Have the Democrats lost the White vote forever?

[Virginiá]

"Lost" as in they will not win an outright plurality (at least)? For the foreseeable future, yes. However, let's not pretend this is a huge deal. Yes, Democrats need white support for downballot races, and we do need to do at least slightly better than 38%-39%, but we don't need a majority. With an ever-diversifying country, we can afford to come up short in many places. It should also be noted that these losing margins are not uniform. The South really helps weigh it down. Finally, I think it's important to keep an eye on the support by age group. White voters ages 18-29 are much less Republican than, say, boomers. This will probably help Democrats stabilize their margins in the low 40s going forward, or at least prevent further erosion from where we're at now. Long-term, those are winning numbers for us.

[Virginiá]

Not so sure that White youth alone will push the total share of White voters the democrats receive to 40+. Hillary Clinton only received 43% of White youth (18-29 year olds according to CNN exit polling) and that occurred during a presidential year. As young Whites get older they will trend Republican.

A certain percentage of people typically become more conservative as they get older and this will definitely be the case for the White youth.

Actually I'd say there is more than enough proof to show that people do not definitively trend conservative as they grow older (not to mention 'conservative' might not mean exactly the same things 30-40 years into the future). It's not a rule of life. And even if they did, that doesn't mean they automatically become Republicans. The composition of the electorate state-by-state, historically, does not support this idea. What studies and data do seem to support is partisan identities embedded at a young age and becoming resistant to change over time, save for big realigning events.

Honestly, I'm somewhat convinced this idea persists because older people right now are so Republican/conservative, and many assume it's always been that way. In reality they are simply products of their generations, which were positively influenced by years of cultural/economic events and well-received GOP administrations and the failures of the Democratic Party.

As for what I said about white youth - right now it isn't enough, but as they grow older it'll balance things out, assuming the youth that follows them isn't dramatically less Democratic, which I don't personally believe will be the case but, we'll see.

[Virginiá]

Look at the CNN exit polls in Missouri, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. The 18-24 year olds were considerably more conservative than the 25-29 year olds were in each of these states. In some cases the disparity was so great that it was likely 18-20 year olds within that bracket that was skewing the entire bracket conservative.

I did think that was interesting, particularly since the GOP share for 18-29 year olds overall actually went down from 2012 despite these upticks, which implied youth in other areas of the country became more Democratic.

Hillary was detested by young people, and she was a terrible fit for the rustbelt/GL region. For a while, many people believed (with good reason) that she would bomb out among younger Millennials and on a national scale that didn't really happen nearly as bad as initially feared. However, she was bound to bomb in some regions, and that just happened to be the rustbelt.

It's worth noting, imo, that Trump didn't win 18-24 year olds by that much in states like MN/WI. It was only single digit margins, or in WI's case, literally just 2 points. This one election won't tell us how the rising generation in that state will trend anymore than MN/WI in 2000 did, where Bush actually won 18-29 year olds in MN despite seeing that group trending hard left in the years to follow. The real question will be how these people vote in 2020. Recall that 18-29 / 18-24 year olds went strongly for Obama in MN/WI in 2012, so this sharp reversal looks more like a backlash but could be showing us a new pro-Republican trend. We just can't tell from this one event.

Democrats are really screwing themselves with White youth because of the SJW nonsense. Obama wasn't afraid to speak out against the college campus environments that try to strangle free speech. In fact he spoke out multiple times.

Not really. I'd say Democrats are just reacting to the current environment. Young people are a critical part of our base, and so the party has to make decisions based on that. I don't understand - are you implying white youth are not pushing SJW stuff themselves? And that they sit on the sidelines, watching in disgust (or something)? The fact is that young white voters were almost as Democratic as they were in 2012, but a lot less Republican. The SJW stuff is not going to make a difference to this crop of young people because many are engaged, supportive or even just neutral to it. Even those who reject a lot of it won't necessarily base their partisan choices on it, either.

Now, if you want to say in the future, then I might agree that if this keeps escalating, we could one day see a relatively quick (or maybe just gradual) break from that culture, just as has happened in the past. However, that could take decades and there is no guarantee Democrats won't adjust in ways to mitigate any loss in partisan support.

[Virginiá]

Democrats said the demographic changes would be catastrophic for Republicans and look what happened!

The lesson here is not that those changes won't be increasingly more damaging for the GOP, it's that it will take longer than people thought.

Demographic changes won't end the GOP because political parties adjust to the times they are in.

The GOP isn't going to be like this forever, and while no one can say never, it's 99% unlikely either party is going to "end." However, the GOP didn't adjust. They more or less doubled down. It just so happened that that strategy was sufficient for this election.

So it's not a question about 'ending' - to me, it's more about a question of how long the GOP will find itself out of power down the road when the check comes due for their current strategy/behavior? I haven't seen anything new really that contradicts my own view that your party is in for a generational/demographic reckoning eventually. I'm pretty sure, though, that whenever the dam does break, it'll probably take decades to regain your footing and adapt, just like it took Democrats decades, and Republicans generations before, and so on.

[Virginiá]

literally 4 entire pages of back and forth arguing between 2, but sometimes 3-4 people lol

[Virginiá]

Notably, the white vote didn't substantially change in margin from Romney to Trump. They were roughly the same 20% (up a little to 21%). The winning Republican candidate barely improved by 1% over the losing GOP candidate of 2012.

The more apt question, is the white vote going to get more Republican? Or have they reached a plateau? (Most likely, a plateau with a upper limit of some 60%). If the white vote has reached a plateau, the GOP is in some considerable trouble.

We might actually be able to start answering that question in Dec 2020 (imo). Republicans can't maintain, let alone increase their share of the white vote without making big inroads with white Millennials, and in 2020 white Mills. will constitute the entire 30-39 age bloc. If the desperate idea that they will naturally trend Rep. as they age or that racial polarization will make them into members of the GOP, then this age group should show stronger GOP support than today's/2012's 18-29 whites did. If that bloc (30-39) shows Democratic support largely similar or the same as 2012/2016, then the GOP's whites-only strategy for the future is a big league loser. This same test would be even more potent for 2024 as the entire 30-44 bloc would be Millennials and gen z voters.

Personally, it's my belief that white Millennials will remain at least somewhat more supportive of Democrats than boomers, and that even if young whites now trend a little Republican 20 years from now, that would still make them only roughly as Republican as whites as a whole were in 2012. That would really be bad for the GOP.

At any rate, I wish people would be more considerate of things like this. Advocating for the GOP to essentially become the party of all/most white people could be bad news for the stability of American society in the future.

There is another reason they are in trouble too... the white vote is shifting...  Republicans are running up bigger margins in rural areas but are weakening in suburbs.  This won't impact many states but it is going to hurt them in house races because their vote will be more concentrated, similar to how Democrats' votes are concentrated in big cities.

If that scenario were to somehow come to be, I wonder how long it would take to start causing problems for the GOP.