Republicans are hoping for a dip in minority turnout in 2016 due to Obama’s absence from the ballot. But history says that’s unlikely; the non-white share of the electorate has declined in each of the last five general elections. This is true both nationally and in the four Rust Belt states, with the lone exception of Michigan, whose white voteshare was unchanged from 2004 to 2008. The white voteshare nationwide was 72 percent in 2012, down from 74 percent in 2008 and 77 percent in 2004. The same trend manifested itself in Wisconsin (86, 89, 90), Michigan (77, 82, 82), Ohio (79, 83, 86), and Pennsylvania (78, 81, 82.)
If primary season turnout is any indication, Trump is indeed growing the GOP, mostly by bringing in more blue-collar whites who either defected from the Democrats or sat out recent elections. But even if Trump drives up the overall white vote in November, it almost certainly won’t be enough to stem the decades-long decline of the white voteshare nationally or in key battleground states. America’s demographic headwinds are just too stiff.
Non-white participation overall may have been poised to slide in the first election of the post-Obama era. If Trump’s the nominee, Democrats say, we’ll never know. His rhetoric will galvanize minorities to vote at levels comparable to 2012, they convincingly argue, and the margins will be even more lopsided. Minority turnout, unsurprisingly, is paramount for Democrats in these four Rust Belt states. Wisconsin (Milwaukee), Michigan (Detroit), Ohio (Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus) and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) each have at least one major urban center where the African-American population exceeds 40 percent.
Ohio was the closest of the four contests in 2012; Romney lost the state by roughly 166,000 votes, or 3 percentage points. Exit polls showed 79 percent of the state’s roughly 5.6 million voters were white, and that Romney won them 57 percent of them. This means that even if minority turnout holds steady at 21 percent in Ohio, and Trump performs comparably to Romney with non-whites, he would need to win at least 60 percent of white voters to carry the state. For any uptick in the non-white voteshare of Ohio’s electorate — or for every point Trump loses among minorities with an unchanged non-white voteshare — his percentage of the white vote would need to creep higher and higher into the 60s.
It’s hardly implausible. But the demographic stars need to align in a very specific way. And again, Ohio is the most competitive of the four states to begin with; aligning those stars in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will be far more difficult.
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