There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from the 2012 presidential contest without trying to predict the winner. As the polls are about to open, let’s look at some of these developments, which fall into four broad categories that will shape the future of politics.
Demographic Trends: The first major development (or non-development) revealed by this year’s campaign is that the pro-Democratic demographic tidal wave threatening to swamp the Republican Party has not crested. The overwhelmingly white Republican Party remains competitive.
The primary factor keeping Romney within reach of President Obama is his decisive margin among white voters. African-Americans and Hispanics remain solidly Democratic. Blacks back Obama by the same 91 point margin that he had in 2008. Obama’s margin of support among Hispanics, 69-21, is substantially larger than his 67-31 margin 4 years ago. (The 2008 data is from exit polls in which by definition there are no undecided voters; the 2012 data still have a bloc of the undecided.)
The demographic threat to the Republican Party grows out of the fact that every four years the electorate becomes roughly two percent less white and two percent more minority, primarily as a result of the increase in the Hispanic and Asian-American populations and the relatively low birth rate among whites. By my computation, this translates into a modest 0.85 percentage point gain for Democrats and 0.85 percentage point loss for Republicans every four years. In other words, the changing composition of the electorate gives Democrats an additional built-in advantage of 1.7 percentage points every four years.
Many analysts and strategists were convinced that Obama’s victory with 53 percent of the vote in 2008 marked the tipping point in terms of this demographic transition, but in 2010 Republicans reaffirmed the continuing viability of the party’s “white” strategy, winning with 62 percent of the white votes cast, the highest margin in a non-presidential year since the start of exit polling in 1972.
The white strategy will be tested once again on Tuesday, when election-day exit polls will provide a verdict. (In general, election-day exit polls are more conclusive than pre-election surveys, with 44 percent of those questioned in 2008 responding, in contrast to a 9 percent response rate in pre-election polls this year.)
Even if Obama wins, however, the Republicans are unlikely to change course on immigration policy in order to court Hispanic votes. Instead, a Romney loss will encourage party leaders to blame his ideological inconsistency, his lack of charisma and his moderate past for the defeat, rather than to swiftly initiate a major re-evaluation of the party’s approach to ethnic or racial minorities.
The Republican commitment to remaining a predominantly white party has been profoundly reinforced by growing evidence of declining white support for Obama. Survey data from both the Washington Post and the Pew Research Center show white backing of Obama dropping from 43 percent in 2008 to 37 percent by the end of this October.
There is another crucial demographic issue: Obama’s decision to devote huge blocks of time and resources to winning the votes of women may backfire, accentuating Democratic liabilities as the party of race and gender preferences and accelerating defections among men. My Times colleague Ross Douthat has written incisively about the shortcomings of Obama’s approach to targeting women voters.
There are, I think, additional risks to Obama’s approach. Forget race and gender for a moment: focusing on any particular demographic group is likely to revive the image of the Democratic Party as a collection of “special interests” seeking advantage, rather than a coalition supportive of a broader policy agenda. There is some evidence that the strategy of courting women may have done more to alienate males than to win over females. For example, Frank Newport, the editor in chief of the Gallup poll, found in an Oct. 23 survey that:
Barack Obama’s support is down seven percentage points among men versus three points among women. In Gallup’s latest 21-day rolling average of likely voter preferences, based on interviewing conducted Oct. 1-21, Romney leads Obama by 14 points among men, whereas Obama and John McCain were tied among men in Gallup’s final pre-election estimate in 2008. Obama currently leads Romney by eight percentage points among women, whereas he led McCain by 14 among women in 2008.
Obama’s tactics vis-à-vis women also risk the loss of some support among economically liberal but socially conservative Catholic voters who find the focus on contraception and abortion – under the rubric of women’s rights – problematic.
Health Care: The second major development of the 2012 campaign has been the failure of Paul Ryan to emerge as the white hot ideological flash point that many on the left and right expected. Instead, from a purely political vantage point, Ryan has not only turned out to be an acceptable running mate – his home state, Wisconsin is unexpectedly in play — but his March 20, 2012 proposal to turn Medicare into a “premium support” (or voucher) plan has not, in and of itself, doomed Republican chances.
In practice, the Ryan Medicare proposal did not become a dagger aimed at the heart of the Republican Party. The Pew Research Center has found that the expected Republican-Romney vulnerability on Medicare never materialized: in a Sept. 12-16 survey, Pew noted that voters, by a 51-38 margin — a 13-point difference — believed that Obama would deal with Medicare better than Romney. By October 24-28, however, Obama’s advantage had fallen to 48-43 — just 5 points.
The same survey showed that from 2008 to 2012, Obama experienced his largest declines in backing from two specific age groups: the young, whose support for the president dropped by 13 points from a 34 point advantage in 2008 (66-32), to a 21 point advantage in 2012 (56-35); and the elderly, who supported John McCain in 2008 by 8 points, 53-45, and who now support Romney over Obama by a robust 19 points, 57-38.
This suggests a couple of things. First, that the Republican attacks on Obamacare, particularly the charge that Obamacare will cut $716 billion from Medicare over ten years, have had a substantial impact.
Perhaps more significant, the survey suggests that Democrats may have lost much of their overwhelming advantage among voters on the broad issue of health care, including Medicare. Less than four years ago, Democrats held an impressive lead on this issue. An Ipsos-Reuters survey conducted after the 2008 election in late November found that voters trusted Democrats over Republicans to reform health care by a 62-23 margin, a 39-point difference.
Truth: An equally significant development has been the strategic decision of the Romney campaign to set new standards in the use of untrue campaign claims.
The ultimate test case of whether it is possible to lie and get away with it will be the outcome in Ohio, where Romney is running ads in open disregard of the truth.
Over the past two weeks, with Ohio once again a key battleground, the Romney campaign has falsely alleged in speeches and in television commercials that Chrysler plans to shift Jeep manufacturing and jobs from the United State to China.
“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China,” Romney told a rally in Defiance, Ohio on Oct. 25. His commercial declares:
Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.
Glen Kessler, the Washington Post fact checker, gave Romney his worst rating, four Pinocchios, for the speech and the ad. Ohio newspapers have written tough editorials and news stories challenging Romney.
If Romney wins Ohio, every campaign in future elections is going to give much more serious consideration to lying and to open defiance of media rebuttals as a legitimate campaign expedient.
Ideological Conflict: The most important development in the 2012 presidential election is something that did not happen. Many observers expected that the contest this year would draw a clear ideological line between the two parties.
This expectation grew out of the fact that House Republicans, with backing from their partisan allies in the Senate, twice approved budgets radically cutting back the American welfare state that has expanded steadily since the 1930s.
Romney’s decision during the Republican primaries to endorse the 2012 Republican budget and his continuing warnings that America is in danger of becoming an “entitlement state” further signaled an ideological battle. Romney’s selection of Ryan — the author and leading advocate of the Republican budget — as his running mate further raised the ideological stakes. Democrats at all levels geared up for a counterattack.
The groundwork was laid for a confrontation of unprecedented proportions. But the candidates and the campaigns decided against doing battle on such high ground.
The Obama forces focused on Bain Capital instead of on the Ryan Budget. In the crucial first presidential debate, when Obama had the chance to force Romney to provide specifics and defend his domestic spending cuts, Obama chose instead not to challenge his opponent on this front.
Romney, in turn, has clearly decided that his best chance lies in moving toward the center, muting the Republican call for a shrunken safety net, ducking the Republican commitment to end abortion rights, and avoiding discussion of the belief he expressed behind closed doors that nearly half the population, 47 percent, has been corrupted by government dependency – a conviction widely shared in the conservative community.
Looking back, an election measuring support for the conservative agenda was too much to hope for. Politicians, especially those as malleable as Romney, are inherently adverse to risky strategies, and especially averse to testing voters by giving them an accurate assessment of the costs of their favored policies.
Sharp ideological choices are alien to the American political tradition. Republicans in the House of Representatives have been pushing the margins in this area, but the current contest shows that backpedaling still dominates the post-convention stage of presidential elections.
If Republicans retain control of the House as expected, the same major question will arise regardless of who wins the White House:
Will it be possible to constrain the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, the wing that has effectively dominated policy making since the 2010 midterm election? This faction has demonstrated a willingness to risk economic collapse in its determination to reject compromise.
The country faces the larger danger of going over the “fiscal cliff” this winter if it fails to address the issues of pending tax hikes and the sequestration of $100 billion in defense and domestic spending.
Both Obama and Romney have demonstrated a relatively insipid leadership style. It is difficult to imagine either of them controlling the destructive forces within the conservative movement or the crisis of government spending vastly exceeding its income. Whichever party steps forward with real solutions will inevitably get kicked in the teeth by voters. At a time when both parties have consigned themselves to a politics of equivocation and retreat, the far right is the only force in Washington with a kamikaze commitment to a defined agenda. The presidential election does not appear likely to produce an effective counterforce.
Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” which was published earlier this year.