10/28/20
Republicans, win or lose next week, face a big — and growing — math problem. They're relying almost exclusively on a shrinking demographic (white men), living in shrinking areas (small, rural towns), creating a reliance on people with shrinking incomes (white workers without college degrees) to survive. You can't win elections without diversity, bigger population centers and sufficient money. Before President Trump, the GOP acknowledged all this. Then-RNC Chair Reince Priebus said in his "
autopsy" after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012:
"We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities." Trump threw that out and realigned the GOP base away from suburbs and wealth, and toward working-class whites in small towns. New Gallup polling finds Trump remains above 50% with rural residents, white men and white adults without college degrees. But he has dropped nine points just this year with suburbanites — falling with both men and women — to 35%, after winning them in 2016.
Another GOP drain: Voters are no longer following the traditional pattern of getting more conservative as they age. In what Axios demographic expert Stef Kight calls the "liberal youth revolution," millennials and Gen Z are sticking with the Democratic Party as they move through adulthood. The demographic wind shear is also hitting Republicans financially, the N.Y. Times shows in a new
analysis. In ZIP codes with a median household income of $100,000+, Biden beat Trump 3-to-1 in fundraising, "accounting for almost his entire financial edge. In the rest of the country, the two were knotted closely." Key players in the Republican Party tell Axios they're deeply concerned about winning back the suburbs. Republicans eyeing 2024 runs know the party's current demographic math may not work for Trump again — and certainly won't work for them.
www.axios.com
