[Note: From time to time, this blog issues a set of
postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous
postings. Of late, the blog has been
looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their
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such summary accounts. The advantage of
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[Further
Note: Phew, it’s over. Happy New Years!!]
Earlier in this blog,[1] this writer presented a listing
of findings from a Pew Research Center report that offered demographic
information comparing the electorate in 1992 and 2016.[2] The goal was to observe changes the
electorate had experienced during the intermittent years. While that is helpful in understanding the
nation’s politics in and of itself, it also suggests reasons for the
polarization the nation is experiencing.
While this posting reviews those changes in summary, the review
will spur this writer to offer some hypotheses that will be tested by the
information offered by another Pew publication[3] – which will serve as the
topic of this blog’s next posting. But,
at minimum, this first Pew offering can stand on its own and provide the reader
some insight.
In terms of ethnicity and race (as a combined factor), the
nation has gone through some changes:
non-Hispanic whites make up a smaller percentage of the electorate (by 14%
points), Hispanic share has doubled (5% to 9%), blacks increased (10% to 12%),
mixed-race grew (1% to 5%), and total non-whites went up (16% to 26%). Whites’ share of the electorate fell to 60.7%
and is projected to be below 50% by 2045.
Just these limited numbers explain quite a bit and the demographic
shifts spell out advantages for the Democratic Party as that party is
constituted today. That is, that party
garners the bulk of non-white populations around the country. Surprisingly, the Pew report states that the
Republicans have also gained among these groups but not to the extent that Democrats
have.
In terms of age, the nation is older, and
the older set has shifted from being more pro-Democratic to being more
pro-Republican. Americans are better
educated and educated people who tended be Republican in ’92, tended to be
Democratic in ’16. When one mixes
education with ethnicity/race an interesting change is highlighted, whites with
college degrees increased as a proportion of the electorate. And Democrats with no college dropped
significantly (55% to 32%). Bottom line,
Democrats have benefited from changes in educational attainment numbers.
Then there is the effect of religion
on politics. Those who do not consider
themselves as belonging to a religion significantly went up (8% to 21%). This change seems to have benefited Democrats. Religious affiliation maintained its numbers
among Republicans. Summarily, Pew
observes that Republicans are strong among evangelical Protestants or white
Catholics during those twenty years but overall, they account for a smaller portion
of the electorate.
With the easy ability to categorize so
many groups according to identity factors such as race, ethnicity, and religion
– and to some degree age – with political parties and all that that represents,
one can surmise that these factors add to polarization. And that is the most prominent hypothesis one
can make from this information.
This posting ends with a statement that
more specifically captures this hypothesis:
… [F]or those voters
who are concerned over identity issues, the growth of more recent immigrant
population – including first generation Americans – less
white-based/traditional religiously affiliated people, and an increase in
non-religiously affiliated people, life seems to be becoming more secular, less
white, and more urban. In 1992 the US
urban population was 76% and in 2016 it was 82% (82.5% in 2019).[4] Conservative, white, religiously prone people
in the US, one can guess, are feeling more and more threatened.
To
test these hypothesized relationships, this blog, as stated above, will relate
another Pew research report, “Urban, Suburban and Rural Residents’ Views on Key
Social and Political Issues,” that Pew issued in 2018. That will be the topic for the next posting
of this blog.
[1] These findings are reported in the posting, “Some
Demographics in Election Years,” Gravitas:
A Voice for Civics (a blog), September 1, 2020. The reader can see the actual percentage
amounts the findings here indicate.
[2] “1.
The Changing Composition of the Political Parties,” The Pew Research Center (September 13, 2016),
accessed August 31, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/09/13/1-the-changing-composition-of-the-political-parties/ .
[3] Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Anna Brown, Richard
Fry, D’Vera Cohn, Ruth Igielnik, “2.
Urban, Suburban and Rural Residents’ Views on Key Social and Political
Issues, Pew Research Center: Social and
Demographic Trends (May 22, 2018), accessed January 1, 2021, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/urban-suburban-and-rural-residents-views-on-key-social-and-political-issues/
.
[4]
See “Urban Population (% of Total Population) – United States,” The World Bank, n.d., accessed December 30,
2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?end=2019&locations=US&start=1978
.
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