Democrats aren’t going to be the only benefactors of changing demographics. Republicans will benefit greatly from a relatively new Republican voter group— the whites in the Great Lakes region that handed Trump the presidency in November. In my article I published last week it looked dire for Republicans. They lost states like Texas, Georgia, Montana, and Arizona due to demographic shifts. But Republicans could return to their former dominance in the North or at least make it competitive once again. We could soon find once Democratic bastions like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin sitting firmly in the red column or permanently purple.
There are two driving forces behind this shift: Minorities. particularly blacks are moving back to the South and economic policy.
Shortly after the beginning of the 20th-century blacks began leaving the South en masse. It was dubbed the Great Migration which lasted between 1910–1970. And it’s generally divided into the first and second Great Migrations.
The first lasted from 1916–1940, in which 1.6 million African-Americans left the South for the North. The reasons for them leaving were obvious: Widespread racism and little opportunity. In fact, racism spiked in the late 1890s and early 1900’s with the passage of Jim Crows Laws and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. Secondly, following the United State’s entry into World War I in May 1917 the economy began to boom. Factories sprung up in the North to fuel the Allied war effort and attracted hundreds of thousands of blacks seeking better economic opportunities and a better life.
The second began in 1940 and ended in 1970. Some 6 million African-Americans left the South for Western and North Midwestern states like California and Illinois. The reasons were much the same for the first Great Migration. The United States entered World War II in December 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This war would require far more industrial power than the previous war and thus blacks filled factory and shipyard jobs, often having to do the more dangerous jobs due to racism. Secondly, Northern and Western states were more liberal and thus had less racism so it was a far better place to live. Following the end of World War II, the post-War economic boom began and the Northern and Western states began rapidly developing and had more to offer to African-Americans.
Now, this trend of blacks leaving the South has begun to reverse. Since 1990 the percentage of blacks living in the United States has increased from 53% to 57%. This is a small increase but it’s not going to stop. This is primarily because millennial African-Americans are moving more and more to Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina and starting families, thus establishing roots there.
Since African-Americans tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic (Democrats usually garner around 80% of the black vote in elections) we can assume Republicans are going to benefit from this demographic shift. In fact, it could lead to a situation where the Democratic base is split thus Republicans could dominate the South while still competing or winning Northern states outright.
Economic policy and nostalgia are the key reasons why Trump won the majority of Rust belt states. Trump campaign promises to bring back jobs, renegotiate trade agreements, reform immigration policy, which many Trump supporters saw as the cause of their economic woes, and to “Make America Great Again” resonated with white voters in these Northern states.
In Ohio Trump walloped Clinton by 8 points and got the same amount of votes as Obama did in both 2008 and 2012. This was the first time since 1988 that a Republican won by such a large margin when George H.W. Bush handily defeated Michael Dukakis by 11 points in the state.
Meanwhile the so called “blue wall” crumbled. Pennsylvania and Michigan went Republican for the first time since 1988 as the rural and Rust belt vote overtook the urban vote and Wisconsin went Republican for the first time since 1984, driven by the same factors that turned Pennsylvania and Michigan red.
These wins were driven by Trump out performing in the typical Republican base, such as old and white Americans. In counties where the 60+ year-old populations constituted under 20% of the population, Trump did better than Romney by an average of 3 points, according to FiveThirtyEight. Also, according to FiveThirtyEight, Trump did better in whiter counties and in increasingly diverse places, which could be a result of racial prejudice, a white lash if you will.
This all points back to my earlier point: Trump won because of economic promises and nostalgia. Older, white Americans wanted to return to the “glory” days that they or their parents grew up in. Whether or not those days were so peachy as they are painted is a story for a different day. Meanwhile, his promises to bring back coal and jobs to the crumbling economies of rust belt states appealed to a wide range of people, which is why he did better than previous Republican candidates in regards to minorities and an economic message like Trump’s could be replicated by Republicans to win these states again in the future.
But like I said in my last article demographics aren’t everything. If Republicans want to start winning elections they need a uniting message, not a dividing one. It also needs to be a sincere appeal to all people instead of a desperate ploy for votes.
Thus this means they need to ditch their old social policy platform. The Conservative platform has been anti-LGBT and often racist sounding at times. If Republicans switched to a more welcoming agenda like fighting to promote equality instead of ignoring the existence of inequality then they could appeal to a whole new swath of voters. The Republican party has seemingly made little to no movement towards moderation on social issues, in fact, it’s made a step back. If the GOP doesn’t it will retain its title as the party of bigots and continually lose the minority vote while barely scraping by in presidential elections.
However, if Republicans begin moving the focus of their party back to economic issues, which I believe could have a wide appeal to people from both aisles, and adopt Democrat’s inclusive policies then they could turn Northern states red and become electorally competitive again, while promoting equality for all and recognizing the injustice in our society today.
Part One: www.dailykos.com/...