Oh Good Grief. Not Again??!!??!

The Dangerous Reliance on the Inevitabiity of  Demographic Shift


There is a commonly held belief in Democratic circles that it is inevitable that by 2016 this state will be purple. The notion is based largely on a belief that an influx of Hispanic residents and an aging Republican base will allow us to pull even.

It is true that the GOP numbers are not pacing population growth and that they have maxed out their potential. It is true that “replacements voters” will be far more likely to be ideologically skewed to the Democratic Party in substantial ways. It is true that the Hispanic population is growing. But it is also true that the margin between the parties is increasing rather than decreasing.  But...

• There are 100,000 self-identifying Hispanic voters in Georgia, but over 850,000 Hispanics living here. That means about 12% of the adult Latino population is registered to vote and many may not be eligible.

• Half of the registered Hispanic voters were registered since the end of 2007. That’s great but it is only 50,000 voters and only 22,000 of those actually voted.

• While there are substantial shifts in the composition of the population that has not yet translated into any movement in the composition of the electorate at all in the last three elections.

• As importantly, it appears that only 20 to 30% of whites are voting for Democrats. And while there might be credible anecdotal information that whites under 35 might be trending Democratic, they certainly are not replacing older whites who are “exiting” the electorate. Moreover, of the 1.03 M Georgians under 30 who were registered prior to the 2010 Election only 13% showed up in both 2010 and 2012 and 53% never showed up at all.

• Finally, there is scarce evidence that the influx and influence of white transplants from “bluer” areas of the country to the Atlanta has had much effect, if any, on Democratic prospects in Georgia. The Atlanta region has grown by over 3 Million inhabitants since 1990 and accounted for 72% of the State’s growth. But by all accounts and measures the state is redder not bluer. Metro Atlanta certainly has not gotten bluer once you  get five miles  outside the Perimeter.

There is great news on the horizon; from the AJC’s Jim Galloway:

“Last month, Gov. Nathan Deal warned the Georgia GOP of the demographic perils that lie ahead – 56 percent of the state’s public school students are non-white. A few days later, the Atlanta Regional Commission said the trend was even stronger in metro Atlanta, where 63 percent of K-12 students are non-white”.

That’s great news 10 years from now. What we must understand is that the notion that shifts in demographics based on either race or age, while real in the general population, do not necessarily translate automatically to the electorate. More dangerously, this notion creates a false hope and as a consequence reinforces a certain historical passivity when it comes to doing what is necessary to change outcomes in Georgia at the statewide level.

The bottom line is that we are not registering enough voters in Democratic areas and those we are registering are not showing up in numbers that close the numerical gap. It is the main reason we are losing.

The fundamental question that must be answered is whether the 350,000 votes we need to win statewide races in 2014 even exist? The short answer is yes, obviously.

• First of all, we know there are 1.8 Million Democrats in Georgia because they voted for the President.

• In 2010, we received 1.1M votes in the Governor’s race but lost by 260,000 votes. The simple math is that we need to get 300K from the 750K extra votes we see in Presidential years to be competitive in Gubernatorial years.

• Beyond these numbers there is another universe of 1.5 M voters who did not vote in 2012 at all with 555K of those were in reliably Democratic Counties

Fundamentally, election after election we are seeing the same numerical gap. Voters are not self-motivated in sufficient numbers and our GOTV infrastructure has not been able to motivate sufficient additional numbers to close the gap.

What makes this particularly distressing is that we keep doing the same thing over and over somehow expecting a different result.

Either  we  wait ten years.  or we fix the problem now.  350,000 vote   really is not that heavy a lift.  We simply have to get organizationally and operationally savvy as Democrats across the board.