakable, and Trump is only making it more pronounced. As the Times points out, however, it is not only minority voters but educated, professional white voters who Trump is driving into the Democratic column in Arizona and elsewhere in the West. Of course, his unpopularity with women—of all races—speaks for itself.
The Clinton campaign, seeing an opportunity, has expanded voter registration efforts in Arizona, with a view towards expanding the state’s Democratic base even if the Grand Canyon State votes for the Republican in 2016:
The Clinton campaign said it invested hundreds of thousands of dollars this month in a coordinated program with the Arizona Democratic Party to win races up and down the ballot, a commitment the Obama campaign decided not to make in 2012. Together they are targeting 450,000 people they have identified as likely Democratic voters whom they hope to place on the state’s early voting list.
Even Alaska is no longer safe, as Hispanic, Asian and Alaskan native populations are expected to comprise about 40 percent of the AK electorate by 2032. And the Democratic Party is even turning its eyes to Utah, as Trump’s implicit promotion of religious “means-testing” has alienated that state’s reliably conservative Mormon population.
Trump’s racism-on-steroids, and the very visible and noxious behavior of his supportive base, has created an opportunity for the Democratic Party to expand its national electoral prospects in the Western U.S. far beyond anything previously anticipated.
And Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned, when the people who actually warned them were their own fellow Republicans. Perhaps more than anything else, the fact that they deliberately ignored their own advice after 2012 proves that the Republican Party is well beyond any hope of redemption.