EVENTS

Date:	Friday, June 12, 2009
Time:	9:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

WASHINGTON, JUNE 12, 2009--"Demography may not be destiny . . . but it is very hard to ignore," AEI senior fellow Karlyn Bowman said in her introductory remarks at a joint AEI/Brookings Institution conference on June 12 about how demographic shifts seen in 2008 may affect elections in 2010 and 2012.

Event participants highlighted the importance of several trends that contributed to President Barack Obama's victory in 2008. They indicated that Republicans have a lot to be worried about and that Democrats need to avoid complacency for success in subsequent elections.

Ron Brownstein, political director for the Atlantic Media Company, said Democrats have the upper hand because they appeal to a broad audience while Republicans are overly dependent on the South. Obama's win may have been partly about George W. Bush's unpopularity, but Brownstein claimed that a "coalition of the ascendant"--a coming together of minorities, youth, and college-educated whites for the Democrats--played a bigger role.

The minority vote share is increasing and trends Democratic. William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, said the votes of blacks and Hispanics made a significant difference in 2008: ten of the states that went for Obama in November did so because the minority vote tipped the balance. Obama also gained a significant portion of the youth vote. Although Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, said Obama would have won the election even if those under thirty had not voted, 61 percent of young voters support the president. If it indicates a trend, he added, Republicans should be very worried. At the same time, Democrats should not be complacent: the young may be identifying with the Democratic Party because they think it is better than the alternative, not because they agree with its entire platform.

College-educated white voters are voting for Democrats in larger numbers.  At the same time, the electoral influence of the white working class is declining, Ruy Texiera, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, said. That means Democrats can distance themselves, to a degree, from cultural issues that have been difficult for the party in the past and instead talk more about the values the party increasingly shares with college-educated whites.  

Robert Lang of Virginia Tech discussed voting trends associated with geography. He argued that we are seeing "3D politics"--that is, density plus diversity equals Democrats. Four of five Americans live in metropolitan areas, and the densest of these are voting Democratic. If the trend is "not reversed by 2020, even Texas could be gone [to the Democrats]," Lang said.

According to Bill Bishop, coauthor with sociologist Robert Cushing of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, the number of "landslide counties" is rising, indicating that Americans are becoming more polarized. Bishop did not discuss whether this trend favored one party over another, but their findings demonstrate that people want to live in communities with others who share their opinions and make similar lifestyle choices. These lifestyle differences between communities manifest themselves in elections, he said.

Some non-demographic factors may have played a role in the last election, argued Mark Schmitt, executive editor of The American Prospect, and Michael Barone, a resident fellow at AEI. Schmitt said the perception of demographic change and the ability of candidates to understand these changes could be more important than the demographic changes themselves. He credited Obama's victory in 2008 in part to his ability to comprehend and benefit from the demographic changes around him.

Barone spoke about the "balance of enthusiasm" that may lead to greater voter turnout. He noted that voter turnout has risen in each of the past three presidential elections for the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. The balance of enthusiasm may be seen as enthusiasm to elect a candidate or to defeat one. Either way, Barone cautioned that enthusiasm levels and voter turnout can fluctuate dramatically and that changing demography that may have helped to increase turnout recently should not be relied upon too heavily for predictions about future elections.