The Changing Electorate

We often hear that Donald Trump did not win the popular vote so he is somehow an illegitimate leader.

The irony is that this statement often comes from Democrat supporters of Hillary Clinton.

It seems lost on them that the same could be said of Bill Clinton. In fact, both times he was elected President he did not have a majority of voters supporting him.

Clinton won the Presidency in 1992. He won only 43% of the popular vote. 57% of the people who voted wanted someone other than Clinton. In that year George H.W. Bush won 37% and Ross Perot 19% of the popular vote.

In 1996, Clinton garnered 49% of the popular vote to 41% for Bob Dole and 8.5% for Perot.

Shortly before the 2016 election the Pew Research Center released an interesting report that tracked how the electorate had evolved since 1992 in the United States by looking at how partisan preferences have changed among various demographic groups.

In all of these charts red identifies Republicans, blue represents Democrats and gray Independents.

The first chart shows that White voters have become increasingly Republican since 1992.

Notice that this trend really started after  Barack Obama became President. Whites favored Democrats as much as Republicans in 2008. Whites elected Obama President. They did not see race in their votes. However, the policies of Obama and Democrats after he was elected drove many whites toward the GOP.

Whites favored the GOP by 15 points in 2016. It was evenly split in 2008.

The Black vote has continued to be solidly Democrat since 1992. The change is negligible.

Men have left the Democrat party in droves since 1992. Democrats had a 4 point advantage among men in 1992. Democrats were down by 10 points among men by 2016.

There has not been much change in women's party identification since 1992. It has been remarkably steady.

Most of the change has been with white men. White men favor the GOP by almost 30 points!
White women, who leaned Democrat by 4 points in 1992  started leaning to the GOP by 2016.

The Democrats used to be thought of as the party of the working man and women, particularly those that did not have a college degree and worked in blue collar positions.

That was the core constituency of the Democrat party for decades. That is no longer the case.

This is particularly the case with white voters.

Democrats used to have a 9 point advantage with white voters with a high school education. Democrats are now down 26 points with this group. Similar trends can be seen with those with some college.

On the other hand, white college graduates have moved toward the Democrats. Democrats now have a one-point edge among college graduates. Of course, part of this is explained by the fact that almost 60% of college graduates are now women.

It may also be explained by the steady diet of liberal indoctrination that is fed to college students.

If you doubt this, consider this recent study that measures the extent of left-wing bias at top U.S. universities. Even disciplines such as Chemistry and Economics have five Democrats for every Republican faculty member.

In subjects such as Anthropology and Communications, the study could not find any Republican faculty members!

The final chart concerns generational differences.

Generally, younger and non-white voters are more likely to be Democrats.

Older and white voters are more likely to be Republicans.

Looking at all of these trends should give you a better understanding of the positions the two political parties take. It is particularly easy to see for the Democrats who have largely become a party that is a reliant on the young, minorities and single women for votes.

That is a long, long way from when the Democrats used to be known as the "working man's party".