A Republican winning the White House doesn’t add up
Mar 2, 2016, 2:18 PM
(Facebook Photo)
(Facebook Photo)
I am admittedly challenged by math, but I sat down and did some research so I could better understand the challenge ANY Republican nominee is facing in the upcoming presidential election.
First off, some history on voting patterns: Traditionally, the Republican candidate has secured a majority of the white vote.
Mitt Romney received 59 percent of the white vote, John McCain received 55 percent, George W. Bush received 58 percent, you get the pattern.
The problem is that over the last 40 years, the percentage of white voters has been declining, while the percentage of non-white voters has been increasing.
For example, in 1976, Jimmy Carter won the vast majority of the Hispanic vote, but that was only 1 percent of total voters. Eighty-nine percent of voters that year were white.
In 2012, Barack Obama won the Hispanic vote in a landslide. It made up to 10 percent of all voters, while the white vote was down to 72 percent of the electorate.
In 2016, this trend is expected to continue as the demographics of the nation keep shifting.
So the challenge facing the Republicans is dual-fold: How can the nominee encourage non-white voters to support them or how much better must they do with the white vote?
Again, I’ll rely on the math nerds.
In order to secure the votes needed to win the electoral college, the Republican nominee MUST win 64 percent of the white vote and 30 percent of the non-white vote. That’s just math.
Could it happen? Sure. You could also hit three hole-in-ones in your next round of golf, but I’m not willing to bet on it.
If the Republican candidate does hit both these numbers, it will be the first time it’s happened since Ronald Reagan did so in 1984 — a time with VERY different demographics than 2016.
