GOP Cracks the Dems' Minority Firewall

There's still much work to do, but in 2010 the Republican Party took important steps to winning over minority voters.

Jim Geraghty is noting the elected Democrats who are now switching to the GOP at the state level.  This is occurring across the country and not only in the South.     Kansas and New Jersey have joined the trend.  Critically, the southern realignment to the GOP now includes elected black Democrats.

Republican inroads not only in the black vote but amongst actual black elected officials is huge.  African-Americans are to the Democrats what the Old Guard was to Napoleon.     When they retreat from the Democratic cause, that cause will be lost.  Doubters will scoff at these defections as unrepresentative and the election of people like Tim Scott and Allen West to Congress as meaningless.  But 45 years ago the switch of Strom Thurmond and the election of John Tower of Texas were harbingers for the complete loss of the Solid South for the Democrats.  With the end of segregation the trickle of defections became a torrent.

Here is what I predicted in August:

There is all kind of concern that the Republican Party is not pro-immigration, pro-gay or pro-minority enough to survive in the future electorate.  This is precisely wrong.  The Republican Party this year is running more black Republicans with a chance to win than it has in memory and the RNC still has a black chairman.  As pointed out, in Florida a Hispanic is running for Senate, and in Nevada, sharing the ticket with Sharon Angle and running ahead of her against Harry Reid’s son for governor is another Hispanic.  My predictions in the past have not turned out too badly.   Though there are glitches.

So here is my end of summer prediction: In the mid-term elections this year the GOP, tea party-fueled and all, will get as high, or a higher percentage of the Hispanic, Asian and black vote than in any mid-year election since 1994.  The percentage of that vote overall will be lower than any mid-year election since 2002.  Finally, the Senate will lose as many or more Democrats than it did in 1994 (when the Democrats lost 8 seats).

While I got the number of Senate losses wrong, almost every other prediction was correct.  How did the GOP do with Hispanics?  As I predicted.  Though not all is sweetness and light, it is improvement.  How about blacks?  They turned out in lower numbers and were a smaller percentage of the electorate.  While they may have voted slightly more Republican, this excellent report notes not in any statistically significant manner (and it also notes that while they declined as a percentage of the vote, the overall numbers did not decline).  I was also stunned to learn from this report that Florida now has a black, Republican Lt. Governor.  In Florida, the black, Democratic Senate candidate, Meeks lost but a black Republican won an executive position.  Indications are that Asian voters turned toward the Republicans.  They certainly did in the South but in the North appeared to vote like Democrats.

In short, Republicans have found ways to make gains among Asians.  Some Republicans have found ways to make gains among Hispanics.  Blacks remain the Democratic firewall.  But like, the slightest leak in a dike, the small gains made in each of these constituencies may eventually pull the whole structure down.  While Barack Obama is president the movement of African-Americans to the Republican party will apparently be checked.  But opportunities among Asian and Hispanic voters exist and should be exploited.