Minority Turnout Was Critical to Obama's Election, Data Show

[question everything]

JULY 21, 2009

Minority Turnout Was Critical to Obama's Election, Data Show

By CONOR DOUGHERTY
WSJ

Census Bureau data released Monday show the extent to which strong minority-voter turnout in the 2008 election helped President Barack Obama win over swing states and make inroads into Republican strongholds. About five million more people voted for president in November than four years earlier, with minorities accounting for almost the entire increase. About two million more black and Hispanic voters and 600,000 additional Asians went to the polls.

While the figures reflect a long-term demographic shift, they also attest to the success of the Democrats' extensive campaign to register their supporters and get them to the polls. Overall, the 64% turnout was unchanged from four years earlier. The data also show an increase in turnout by young voters. Those between 18 and 24 had a 49% turnout rate, up from 47% in 2004 -- the only age group to see a statistically significant jump at the polls.

Strong minority support helped Mr. Obama's campaign win swing states such as Ohio and pick off Republican redoubts including Virginia, Nevada and Indiana, according to an analysis of poll and Census data by William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who blended the Census data on voter turnout with poll data from Voter News Service.

The data are the latest to highlight the demographic conundrum facing the Republican Party, which in 2008 lost several red states to Mr. Obama largely because it couldn't compete among minority voters. This demographic challenge isn't going away, as non-Hispanic whites are expected to account for less than 50% of the U.S. population by 2042. To be sure, Mr. Obama's victory also relied on white voters: In 19 states including California, New York and Massachusetts, a majority of white voters cast ballots for Mr. Obama.

(snip)

Mr. Frey found minority voters made the difference in several key states: North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and New Jersey. Mr. Obama's ability to win over minorities there overcame white voters who favored John McCain.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124813588601666995.html (subscription)

[imdjh]

1. I wonder when hispanic whites cease to be hispanic and other demographic questions.

We keep seeing these projections of "nonhispanic whites" falling below the 50% line by 2042, but hispanic is not a race, it's a language group and arguably an ethnicity. Meanwhile, included in the "nonhispanic white" population are second and third generation Americans of Italian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Slavic, etc... ancestry. Especially interesting in demographics of course would be those caucasians indigenous to Asia, who are not classified as Asian, because Asian is used as a euphemism for Mongoloid because it was used to mean Downs Syndrome.


It seems a bit (for lack of a better word) racist or oddly ethnocentric to single out hispanic caucasians as an assimilation-proof subculture. Are Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucy Arnaz Luckenbill hispanic? How about Simon Ball Arnaz Luckenbill? How about the children of Mel Martinez and his waspy wife Kitty? How about George Preston Bush?

What do these words mean?

[thesquanderer]

2. Mongoloid?

I never heard of "Asian" as euphemism for "Mongoloid" but I do remember when Asians were called Oriental. Because they came from a region that was referred to as the Orient. I'm not sure when and why that became incorrect.

[imdjh]

3. Australoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid

Mongoloid
1868
1: of, constituting, or characteristic of a race of humankind native to Asia and classified according to physical features (as the presence of an epicanthic fold)