Democrats are in more trouble than they think. And changing demographics won’t save them.

Vox ^ | 1/14/16 | John B. Judis

[Duke C.]

Democrats are optimistic about the future. They may have gotten pasted in 2014, but they expect great results in the next decade based on favorable trends in the population.

"The Republican party is in a death spiral," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warns in his new book America Ascendant. It is in a "pitched fight" with what Greenberg calls the "new American majority," which is composed of "African Americans, Hispanics, Millennials," who "will constitute 54 percent of the electorate in 2016." If one includes "seculars with no religious affiliation," then this group amounts to 63 percent of the electorate that is sympathetic to the Democrats.

[Duke C.]

OK, I know it's Vox. Which makes it that much more interesting.

[bigbob]

the big thing they Rats are quivering in fear about is that according to polling, 20% or more of Democrats will flip over and vote for Trump.

[V_TWIN]

-they expect great results in the next decade based on favorable trends in the population.-

Translation:

They (the lib democrats) expect that the flood of illegals they have ILLEAGLY allowed into the country will vote democrat because they (the lib democrats) have ILLEAGLY allowed them into the country.

[Go Gordon]

As millennials get older they will become more conservative and vote republican.

[Awgie]

We will soon find out if America will continue. Everything is riding November.

[1Old Pro]

Millenials are one of the first younger generations that will quickly jump the sinking Dem ship. Old Lady and law breaker Hillary ain’t attracting these folks.

[max americana]

“As millennials get older they will become more conservative and vote republican.”

not so. We have stupid white millenials here in LA with their idiotic Bernie stickers.

[elcid1970]

You mean that those thousands of incoming Jose’s & Mohammed’s won’t save the day for the Dems at the ballot box?

[IChing]

Literally.

[IChing]

Veeerrrrryyyy interesting....

[ncpatriot]

Side note: when I see a Bernie sticker, I think - anti Hillary vote goes there.

[chrisser]

I was thinking this author might have some reasoning ability, until I got to the end and his comments about Cruz and Trump.

[Disambiguator]

We have stupid white millenials here in LA with their idiotic Bernie stickers.

That makes it easy to identify who needs to be run off the road.

:^)

[Rusty0604]

According to this VOX article, the republicans will not win if Cruz or Trump is the nominee.

[Uncle Miltie]

America is OVER right now. The question is, can we raise it from the dead?

[Billthedrill]

Progressives tend to fall into the error of assuming that demographics equate to social classes and that the behavior within them is consistent over time. I used to work at a market research company whose staff skewed way left politically and the analysts were very vocal about trying to avoid that little habit. That didn't always please the progressive clientele who were getting answers they didn't like.

Demographic analyses tend toward linearity, which is why the dire predictions, for example, of declining populations over time need to come with severe caveats. And so the logical thread that Hispanic populations increase over time and that they vote Democrat more than other ethnicities that leads to conclusions such as the author's that a permanent Democrat majority is demographically inevitable, ignore such changes as age and economic distributions and especially - this is entirely non-normalizable - especially cultural variations such as the advent of a single populist political figure, whether conservative or otherwise.

In short, this sort of analysis isn't really much better than reading tea leaves. These are wonderful as after-the-fact descriptive models to attempt to understand what just happened, far less so as predictive models. As normative models, they're useless.

[arthurus]

These guys can tell us all the reasons why Reagan lost so spectacularly in 1980, only winning some states in the South.

[fuzzylogic]

How many Hillery or Bernie bumper stickers do you see?

[arthurus]

We don’t have time for the millennials to get older. By the time they are old enough to be sensible they will either be in the Camps or they will be guarding them.

[theoilpainter]

It’s actually an excellent analysis. Elections will be won on the strength of candidates and policies, not by catering to certain demographic groups. While electing a conservative is important to me, I understand that the last thing we need is a test for ideological purity. . . there is a meaningful difference between ANY Republican running in this race and ALL the Democrat contenders. The next Pres will pick one, maybe three Supreme Court justices.

Which is why I will vote for ANY of the Republicans ( yes, even Trump - is he really a conservative?) and NEVER vote for ANY of the Dems.