After decades dreaming of high black turnout, Democrats finally got their wish in the last two elections, with obvious results. President Barack Obama overcame a strong Republican performance among white voters last November, and Monday, an analysis by William Frey, a demographer at Brookings, found that black turnout actually exceeded […] Read more »
Wealth Gap Among Races Widened Since Recession
Millions of Americans suffered a loss of wealth during the recession and the sluggish recovery that followed. But the last half-decade has proved far worse for black and Hispanic families than for white families, starkly widening the already large gulf in wealth between white Americans and most minority groups, according […] Read more »
In a First, Black Voter Turnout Rate Passes Whites
America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home. Had people voted last November at the […] Read more »
Demographics Overtakes Economy as Prime Presidential Election Indicator
One of the questions we asked prior to the 2012 election was whether or not state-level unemployment figures would matter much on Election Day. As it turned out, the answer was “probably not much.” … Something else seems to matter more than unemployment right now: demographics. [cont.] Geoffrey Skelley, U.Va. Center […] Read more »
That’s Rich: Wealthy Americans, more than the middle class, say the Grand Old Party is out of touch
Ever since last year’s election, the nation’s conservatives have been in self-preservation mode: They know something about the GOP needs to change, but they don’t want it to be them. The party establishment would prefer to jettison cultural issues, since it never cared much about cultural issues, anyway. And the […] Read more »
Democrats Risk Alienating Young Voters by Opposing Cuts in Entitlement Spending
My National Journal colleague Ron Brownstein wrote a column for last week’s magazine that I thought was the most important piece of the week. In it, he argues that “large portions of the Democratic base still don’t understand the political and economic dynamics of the party’s changing electoral coalition.” Brownstein […] Read more »