ConservativeHome's The Republican

Poll results: the Tea Party continues to be alive and well

Ryan Streeter

Two interesting findings in today’s poll data:

First, Gallup released poll numbers today showing that 70% of Americans believe the Republican Party should consider the Tea Party’s ideas as important. Of these, 53% of Republicans and 46% of Independents said the GOP should consider the grassroots movement’s ideas “very important.”

 

The Tea Party has favorability ratings in the Gallup poll lower than those of the Republican Party, and yet voters think it’s influence should be felt.

Second, in Pew’s release of its Daily Numbers, we see a significant drop over a three year period in the number of Hispanics who view the contribution of illegal immigrants (or what Pew calls “unauthorized” immigration) in a positive light. Between 2007 and 2010, the share of Hispanics holding a positive view of the contribution of illegal immigrants dropped from 51% to 30%, while the share holding a negative view rose from 20% to 31%.

The net effect is that roughly an equal share of Hispanics now view illegal immigrants’ effect on America positively and negatively, a big shift from the rather lop-sided scale in 2007.

Much was made up and through the 2010 elections of the Tea Party’s anti-immigrant animus, and indeed, there were tea partiers out there saying some pretty awful things. But we shouldn’t allow them to paint the picture for us. Something more general is likely at work.

The most likely hypothesis would be that in challenging economic times, the overall effect of an illegal immigrant population will be viewed more negatively by more people, both Hispanic and non-Hispanic. Illegal immigrants would more likely be viewed as taking jobs the unemployed would like to have, and as a greater social burden as they consume healthcare and other resources that the citizen population has to pay for.

What is interesting from both of these polls is the conclusion that even though the Tea Party may be viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans, its influence is respected, and its negative view of illegal immigration actually seems to be shared by a growing number of Hispanics.

This all suggests that the mood of the country is much closer to the Tea Party’s mood, even if the movement itself is held in suspicion. This doesn't mean, of course, that the GOP stands to gain among Hispanics on account of this issue, but it does suggest that continuing to regard the Hispanic population in a monolithic way is inconsistent with how it is changing.

The "purple problem," low wages, values and independent voter preferences: Republicans may be losing middle America after all - Part 2 in Ryan Streeter's 3-part series

Ryan Streeter

This is the second of a three-part series on a Republican agenda for middle America. Part 3 will run after Christmas weekend.

Yesterday, I looked at two ways that Republicans are winning in Middle America. Today I look at four ways they’re losing the middle.

Jobs and wages: Middle class wage stagnation has been around awhile, and the GOP has not put forward a plan to address it. Many smart observers have made the point for a long time that health care costs are dragging down wages, and they’re right. By fixing the tax code’s treatment of health insurance, we could free up more business revenue for wages. But beyond the health care reform implications of this view, the GOP has had little to show for an aggressive growth agenda whose primary units of measurement would be rising wages and new jobs across the broad middle of America’s income scale.

Republicans have gotten too comfortable assuming Republican support. With unemployment at 15 percent for people with anything lower than a college degree, nothing’s a given.

Values: Traditional Republican values are no longer the same things as middle class values. We once thought of Republican values as most at home in America’s middle class. Not anymore. Divorce rates and out-of-wedlock child-rearing and –bearing have skyrocketed among middle class families since the 1980s. This was brought to light recently by a report from the University of Virginia’s Brad Wilcox, which garnered a lot of public attention for documenting  this troubling trend - which the National Review’s Rich Lowry termed “social and economic evisceration of a swath of Middle America.”

The middle class is supposed to be the part of America to which you “graduate” if you’re poor but ultimately embrace work, values, and family.  Alas, the middle class has begun looking more like what conservatives used to lament as the broken society of the lower class. And no one seems to have noticed. But Wilcox’s study wasn’t the first time someone pointed this out. For instance, Kay Hymowitz noted 4 years ago in City Journal that America had formed into “two nations” in which high-earning educated women were divorcing less and less by 1990 while less-educated, lower-income women “continued on a divorce spree for another ten years.” Hymowitz’s conclusions come from a study published in 2004. This isn’t new news. Conservatives have just been quietly looking away.

Middle spectrum voters: The Republicans are losing the fastest-growing parts of the middle electorate. As Joel Kotkin noted last week on ConservativeHome, millennials and Latinos represent the most significant part of the middle that trends “progressive.” This “does not mean they will not shift center or even center-right over time but Republicans have much work to do on getting them to shift. Both groups are right now voting about two to one for Democrats.”

Republicans have shown that they can do well among Latinos, though they’ve shown they can also alienate them in a heartbeat, too. Millennials, who will constitute 1 out of every 3 voters in 10 years, are even more of a question mark for Republicans. Currently, they trend away from the GOP in a pretty serious way.

The “purple problem”: The fastest-growing states are red, but the fastest-growing sections within them may be blue. Despite the Census’s good news for Republicans this week, it may be the case that population growth in otherwise red states is driven by surging blue populations within them. I noted yesterday that states gaining congressional seats are benefitting from policies that Republicans promote. Uber-demographer Michael Barone makes a similar point.  However, as Michael Shear pointed out at the Caucus, and as Christopher Beam recounts in his post, the hidden gem for Democrats may be that the real drivers of growth favor their party.

We’ll know more about this as the Census releases more data, but the GOP should be uneasy about this. While Republican-esque policies may create environments in which people want to live, that doesn’t mean that the churning, burgeoning suburban cauldrons of diverse entrepreneurs, professionals, managers and working class families will vote red. 

The Republican party is living a paradox. On the one hand, it "owns" the middle class while the Democrats "own" the low-income and super-rich segments of the voting public. But on the other hand, the trends discussed here suggest the GOP's grip on middle America is slipping - significantly. The good news for Republicans is that the Democrats don't have much more to offer middle America than a politics of resentment. The GOP can get ahead if it starts planning now. I would argue that the 2012 presidential contender who internalizes these concerns and addresses them head-on will do well indeed.

Who owns the middle class and Hispanic vote? It's not as clear cut as it used to be

Ryan Streeter

That we have been hearing non-stop about "middle class tax cuts" the past couple of days shows just how much the Democrats and the left own the concept of the middle class. But it's not at all clear that the middle class loves them as much as they say they love the middle class. 

And on top of this, it's also not clear that working and middle class Hispanic families are so much in the Democrats' pocket that using the Dream Act will ultimately work as a wedge issue.

Michael Barone's analysis today at The American sheds some interesting light on the middle class and Hispanic vote last month. 

While Democrats continued to do well among African Americans and what Barone calls "gentry liberals" (high-income, left-leaning voters), the GOP made substantial gains among Hispanics and working class voters. Barone looks at the districts in which Obama won by 60% or more in 2008, and then lists the percentage difference in the Republican vote in those districts in 2010. The results are astounding. While the GOP did fairly well in 2010 compared to 2008 in general, its strongest gains in these heavily Democratic districts were in the Hispanic and working class districts, as the chart below shows:

Newt Gingrich is showing a lot of insight, and foresight, by reaching out to Hispanic voters in such a public way. And blogger Matt Lewis has been writing for some time now about the important opportunity Republicans have before them with Hispanic voters - something GOP leadership should be thinking a lot about.

It's now time to throw the recent gains Barone documents into high gear by ensuring that the new group of Hispanic Republicans - from Marco Rubio in the Senate to Susana Martinez in New Mexico - are given a lot of airtime. They will likely, as a result of their newfound prominence, to be held to a slightly higher performance standard than other newly elected officials, but that's okay. Bobby Jindal, as an exciting non-white new governor, was held to a tough standard early on, and he has rebounded beautifully to a position of fairly strong prominence.

Equally as important is how the GOP capitalizes on its gains with working families. Ross Douthat recently wrote on ConservativeHome about the importance of making progress with middle class families by offering real, solid policy solutions that boost disposable income and create opportunity.

Barone's analysis shows that middle class families trended hard enough toward Republicans that it's hard to believe the Democrats will win too much ground with all their talk of "middle class tax cuts." However, without the kinds of policies Douthat talked about, these gains could vanish.

We'll be revisiting this theme a lot at ConservativeHome in the coming weeks.