Opinion: demographics are not destiny

[wnwnwn]

I understand that some think that democrats will have a permanent majority if the current border situation continues or the inmigration policy becomes more open.
I don't think so.
A good part of the recent inmigration is from Venezuela. Most of them will end up supporting republicans if you give them citizenship.
The mexican american vote for republicans got a low point in 2016, but the situation is changing. A good part of the recent migrants are conservative on social issues, and even if they would support democrats if given citizenship, their offspring could do otherwise.
Also, I feel like dominican americans will swing to the right in the next years.

[Xing]

Each party thinks “demographics are destiny” when it suggests good electoral results for them, while claiming that “no group is a monolith” when demographic changes and voting patterns don’t necessarily bode well for them. Prime example: Latinos.

2015: Latinos appear to be trending Democratic as a whole.

Democrats: “Demographics are destiny! Blue Florida and Texas here we come!”
Republicans: “Now hold on a moment, Latinos aren’t a monolith and they won’t necessarily uniformly trend Democratic forever.”

2023: Latinos appear to be trending Republican as a whole.

Republicans: “Demographics are destiny! Red Nevada and New York here we come!”
Democrats: “Now hold on a moment, Latinos aren’t a monolith and they won’t necessarily uniformly trend Republican forever.”

[mileslunn]

Part of problem with that is it assumes parties won't change which off course they will.  With Hispanics, I do think its quite possible they could be like Italians and Irish who at first voted heavily Democrat, but now more or less vote GOP and Democrats in similar numbers to whites in general. 

Even with Asians, they are not necessarily automatically Democrat.  In Australia and New Zealand, L/NP and National Party who are on right dominate East Asian community and in Canada it varies by election with some like 2021 going heavily Liberal but others like 2011 or more recently in Ontario provincial one, they vote Conservative.  Reagan after all won this cohort so if Democrats drift further left and GOP drops the populism and moves back to standard economic conservatism, I think they could win over Asian-American community.  African-American seems harder to crack but just because they always vote massively Democrat doesn't mean it is a given.  But any change there will take time and probably not in near future. 

I think bigger worry for GOP is education and urbanization.  Metro areas are where most of the population growth is and those are becoming increasingly Democrat.  GOP never did well in city proper, but usually did well in suburbs where majority live.  If they can win back suburbs, then fine, but if suburbs continue to trend Democrat then problems.  One thing that may save them is suburbs tend to be very moderate and more turning away from GOP due to drift right while Democrats have avoided a strong drift to left.  If your AOC, Warren or Sanders types dominate Democrats in future, I could easily see suburbs swinging back to GOP.  Likewise if post Trump GOP returns to more your fiscally conservative but socially centrist, I could also see them winning back suburbs.

On education, right now that is a big problem as while winning whites overall, they are losing whites with a college degree and unlike minorities or younger voters, that group tends to have highest turnout.  And younger Americans more likely to have a degree than older.  At same time GOP did best with educated under Reagan so not sure this will stay.  If anything I find educated more likely to be open to trying new things while less educated prefer to stick with what they know.  So if anything educated more likely to break with dominate orthodoxy than less educated.  It was after all educated who embraced supply side economics in 80s while many with only high school diplomas preferred Keynesian economics longer than those with college degree. 

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Demographic changes are an opportunity, but they aren't inherently going to result in gains.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I'm going to ignore mileslunn's tungsten-melting take on the appeal of Reaganism among certain segments of the US voting population, and share this op-ed by Noah Smith.

Hispanics as the new Irish: A historical analogy to help us understand the present moment.

Given all the hand-wringing about a “Great Replacement”, it’s astonishing how much of a non-event this has been. Texas is still a deep red state. Texas Hispanics still lean toward the Dems, but they shifted strongly toward Trump in 2020, and Republicans in the state still reliably get 40% of the Hispanic vote. Meanwhile, Texas’ culture, which always had very large Mexican influences, has not noticeably changed as a result of the influx.

This reinforces my thesis that the best historical analogy for Hispanic immigration to the U.S. is the great Irish immigration of the 1800s. The usual analogy we draw is to the Italians, but I think the Irish make a better model. First of all, Irish immigration, like immigration from Mexico and Central America — but unlike immigration from Italy — was very drawn-out over a long period of time:

Like Hispanics, Irish migrants were mostly working-class folks who came for mainly economic reasons — pressures from poverty back in Ireland, plus the great dream of making it in America. And like Hispanics, they provoked a sustained and ferocious pushback from nativists.

When the Irish arrived on American shores, they generally had very little money, simply because Ireland was a very poor country at the time (you can read some of the statistics in Expelling the Poor). But over time, Irish Americans climbed the economic ladder, and ultimately became more or less indistinguishable from other White Americans. There has been concern that Hispanics would not follow the same pattern, and would languish as a racialized economic underclass forever.

Luckily, those worries are proving unfounded....

This income catch-up is being driven by several factors. Geographic dispersal from the Southwest and Florida to the rest of the country is one factor. Education is another. Hispanic education attainment has risen strongly — dropout rates have plummeted, and college enrollment has soared.

Language is one big difference between the Irish and the Hispanics, since the former came over already speaking English. But evidence consistently finds that Hispanics adopt English very quickly. And by the 3rd generation, a majority have left the Spanish language behind.

The stereotype that Hispanics commit more crimes than the native-born population was never true, once you controlled for the age of the population. But in recent years, even without controlling for age differences, Hispanic jail incarceration rates have fallen to the Non-Hispanic White average:


In fact, as Matt Yglesias notes, rather than joining the ranks of the incarcerated, Hispanics are overwhelmingly joining…the police...
This all strongly echoes the pattern of the Irish, who were initially stereotyped as criminals, but who joined police forces in large numbers (this is probably where the term “paddy wagon” comes from). Police forces around the country still have a strong Irish American presence to this day.

Demographic changes are an opportunity, but they aren't inherently going to result in gains.

[Samof94]

Le Pen won some gay white French men especially in 2017 who were "scared of Muslims".

[Upper Canada Tory]

If demographics are destiny, we will all be Amish or Mennonite a century from now anyway.

[TheReckoning]

Hispanics are becoming less likely to identify as white overtime, not more likely. This implies they will be more entranced into their “people of color” mindset, and will become more likely to vote Democratic.

[Long Live Israel]

Latin American leftists are the biggest friends of Republicans every time they take power a new wave of conservative migrants comes to America

Democrats should go back to the 60s foreign policy for Latin America.