Have Hispanics Forced the GOP into Electoral College Bankruptcy?

[Torie]

Look at the map above. Yes, it assumes that Romney won Florida, Ohio and Virginia - states in which Obama's margin over Romney was less than his national margin.  (My numbers are current as of this morning.)  You see the problem right?  Let me help you some more with this, if you have not, by putting up this little chart I constructed, with all its pretty little cell colors for which I am so justly famous.



Romney still only has 266 electoral votes, and loses. To get to 269 electoral votes (where he wins in the House), Romney and the GOP needs if everything swings at the same rate, to get to a national vote total of 51.17% in order to carry the next closest state - rapidly browning and greening Colorado that is trending Dem at a brisk pace. The next state up assuming Colorado will move up the Dem scale in future election cycles, is yes, our favorite state, Pennsylvania. Team GOP picks that one up this time with a 51.39% margin.  That cell I have highlighted in blue. That is where the blue bias of the electoral college I think more or less sits for the next cycle, absent the Pubs dealing with their "brown problem."  

In short, the Reader's Digest answer to my question, is that yes, the Hispanics have essentially sent the Pubs into Electoral College bankruptcy.  The Pubs have more electoral college liabilities than assets, with the liability column having a margin over the assets column in percentage terms of 2.78%, 51.39% to 48.61%.  The Pubs need a Plan of Reorganization, and they need it NOW.

Oh yes, why is NH painted in green?  I am glad you asked. "Ironically," the precipitating cause of the Pub bankruptcy was not Hispanics themselves, it was the greening of New Hampshire. The Greens are not coming back to the GOP - ever. NH is gone. So NH is not a practicable Plan of Reorganization for the Pubs. They will need to deal with the browns. They may not like it, but they have no choice. It is either that, or becoming political bag ladies, walking the streets pandering for a few crumbs from some good hearted Dem from time to time. I don't think that will be good for their self esteem.

Thank you for listening.

[Torie]

Well getting past the issue of the Pubs getting more comfortable with persons of color and all, and continuing the Pub cold shower theme here, it may be that if Hispanics don't move on up in Social Economic Status (SES) at a rather brisk pace, then the Pub malaise may be quite terminal - estan muertos.

[Torie]

Well getting past the issue of the Pubs getting more comfortable with persons of color and all, and continuing the Pub cold shower theme here, it may be that if Hispanics don't move on up in Social Economic Status (SES) at a rather brisk pace, then the Pub malaise may be quite terminal - estan muertos.

While it is convenient to dismiss blacks and hispanics as a bunch of poor moochers, how then to explain why Asians voted for Obama at an even higher rate than Hispanics?  Are they just a bunch of 'takers' too?

Each ethnic group is different. Blacks vote 90% Dem no matter how rich they get. That is not likely to change anytime soon. There is just too much history there, and their lives still remind them from time to time that they are still to some extent "the other."  Hispanics I think are driven by economics - heck given their large families, and low income, they are financially speaking up against the wall - and do depend on government largess to make ends meet, and it's still hard - very hard.

Asians however, swing more. They are been known in CA to give 40% of their votes to Pubs. Sure the exit poll this time, if it is right (remember it is a very small subsample, so the margin of error is higher), has the Pub percentage down to 27% or something. But if the Pubs get over their color problem (it is more muted with Asians anyway, unless they're South Asian anyway, and then the Muslim thing comes up too), and their hostility to secularism and cosmopolitanism, I would think that Asians would be open to the Pub approach  to economic management (at least when the approach is sensible rather than innumerate (Asians tend to be numerate)) - call it that dirty word around here "neo-liberalism," or whatever. They're professionals and businessmen, and have relative high SES, which SES is moving ever higher. Asians to the extent they are not already, will be members of the American bourgeoisie in short.

Just my crystal ball of course. I could be totally delusional about all of this. Thus I appreciate we all discussing it, and bouncing around ideas. Thanks.

[Torie]

So, my first question is: how might the electoral situation you describe, Torie, shift if the GOP had adopted the immigration stance of George W. Bush?  

Maybe shift the needle a bit to the GOP, but if you believe it is mostly about economics, then while that Dubya "compassionate conservative" palliative might have kept Colorado within the neutral PVI zone by being more empathetic to the Hispanic angst of they, or those they hold dear, living in the shadows of the twilight zone, longer term the metric holds. It may be that the Dems have the whip hand unless and until their economic approach can more definitively be proven to be truncating long term growth, and/or until these voters decide that the teachers' unions are really screwing their kids' futures - or something.

[Torie]

Well the white secularists, shall we call them, are another, more systemic issue that is less about the electoral college Dem bias vis a vis the popular vote, than the popular vote itself.  White secularists are in two groups perhaps, the Greens and the non-Green more business oriented or cost-benefit sensitive secularists, where "the planet" is not a religion, or a passion, but just another problem to work through pragmatically. The GOP can't get the Greens, because their approach clashes with the core of Pub economic orthodoxy, or anything in the market oriented factor in the economic externalities but no more adjacent neighborhoods.  However, if the culture wars were dialed back, the GOP presumably can cut into the pragmatic secularists.

Again however, the culture wars seem to me to be more of a long term loser for the Pubs rather than both a short term and a long term source of dysfunction presented by the Hispanics. If the culture wars end now, I am not sure psephologically, that is a net plus for the Pubs right out of the box. There goes the white working class as an offset perhaps, along with some anti abortion higher SES hard liners, who are otherwise sympathetic to many Dem economic positions.