Hyperpartisanship, Part II: Immigration and "The Emerging Democratic Majority"
Ruy Teixeira and John Judis published The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002, which posited that with the increasing population of minorities, single women, and college-educated professionals – all Democratic-leaning or strongly Democratic – the party would in coming years secure durable majority support at the state and federal levels.
The book was well-received at the time, especially by hopeful Democrats, as it suggested that the party need not make any course corrections even though they had just lost the presidency (but won the popular vote) and were drubbed in the midterm elections (easily explained as a rally-around-the-president’s-party so soon after 9/11). Instead: stay the course, it’s all going to work out.
Which looked right on after Obama’s convincing victory in 2008, together with huge gains in the House and Senate. Obama did very well among all the Democratic-leaning groups and well enough (around 40%) among working class whites to carry the day.
2010, what happened?
The Emerging Democratic Majority started looking a little less prescient in 2010 with the Republicans crushing Democrats in the midterms. By their own admission, Teixeira and Judis were wrong in one key sense.
As they had originally pointed out, the Democratic majority relied not just upon maintaining strong support among Democratic leaners but also on retaining something like 40% among the white working class. As the second decade of the 21st century wore on it became clear that the 40% of the white working class would not hold, nor would the Democrats’ strong majority among Latinos.
Teixeira and Judis pointed out that from Obama 2012 to Clinton 2016 Democratic support among white working class voters dropped anywhere from about 10% to over 20% in key midwestern and rust belt states. And from 2016 to 2020 the Democratic advantage among Latino voters dropped nationally about 18% (from a 41 point margin to only 23). In Florida, a 32% advantage in 2012 may have entirely evaporated by 2016.
There was no emerging Democratic majority.
Abortion, immigration, and other cultural issues
It’s axiomatic that parties’ stances on issues change as their coalitions evolve. As different groups become more influential, their policy demands begin to take precedence.
For example, for Republicans over the last fifty years, the party line on reproductive health changed as Christian conservatives gained influence. George H.W. Bush would not have been elected president had he not gone from his relatively liberal views in the 1970s to a pro-life or anti-abortion position in the 1980s. Today of course pro-choice Republicans are few and far between in public life.
For Democrats, we can point to a similarly dramatic evolution on immigration. Labor, a key component of the coalition, had traditionally been suspicious of liberal immigration policies given their view that a glut of workers would drive down wages.
The 1996 Democratic platform represented this view in a way that it is almost identical to the current GOP party line. Here is a passage from that platform [quoted from the NPR article linked below]:
We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992 [under GWH Bush], our borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again.
The dynamic at work
In the last several decades the parties’ coalitions have evolved in polar directions, with more conservative groups gaining the upper hand in the GOP and progressive ones for the Democrats.
As Teixeira and Judis acknowledged, there can be electoral costs in making gains among certain groups if a party’s platform moves away from the views of other constituencies. Obviously this has happened for Democrats on immigration and other cultural issues, which has cost them dearly among the white working class and Latinos, and may even among African-Americans in 2024 if polls are to be believed.
Likewise Republicans lose younger voters and better educated suburbanites, especially women, when they move to the right on cultural issues, just as they take votes from what were once core Democratic groups that are more culturally conservative.
Electoral stasis
The result of this polarizing partisan dynamic has been an historically long period of electoral stasis, with neither party gaining a lasting advantage. In the 1980s presidential elections were won by decisive margins of 8-18%. Beginning in the 1990s not only did presidential elections begin to get closer, but also winning candidates failed to achieve 50% majorities in four of the eight elections.
And since 1994 congressional majorities have been contested virtually every cycle – a far cry from Democrats’ dominant position in Congress for more than a generation up until then.
Bottom line
The one-time conventional wisdom that the growing minority population and other demographic shifts inevitably favor Democrats is clearly wrong. As parties are pulled to the ideological poles by their activists, they gain and lose voters. This dynamic seems to have left us with a a competitive equilibrium.
Which party benefits more from this equilibrium? And what might change the dynamic so that one party or the other gains the upper-hand? We’ll begin to look at those questions in the next post … we look forward to your comments!