
It does not take long to count every vote, but it can take a few days to sort through complex information about election returns. Here’s what we’ve learned: the electorate who voted last Tuesday was much closer to the one who voted in 2012 than it was to the one who took part in the 2010 midterms.
In 2010, when Republicans won a majority in the U.S. House, 42% of voters identified themselves as “conservatives.” Last week, just 37% of voters labeled themselves as such. This is much closer to the electorate in 2012, when 35% of voters were conservatives.
Still, the day after the Democrats’ historic defeat in the midterms, President Obama held a news conference, saying that he “heard the one-third of voters” who cast ballots last Tuesday as clearly as he heard the “two-thirds” of voters who did not vote. Setting aside that the decision not to vote is, itself, a verdict on politics today, the subtle implication that somehow a quirk of who actually voted doomed the Democrat Senate majority is incorrect.
The electorate in 2014 was also three points more liberal and two points more “moderate” than voters in 2010. These numbers, too, were much closer to 2012 than the midterm election four years ago. If conservatives had voted in the same numbers this year, Republicans likely would have won Senate seats in Virginia and New Hampshire and made other races more competitive.
There was also no quirk in the racial component of the 2014 turnout. This, too, was much closer to the electorate of 2012 than of 2010. This year, the racial breakdown of the electorate was 75% white, 12% black, 8% Hispanic, and 6% “other.” In 2010, 77% of voters were white, 11% black, 8% Hispanic, and 4% “other.” In 2012, when Obama won reelection, blacks were 13% of the electorate, whites 72%, Hispanics 10%, and “other” 5%.
With the exception of Hispanics, Democrats were able to turn out minority voters this year, at least as measured as a share of the overall electorate. Even the drop in Hispanic voters from 2012 likely had only a modest impact, as they are still a small part of the overall electorate.
Even before the votes were in, liberals were spinning the results. The New York Times even published an editorial ahead of the election, arguing that midterm elections were themselves some kind of quirky aberration that ought to be scrapped.
And perhaps the 2010 midterms were a unique fluke. The electorate in the midterms this year, however, matched more closely the one who voted for Obama just two years ago. It was more liberal and less conservative than 2010 and had fewer white voters and more minorities. Nonetheless, Democrats were thumped up and down the ballot.
The Democrats’ challenges aren’t with some weird slice of the electorate, but with the general public. We will see if that message penetrates the White House bubble.
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