Chris Bowers writes:
The nation still moving away from Republicans demographically, too. It can’t be emphasized enough that Michael Dukakis would have won the 2008 election. His exit polls of 40% among whites, 89% among African-Americans, and 70% among Latinos is enough to reach 50%+1 now, even in the event that African-American turnout was only 12% of the vote instead of 13%.
From our analysis of the Current Population Survey post-election supplement, here are our estimates for voter turnout in 2008: 76.4% white, 11.9% black, 7.4% hispanic, 4.3% other, with the categories defined as mutually exclusive (for example, if you’re white and hispanic, you count as “hispanic”). The exit polls say 74% white, 13% black, 9% hispanic, and 5% other (not adding to 100% because of rounding error), but I think CPS is more trustworthy.
Now we can take the Dukakis numbers and plug them into the 2008 turnout numbers, as long as we make some estimate for the votes of “other.” I’ll assume 55%, halfway between his performance among whites and among hispanics. (By comparison, we estimate from the Pew pre-election polls that Obama got 45% of the two-party vote among whites, 96% among blacks, 68% among hispanics, and 59% among others.)
Plugging in Dukakis’s percentages by ethnic group and using the turnout numbers of 2008, we get a national adjusted Dukakis vote of .40*76.4% + .89*11.9% + .70*7.4% + .55*4.3% = 48.7%, which is better than the 46.1% he actually received but not quite enough to win.
This doesn’t really shoot down Bowers’s main argument–demographic shifts are important. I think he was overstating his case just slightly.
And, yes, I know that if Dukakis had really been running in 2008, things would’ve been different. I’m just following Bowers in using the Dukakis vote as a handy way to summarize the trends, keeping voting by ethnic group constant. Voting by ethnic group is not constant (as we can see by comparing Obama’s breakdowns to his predecessors), but doing this sort of calculation is a good way to visualize the demographic changes that are occurring.
If you toss out "other" entirely (and divide by 0.96 to get the percentages back to a 100% total), it drops to 48.4%, and if you use "59% among others," you get 48.9%. In this case, how you treat "other" is not decisive.
If you take the exit poll numbers and multiply through, ignoring the rounding problem, it does reach 50.2%. If you divide by 1.01 to get back to 100%, that drops to 49.7%, so it is decisive there, and it only rises to 49.9% if you use "59% among others." That drops to 49.4% if you throw out "other" entirely and rises to 50.4% if you keep the 101% exit polls and use "59% among others."
Are there too many percentages in those paragraphs to keep it clear? Upshot: you can get to 50%+1, but it requires using the exit polls that sum to 101%. Since I cannot get the Dukakis vote total to 50.5% under any assumptions, I suppose George HW Bush would have had a larger 50%+1 under any assumptions, which is a problem for the argument. As you say, the larger point remains relevant.
Does anything flip if we start looking state-by-state?
But you then need to adjust for the boredom factor. Mike can put a room to sleep. No 75,000 person crowds gathering in the night.
Of course, Dukakis would have won. We shouldn't assume that Dukakis would only get 40% of the White vote. If you look at White voters who were eligible to vote in both 1988 and 2008 (Whites aged 38 and up), you'll see that Obama did almost exactly the same as Dukakis. Obama may have outperformed Dukakis by 1%. But take a look at Whites 18-29. Obama won that group 54-45. If you take a close look at the exit polls from the 2006 Congressional elections, you can surmise that those folks would vote for pretty much any Democrat at that rate. That pushes Dukakis past 50%. Given the electoral college distribution, he's pretty much a shoo-in. Dukakis could afford to lose Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, NE CD2, and Virginia. He might be able to do that and lose the popular vote. He'd just have to hold Colorado which he could probably do with 49% of the national vote.
There are two things that have permanently changed the electoral landscape for presidential elections. One is that the voting population is getting more diverse. The other is that people born since 1978 are strongly Democratic, even Whites.