Dog Whistle Politics: What if Only White People Voted?

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/joshua-holland/54537/dog-whistle-politics-what-if-only-white-people-voted

Dog Whistle Politics: What if Only White People Voted?
Elections
by Joshua Holland | March 1, 2014 - 10:42am

— from Moyers & Company

After the 2012 election, Buzzfeed put together a series of electoral maps that showed what the results would have looked like if we didn’t have universal suffrage. A couple of them went viral, including this one, which depicts the election results if only white men voted, which was the case before the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870:



…and this one, which depicts the outcome if only white men and women voted:



Some people looked at these maps and concluded that they proved white America unwilling to vote for a black president, but that conclusion was far too simplistic. The reality is that the Democratic Party has had a structural disadvantage among white voters that is, at least in part, a result of the success of Republicans’ “Southern Strategy” — dog whistle politics. While Obama got 39 percent of the white vote in 2012, in 2008 he grabbed 43 percent which was two points higher than John Kerry’s share in a losing effort in 2004 and just one point less than Al Gore’s share when he won the popular vote in 2000.

Ultimately, race is just a single variable. Just as Democrats struggle with the white vote, Republicans have been burdened with a longstanding gender gap. Fifty-five percent of women voted for Obama in 2012, a point less than he garnered in his first election. Kerry won 51 percent of women voters in 2004 — a big reason he lost the election — and Gore got 55 percent in 2000.