Primarily Extreme: Voters don’t get much whiter, older, conservative than ones who ousted Cantor

Slate ^ | June 11, 2014 | William Saletan

[2ndDivisionVet]

Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, spent his career denouncing liberals, sucking up to the Tea Party, and doing everything possible to derail President Obama’s agenda. Despite this, Cantor was ousted Tuesday by a Republican challenger in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. Cantor’s loss follows last week’s Mississippi Republican primary, in which Sen. Thad Cochran, another conservative, was edged out by a Tea Party opponent who’s expected to dispatch Cochran in a runoff.

How do right-wingers like Cantor and Cochran lose to challengers even further on the right? The answer lies in the extremism of Republican primary voters.

On June 2, Vox Populi Polling, hired by the Daily Caller, conducted a poll of “Active GOP Primary Voters” in Cantor’s district. Three days later, Chism Strategies, a firm that usually works for Democrats, polled Mississippians who had voted in Cochran’s primary. Both surveys were automated, and Chism has released its demographic data only in unweighted form, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, they’re the best available measures of who actually voted in these primaries. The Daily Caller poll, in particular, came closer than anyone else to predicting Cantor’s defeat, so it has the most reliable portrait of his electorate.

What these two polls show is how white, old, and conservative the voters in these contests were, compared with the national electorate. Let’s start with race and ethnicity. Here’s how the Virginia and Mississippi GOP voters compare with the 2012 national presidential electorate, as reported in the national media exit poll. The national electorate is 13 percent black and 10 percent Latino. The Republican sample in Cantor’s district is 6 percent black and 1 percent Latino. The Mississippi Republican sample is 2 percent black, and everyone else is either white (96 percent) or “other” (2 percent).[continued]

[kcvl]

A self described "liberal Republican", Saletan came out strongly against the re-election of George W. Bush.

Saletan has written several articles about bioethics and sexual ethics, criticizing what he sees as homophobia within the Roman Catholic Church.

Liberal William Saletan Announces Plan to ‘Purge’ Christians

In an article titled, “Purge the Bigots,” Slate writer William Saletan penned these chilling words: “Some of my colleagues are celebrating. They call Eich a bigot who got what he deserved. I agree. But let’s not stop here. If we’re serious about enforcing the new standard, thousands of other employees who donated to the same anti-gay ballot measure must be punished.

“More than 35,000 people gave money to the campaign for Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that declared, ‘Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,’” he continued. “Why do these bigots still have jobs? Let’s go get them.”

[ObamahatesPACoal]

Ohio is 3% Latino.

[montag813]

WHITE voters are who the GOP needs to target. If Romney had won 5% more of that vote he would have trounced Imam Al-Husseini.

[BobL]

Believe me there are plenty of OLD WHITE DEMOCRATS TOO, my parents included. These Democrats live very conservative lives, have children (yes husband and wife), make good money, complain about taxes daily - yet vote Democrat EVERY TIME.

Ask them why...why they identify with Democrats, you just get talking points about how HORRIBLE and REACTIONARY Republicans are - you tell them where this country is going, they simply don’t care. Many were union types They grew up under FDR and JFK and for that reason ALONE, they remain Democrats.

Fortunately they’re dying off, and pretty quickly (hopefully all but two of them, LOL)...so they REALLY NEED a militant Hispanic bunch to replace them, as white young people, even if they seem liberal, are still open-minded and are not nearly as dead-set on Democrats without question.

On top of that, in the last 6 years, the US Hispanic birth rate has taken a NOSEDIVE - still higher than whites, but not by nearly as much.

The Democrats have their own problems too...but you never see it reported.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Any straight males work for slate or are they players in the game of butt darts?

[skeeter]

The misfits think they’re in charge now.

[kevslisababy]

In other words, the working folks...

[Mastador1]

What’s his point? Why didn’t all those young, colorful, liberal little fandangos come out and vote for Cantor? Because they already had their own liberal banana boy to vote for? We have mooochelle telling us what to eat, mr. mulato telling us who we can marry, holderwanker telling us who we can give money to and this arsehole telling us who we can vote for. This is what we need? The whole village of idiots telling us haw to live?

[Peter ODonnell]

Ah good, by analogy then, they don’t get much younger, dumber or blacker than Obama voters.

Hey, they said it.

[teeman8r]

Cantor had to go cause he was jewish...

Anti semitic sarc

[Vendome]

It’s race all the time with you guys.

Funny, you are hurting the same people you are objectifying, while perpetuating your myth.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Do you think they care? BTW, how’s everything?

[WilliamofCarmichael]

the extremism of Republican primary voters . . . The real mystery [is] how the candidates selected by such extreme electorates end up running the country.

No mystery about

"the PRO-GOVERNMENT EXTREMIST Democrat voters . . . [and how] such extreme electorates end up ruining the country."

[Uncle Miltie]

More than 6 hours to “Racist!”?

They are slowing down.

[heye2monn]

That’s right. The media refers all the time to Republicans as having too many white voters. They never say the Dems have too many black voters.

[IronJack]

Oh, that’s right. We white, old, conservatives don’t get a voice in how the country is run any more. Sorry we dared to exercise our prerogative.

[IronJack]

Hey, Skeletor! Why don’t you come tell this white, old, conservative how wrong he is? But bring a couple of your fairy friends to carry your stretcher.

[Vendome]

Life’s doing good.

Stupid shoulder wont stop hurting, 3 operations later.

I’ll have another in two years, by a doctor of my choice, not the insurance company

[ViLaLuz]

Hate speech! Bigot alert!

[The Duke]

They don’t get any blacker than Oba... well .. er ...