I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, as the following theme has been repeated at a few different points during this election cycle, most prominently in many articles written in late August and early September: this will be the last presidential election where Republicans try and win with only the white vote. See, for example, Brownstein in the National Journal, Chait in New York Magazine, and Atkins here at Daily Kos. There were many other articles written on this subject, and they all seemed to be based on the comment by a Republican operative to Brownstein that “This is the last time anyone will try to do this.” The general conclusion from these articles is that as the white vote shrinks in terms of the percentage of the overall vote, Republicans will no longer be able to win with only the white vote. From the title of this post, you can see I have a slightly different take. The evidence suggests Democrats are not far from winning the electoral college with ONLY the white vote.
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