Skip to main content

How Many Republicans Are There?

On July 12, 2018, Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia gave us some interesting statistics:

 44,242,975 voters are registered as Democrats; 
32,570,817 voters are registered as Republicans;  
31,489,028 are registered as Independents; and, 
11,672,1568 voters are registered as other.

 40% Democrats
29% Republicans
28% Independents
 2%  Other

 However, several states don't ask for affiliation and are left out of the count. Sabato points out that "To be sure, there are a number of major states that do not register voters by party, such as Texas, Georgia, Washington, and the keystones of the industrial Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin [19 states]. If they did register by party, Texas, Georgia, and Indiana would almost certainly add to the Republican total; the industrial states probably less so." 


Then he looks at trends and sees that the proportion of voters have shifted to independents as opposed to party affiliation. What does it mean?






It means that Independents have become increasingly valuable to both parties. That if we wish to win in November 2018, Democrats need to attract Independents, the growing part of the electorate.




Another trend from the year 2000 to 2016 is the Northeast has become increasingly Democratic, the Midwest increasingly Republican, the South is split as is the West. We should not write off the South. Even the Midwest, while becomingly narrowly Republican, need not be a write off.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I LIke Mike Bloomberg by Lynne Weikart

Bloomberg took office two months after 9/11. The results of 9/11 - the city lost over 100,000 private sector jobs in one year. The city was devastated. Corporations were fleeing the city as were residents. Bloomberg created an economic development machine that roared through all five boroughs and brought over 400,000 new jobs.    Just about the time the city recovered from 9/11, there was a national recession and Bloomberg guided the recovery. That recovery was cushioned by the fact that Bloomberg had raised taxes twice and the city had surpluses to help navigate the recession. Very early in his mayoralty, Bloomberg made it very clear that he would not tolerate discrimination against Muslims. In 2002 shortly after Bloomberg became mayor, he announced he was against a city council bill that would ban the Palestine Authority from their offices in the city. A few years later in the hysteria surrounding the proposed building of an Islamic Community Center a few blocks from the deva
1 comment
Read more

Federal Abandonment of Public Housing

Public housing began during the Roosevelt years. In 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt signed the United States Housing Act, known as Wagner-Steagall, to support building low-rent public housing. In the wake of  President Truman‘s surprise reelection in 1948, Congress passed the bill now known as the Housing Act of 1949 and re-authorized the public housing program. The GI Bill after World War II supported veterans in securing low-interest loans to own their own homes. In the 1950s Congress passed a second Housing Act focused on conserving and rehabilitating low-income housing. All these laws favored white people. The 1950s were famous for "urban renewal" which meant that the federal government provided grants for slum clearance that often meant cities would choose the poorest section of town to abolish residences and build new construction.  In the 1960s, public housing became less discriminatory with Kennedy's Equal Opportunity in Housing Act. President Johnson eleva
3 comments
Read more

Federal Government and the Lack of Affordable Housing

The federal government hasn't built public housing since the 1960s. President Johnson pushed Congress to pass the 1968 Housing Act that became a major time of construction of public housing almost doubling such units across the country. In addition, Bobby Kennedy and Senator Jacob Javits pushed through a 1966 amendment to the Economic Development Act that provided private developers with incentives payments to invest in poverty areas.   Once the Reagan era began that was the end of public housing. Instead, Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which slowed building of low-income housing further. First, the act repealed accelerated depreciation and the use of depreciation deductions to offset other ordinary income, precipitating a sharp drop in multifamily housing production. Second, the law placed a cap, for the first time, on states’ authority to issue tax-exempt bonds for multifamily housing and imposed income limits on eligible households. Third, the act created the Low In
2 comments
Read more