There is much we must learn from this election. One big thing is the candidate matters. Another is that demographics are not destiny. Another is that you need an Obama to turn out the Obama coalition.
Pennsylvania is one data point:
A closer look at Pennsylvania's balloting produces a different conclusion: Democrats of all stripes -- young people, members of minority groups, suburbanites and working-class loyalists -- just didn't turn out the way they did for President Barack Obama. This was less about Trump than about Clinton.
"He got out his vote but she underperformed their expectations," concludes Terry Madonna who runs the poll at Franklin & Marshall College which, like the Bloomberg Politics October survey, foresaw a Clinton victory.
If she had produced anywhere near Obama's 2012 tallies with young voters and blacks she would have won Pennsylvania instead of losing it by about 70,000 votes.
Bloomberg News
On the other hand, demographics can help us:
Over the next four cycles, to 2032, the share of white working-class eligible voters in each of these states is projected to drop by 8 to 9 percentage points, while minority voters continue their steady increase. (Depending on the state, there should also be small increases in white college voters.)
Here’s what all this means concretely, applied just one election ahead. If we assume that the support patterns from 2016, with their astronomically high white-working class support rates for Trump and relatively weak minority support rates for the Democratic candidate, hold in 2020, projected demographic shifts in the electorate would still, by themselves, produce a very different outcome.
The Democrats’ advantage in the national popular vote would bump up from a little more than 1 point to 3 points. Critically, this change would flip the Rust Belt trio of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — plus Florida — back to the Democrats, producing a 303-235 victory for the Democratic candidate, even with the white working-class surge toward Trump replicated in 2020. In addition, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, already very competitive in the 2016 election, would become even more contestable under this scenario.
And this is just one election ahead. Naturally, the effects of demographic change will be magnified the further away we get from 2016.
Vox, by Ruy Teixeira: Trump’s coalition won the demographic battle. It’ll still lose the war.
A better candidate, more outreach to rural and working class whites, as Obama recommends, and turning out our voters can win.