Posted on 11/12/2014 2:55:28 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Republican Sen.-elect Joni Ernst easily won her race in Iowa last Tuesday, beating Democrat Bruce Braley by 8.5 percentage points. Her victory wasn’t shocking, but its size was (to everyone except pollster Ann Selzer, that is). The final FiveThirtyEight projection had Ernst winning by just 1.5 percentage points.
What the heck happened?
Here’s one explanation: White voters in Iowa without a college degree have shifted away from the Democratic Party. And if that shift persists, it could have a big effect on the presidential race in 2016, altering the White House math by eliminating the Democratic edge in the electoral college.
There are a lot of white voters in Iowa without a college degree, and they have differed politically from their demographic counterparts nationally. In 2008, President Obama won non-college whites in Iowa by 6 percentage points; he lost them nationally by 18 points. In 2012, college-educated and non-college-educated whites both broke by about 6 percentage points for Obama. That’s very different from nationwide, where Mitt Romney won non-college whites by 25 percentage points while winning college-educated whites by 14 points.
In the run-up to this year’s midterm elections, polls showed Iowa’s white voters behaving normally — well, normally abnormal — favoring the Democrat more than their demographic kin nationally. Last month, two Marist polls showed Braley trailing by 5 percentage points among Iowans with a college degree and down an average of just 1.5 points among those without a college education.1 Overall, Braley was down by only 2.5 percentage points, on average, in Marist’s October surveys.
According to the exit polls, however, Braley lost non-college-educated voters of all races by 10 percentage points. His performance among the college-educated matched pre-election polls. But among non-college whites, Braley lost by 14 points.
We can see this in the county-by-county returns. The biggest drop-off from Obama’s 2012 margin to Braley’s 2014 margin was in those counties that had a higher share of whites without a college degree. In those counties, every percentage point of additional non-college-educated voters meant a 0.3 percentage-point drop in Braley’s margin.2
Now, if this were merely a problem with Braley, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But the shift in Iowa may be more fundamental than that — a problem for Democrats in 2016.
Obama saw a similarly distortional decline in his popularity among Iowans without a college degree over the past two years. His approval rating in Iowa used to run at or ahead of his national approval rating, but it hasn’t in his second term. Obama’s approval in Iowa this year has been just 38 percent, according to Gallup. His average approval rating nationally has been 42.3 percent.
In other words, we’re not just talking about Iowa shifting with the nation as a whole. Instead, the state’s relative political position has changed. Iowa has moved more against Obama than expected based on a uniform swing. And it goes beyond Obama. Gallup has been tracking the percentage of Iowans who identify as or lean Democratic over the past few years. This gets at the core of a people’s underlying political persuasion. We see a similar pattern to what was going on with Obama’s approval rating.
During Obama’s first term, the percentage of Iowans who considered themselves Democrats was 1 or 2 percentage points below the national average. It has dropped to about 5 points below that average in Obama’s second term.
It’s hard to overstate what this could mean going into 2016. In every presidential election since 1992, Iowa has been a swing state and yet a little more Democratic-leaning than the nation. But it’s been a very light blue state, helping to give Democrats an edge in the electoral college. In 2012, the states combining for 272 electoral votes were more Democratic than the nation. Using a uniform swing, Republicans would have needed to win the national popular vote that year by about 1.5 points to have won Colorado (the tipping-point state) and the electoral college.
When we take Iowa and its six electoral votes out of the Democratic column, the math changes: The Democratic edge in the electoral college virtually disappears. Only 266 electoral votes would be more Democratic than the nation. Republicans would have 259 electoral votes (including Iowa). The 13 electoral votes in Virginia, which was 0.03 percentage points more Democratic the nation as a whole in 2012, would be the deciders.
That, of course, does not mean that Republicans are going to win Iowa in 2016, let alone the presidency. We don’t know whom the nominees for either party will be. And the shift in Iowa could reverse itself.
Still, what happened in Iowa last Tuesday was probably not just because of midterm turnout (the Gallup numbers are from all adults), or a bad Democratic candidate, or a bad Democratic year. It was a reflection of the movement of the Iowa electorate over the past two years — specifically, movement of non-college-educated whites who shifted away from the Democratic Party. The gap in voting patterns between college-educated and non-college-educated whites in Iowa looks a lot more like the nation. That’s not good news for Democrats.
CORRECTION (Nov. 11, 2:48 p.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly said that without Iowa, 267 electoral votes would be more Democratic than the nation. The correct number is 266.
Its time white voters united to defendant against Shamnesty
Like as in Odd? Queer? Unprecedented?
$5.38 now worth about $0.10
We've known since early 2012 that the Democrat election strategy was to walk away from working class whites and anchor their new coalition in minorities, single women and white elites.
After a couple of years of inattention and outright slaps in the face, working class whites got the message and are starting to change their voting habits.
So, yes, the Reagan Democrats are coming back home -- unbidden, even. And, yes, it's likely a permanent structural change in the electorate...if the Republicans don't find a way to run them off.
Obama will be the gift that keeps on giving for years, for Republicans and conservatives. Lyndon Johnson’s gift to the Republican Party was the South who finally walked away from a Democrat Party that no longer represented them and joined the Republicans who did. The two parties, which both once had liberal and conservative wings were reshuffled with all of the liberals migrating to the Democrat Party and most of the conservatives migrating to the Republican Party. Blue collar, Catholic, and descendants of Northern European immigrants were the exception and stayed true to the Democrats in Iowa, Minnesota and throughout the Rust Belt. Then came Obama.
He is the catalyst who will complete the realignment. They have left the Democrats, and like their cousins in the South, they won’t go back. The zero sum gain that represented the Democrat calculus that told them to make promises to bring in new voters while believing that their traditional voting blocks would never leave is proving to be untrue, just as it was with the South in the sixties. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men can’t put this back together.
The next bunch to leave will be the Hispanics as evidenced by New Mexico CD#2. Hispanics are hard working, family oriented, conservative values folks who are having a temporary infatuation with the Democrats that will not last. Good people don’t like to consort with crooks, thieves, and liars. They are good people.
I am a healthcare provider in Davenport, Iowa. Although not a native, I have come to know parts of the state and its people well. White non-college educated voters have severe economic struggles due to unions (industrial and teacher’s) and Democrats destroying their jobs.
A significant number of these people hoped to follow their parents into good paying industrial jobs. Those jobs are gone because unions overpriced them. They did not find school engaging because the quality of teaching (despite Iowa’s phony reputation) is extraordinarily poor. Democrats in various enclaves and in DC have regulated jobs and business opportunities out of existence.
It only surprises me that Braley didn’t lose by 15 points.
It was odd all along that in an election where Romney took 59% of the white vote, that states like 97% white Iowa would still go to Obama. That was baffling.
Harold Hughes and H. R. Gross...
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