1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
-
-
Email Event
-
-
This second conference about "Red, Blue, and Purple America" brings back the panelists who convened in February 2008 to discuss America's changing demographic trends and electoral landscape. Last year, leading demographers, political scientists, and analysts examined the electoral impact of generational changes, alterations in class and family structure, minority voting
Listen to Audio
play
pause
Download Audio as MP3
patterns, changing urban-suburban mix, and shifts in religious belief. The papers were gathered in Red, Blue, and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics (Brookings Institution Press, 2008). Now, experts will analyze the 2008 demographic electoral transformation and what it may mean for the 2010 and 2012 elections.
This conference is a joint project of the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution.
| 8:30 a.m. | Registration and Breakfast | |
|
|
||
| 9:00 | Introduction: | Karlyn Bowman, AEI |
| Ruy Teixeira, Brookings Institution | ||
| 9:10 | Panelists: | Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort |
| Ron Brownstein, Atlantic Media | ||
| William Frey, Brookings Institution | ||
| Scott Keeter, Pew Research Center | ||
| Robert Lang, Virginia Tech | ||
| Ruy Teixeira, Brookings Institution | ||
|
|
||
| Discussants: | Michael Barone, AEI | |
| Mark Schmitt, The American Prospect | ||
| Moderator: | Ruy Teixeira, Brookings Institution | |
| 12:00 p.m. | Adjournment |
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-5917
E-mail: afoster@aei.org
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4870
E-mail: VRodman@aei.org
WASHINGTON, JUNE 12, 2009--"Demography may not be destiny . . . but it is very hard to ignore," AEI senior fellow Karlyn Bowman said in her introductory remarks at a joint AEI/Brookings Institution conference on June 12 about how demographic shifts seen in 2008 may affect elections in 2010 and 2012.
Event participants highlighted the importance of several trends that contributed to President Barack Obama's victory in 2008. They indicated that Republicans have a lot to be worried about and that Democrats need to avoid complacency for success in subsequent elections.
Ron Brownstein, political director for the Atlantic Media Company, said Democrats have the upper hand because they appeal to a broad audience while Republicans are overly dependent on the South. Obama's win may have been partly about George W. Bush's unpopularity, but Brownstein claimed that a "coalition of the ascendant"--a coming together of minorities, youth, and college-educated whites for the Democrats--played a bigger role.
The minority vote share is increasing and trends Democratic. William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, said the votes of blacks and Hispanics made a significant difference in 2008: ten of the states that went for Obama in November did so because the minority vote tipped the balance. Obama also gained a significant portion of the youth vote. Although Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, said Obama would have won the election even if those under thirty had not voted, 61 percent of young voters support the president. If it indicates a trend, he added, Republicans should be very worried. At the same time, Democrats should not be complacent: the young may be identifying with the Democratic Party because they think it is better than the alternative, not because they agree with its entire platform.
College-educated white voters are voting for Democrats in larger numbers. At the same time, the electoral influence of the white working class is declining, Ruy Texiera, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, said. That means Democrats can distance themselves, to a degree, from cultural issues that have been difficult for the party in the past and instead talk more about the values the party increasingly shares with college-educated whites.
Robert Lang of Virginia Tech discussed voting trends associated with geography. He argued that we are seeing "3D politics"--that is, density plus diversity equals Democrats. Four of five Americans live in metropolitan areas, and the densest of these are voting Democratic. If the trend is "not reversed by 2020, even Texas could be gone [to the Democrats]," Lang said.
According to Bill Bishop, coauthor with sociologist Robert Cushing of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, the number of "landslide counties" is rising, indicating that Americans are becoming more polarized. Bishop did not discuss whether this trend favored one party over another, but their findings demonstrate that people want to live in communities with others who share their opinions and make similar lifestyle choices. These lifestyle differences between communities manifest themselves in elections, he said.
Some non-demographic factors may have played a role in the last election, argued Mark Schmitt, executive editor of The American Prospect, and Michael Barone, a resident fellow at AEI. Schmitt said the perception of demographic change and the ability of candidates to understand these changes could be more important than the demographic changes themselves. He credited Obama's victory in 2008 in part to his ability to comprehend and benefit from the demographic changes around him.
Barone spoke about the "balance of enthusiasm" that may lead to greater voter turnout. He noted that voter turnout has risen in each of the past three presidential elections for the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. The balance of enthusiasm may be seen as enthusiasm to elect a candidate or to defeat one. Either way, Barone cautioned that enthusiasm levels and voter turnout can fluctuate dramatically and that changing demography that may have helped to increase turnout recently should not be relied upon too heavily for predictions about future elections.
- Video, audio, and event materials
- This conference follows on a previous "Red, Blue, and Purple America" conference held in 2008
Speaker biographies
Michael Barone is a resident fellow at AEI, where he studies politics, American government, and campaigns and elections. The principal coauthor of the biennial Almanac of American Politics (National Journal Group), he has written many books on American politics and history, including, most recently, Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers (Random House/Crown Forum, 2007). Mr. Barone is also a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.
Bill Bishop is a writer living in Austin, Texas, and is the coauthor with sociologist Robert Cushing of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (Houghton Mifflin, 2008). Mr. Bishop has worked as a reporter at the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Kentucky; as a columnist at the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald-Leader; and as a special projects writer at the Austin American-Statesman. He and his wife, Julie Ardery, previously owned and operated the Bastrop County Times, a weekly newspaper in Smithville, Texas. They now coedit The Daily Yonder, a web-based publication covering rural America.
Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at AEI. Her research areas include public opinion and polls, American politics, and the media. She regularly updates her AEI Public Opinion Studies on terrorism, the Iraq war, taxes, the environment, abortion, economic insecurity, and other topics. Ms. Bowman writes regular features on public opinion for Forbes.com.
Ron Brownstein is the political director for Atlantic Media Company, with responsibility for coordinating overall political coverage at its publications, which include The Atlantic, National Journal, the Hotline, and Congress Daily. He writes a weekly column on politics and policy that appears simultaneously in National Journal and the Los Angeles Times, as well as articles in National Journal and The Atlantic. From 1990 through 2007, he was the national political correspondent and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Brownstein has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage in the Times of the 1996 and 2004 presidential campaigns.
William Frey is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program and a research professor in population studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Mr. Frey specializes in issues involving state and regional populations, migration, immigration, race, aging, political demographics, and the U.S. Census. He has authored or coauthored over 150 articles and books, including America by the Numbers: A Field Guide to the U.S. Population (New Press, 2001) and The Allyn & Bacon Social Atlas of the United States (Pearson, 2008). Mr. Frey has been a contributing editor of American Demographics magazine. He frequently discusses demographic trends in national media venues.
Scott Keeter is the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. He is the coauthor of four books: A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics (Brookings Institution Press, 2000); What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters (Yale University Press, 1996); and Uninformed Choice: The Failure of the New Presidential Nominating System (Praeger, 1983). His other published research includes articles and book chapters on survey methodology, political communications and behavior, and health care topics. Since 1980, Mr. Keeter has been an election night analyst of exit polls for NBC News. He previously served as chair of the standards committee of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and is currently councillor-at-large for the association. Previously, Mr. Keeter was a professor of political science and department chair at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Robert Lang is codirector of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Virginia, and an associate professor of urban affairs and planning in Virginia Tech's School of Planning and International Affairs. In 2007, Mr. Lang was named a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, he was director of urban and metropolitan research at the Fannie Mae Foundation. Mr. Lang's research has been featured in USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News & World Report, and reported on by NPR, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, and ABC News. He is the author of Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis (Brookings Institution Press, 2003) and Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities (Brookings Institution Press, 2007).
Mark Schmitt is the executive editor of The American Prospect. Mr. Schmitt was recently a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, where he researched reform of the political process, campaign finance, congressional procedure, state-level politics, budget and tax policy, and the history and role of ideas in politics. He has written for The New Republic, the Financial Times, and many other publications and has contributed chapters to numerous books. In 2003, he launched The Decembrist, which was named one of the five best political blogs in 2004 by Forbes. He also contributes to TPMCafe. Before joining the New America Foundation, Mr. Schmitt was director of policy and research at the Open Society Institute, and he was a speechwriter and policy director for then-senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J.). He was also a senior policy adviser to Senator Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign.
Ruy Teixeira is a senior fellow at both the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, as well as a fellow at the New Politics Institute. He was recently a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and wrote a series of reports with William Frey on the political geography of battleground states in the 2008 election. He is the author or coauthor of six books, including Red, Blue and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics; The Emerging Democratic Majority; America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters; and The Disappearing American Voter, as well as hundreds of articles, both scholarly and popular.
