Virginia underwent a massive political and demographic transformation before our eyes, according to new data released on Thursday. These data confirm that state’s slide away from the GOP isn’t an election year fluke, but rather a symptom of deep underlying changes. 

Start with a Washington Post poll of Virginia registered voters. These data show that Virginians now support legalizing same sex marriage by a robust 56-33 margin, compared to just 46-43 in favor in 2011.  In addition, 86 percent of Virginia voters say they support background checks for gun buyers and 54 percent of Virginians support giving undocumented workers the right to live here legally provided they pay a fine and meet other requirements, a measure only a scant 39 percent opposes:

It’s no wonder Republicans can’t carry Virginia any more in Presidential elections: the state has just changed too much for that aggressively conservative brand to attract majority support from the new Virginia.

Other new data underscore the rapidity of change.  Census data assembled by analyst Geoffrey Skelley and posted on Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball demonstrate that Virginians are increasingly not actually from Virginia: they were born somewhere else and moved there later.  Virginia’s decline in “nativity” (the proportion of a state’s residents who were born in the state) has been the sharpest decline in the nation over the last century. In 1910, 89 percent of Virginians were born in Virginia, compared to just under 50 percent today.  That compares to a nativity drop of just 67 to 59 percent in the nation as a whole during the same time period:

Two other states to keep an eye on, judging by nativity statisticsm are North Carolina, down from 95 to 59 percent, and Georgia, down from 91 to 55 percent. Georgia, bear in mind, is probably becoming a majority-minority state sometime this decade.

Georgia. Wouldn’t it be something if that state started slipping away from the GOP. For those who say that could never happen, well…you probably said the exact same thing about Virginia.

The Census Bureau has just released new population projections based on alternative scenarios for immigration — high, low and constant.  The Bureau released their main projection, based on a medium immigration scenario, last fall, which showed the US becoming majority-minority in 2043. The new projections take that conclusion even further.

Under all scenarios in the new projections, the US will become majority-minority no later than 2046.  In other words, even if immigration is low or constant, the date we become majority-minority only moves back a few years.  And if the high immigration scenario occurs, we will become majority-minority earlier, in 2041.

The Census release also notes that the population under 18 years is projected to become majority-minority in either 2018 or 2019 in all four series.  That’s only 6-7 years away.  And the working-age population (18-64) is projected to become majority-minority between 2036 (high series) and 2042 (constant series).

These data show that the race-ethnic transformation of the United States is inevitable.  We are hurtling toward a new world that no one can stop and to which everyone will have to adapt.  And that very definitely includes conservatives who think that by opposing immigration reform they can somehow stop this transformation. The new data from the Census suggest just how futile this quest will ultimately be.

As I pointed out on TP Ideas last Thursday, the new Census voting data show that the GOP’s problem in 2012 was not “missing white voters”, but rather the ongoing march of demographic change. In fact, if we want to talk about missing voters, it makes more sense to talk about missing Latino voters.

Latino turnout lagged white turnout by a very substantial 16 points (48 percent vs. 64 percent). These missing voters are helping the GOP at this point, blunting the impact of demographic change on Republican electoral fortunes. But that might not last forever: this gap represents a potential tranche of votes which, if tapped by successful mobilization efforts, could make GOP’s situation much worse than it already is.

How much worse?  Reid Wilson at National Journal did the math, using census data to show how many additional Hispanic votes would be generated by state if Hispanic turnout matched white turnout:

Of course, Obama won anyway in 2012, even with all these missing Hispanic votes.  But in closer elections, they could be critical. Perhaps one day, mobilizing these Hispanic voters might play a significant role in turning Texas purple, Arizona blue and Colorado and Nevada even bluer.

Maybe instead of worrying about missing white voters, Republicans should start worrying about missing Hispanic voters. And what might happen if they started showing up.

The new Census voter turnout data were released on Wednesday and are full of interesting findings that underscore the extent of the demographic challenge for the GOP. They also show that the exit polls weren’t exaggerating the impact of ongoing demographic change on the electorate, despite the skepticism or perhaps hopes of some

To begin with, these new data confirm what years of exit polling has been telling us about the diversification of the US electorate. According to the Census data, the share of minority voters increased by 2.6 percentage points between 2008 and 2012, very similar to the exit polls, which showed a 2.3 point increase. The two surveys also told the same story between 2004 and 2008, when the Census showed a 2.9 point increase in the minority vote and the exits indicated a 2.8 point increase.

The Census data also confirm that black turnout was higher than white turnout in 2012 (66.2 percent for blacks vs. 64.1 percent for whites), the first time the Census data have shown this result. It is certainly an open question whether blacks will continue to turn out at a rate that matches or exceeds white turnout, but it is worth noting that there has been a steadily rising trend of higher black turnout since the 1996 election, which of course considerably precedes Obama’s arrival on the scene.

While blacks have closed the turnout gap with whites, the same was not true of Hispanics and Asians, who continued to lag about 16 points behind whites.  Even with these relatively low turnout rates, these two groups (especially Hispanics) have been steadily increasing their share of voters over time, and will continue to do so in the future, thanks to their increasing share of the eligible voter population.

The current turnout gap between these two groups and whites is a double-edged sword for the GOP. On the one hand, it helps blunt the already substantial ongoing impact of demographic change on Republican electoral fortunes. On the other, it constitutes a potential tranche of votes which, if tapped by successful mobilization efforts, could make their situation much worse than it already it. The fact that Asian and Hispanic turnout haven’t accelerated yet should be cold comfort for them. Not so long ago, many commentators doubted whether black turnout could ever match, much less exceed, white turnout. But now it has happened.

Finally, these data should put to bed the idea that “missing white voters,” and not rising diversity, fueled the Democrats’ 2012 victory. The Census data estimate that there were 2 million fewer white voters in 2012 than 2008. If these missing voters had all shown up, and assuming these missing whites would have voted as other whites did, who supported Romney by about 20 points, he would have netted around 400,000 votes. Not quite enough: he lost to Obama by 5 million votes!

Looked at another way, if white turnout had not declined at all in 2012 and had instead matched black turnout levels, there would have been an additional 3 million white voters, which would have netted Romney 600,000 votes. Still not enough!  In fact, Romney would have needed an additional 25 million white voters in the electorate to net the 5 million votes he needed just to tie Obama. To say this is implausible considerably understates the case.

Time for Republicans to wake up and smell the coffee. Diversity is here, it’s growing in every election and no amount of wishful thinking will make it go away.

What will America look like in 2050? As regular TP Ideas readers know, that America then will be even more diverse than America now is assured. But the pace at which the United States is hurtling toward this future, even in historically lily-white states, might surprise you.

Our best guess as to America’s demographic future comes from the Census Bureau’s population projections, which provide estimates of our race-ethnic distribution by five year intervals up to 2050.  According to these projections, around the year 2043 non-Hispanic whites will become a minority of our population and by 2050 they will be only 47 percent with minorities a solid 53 percent majority.  Hispanics will be 28 percent of the population, blacks will be 13 percent, Asians will be 7 percent, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders will be 1 percent and multiracial individuals will be another 4 percent.

Of course this change will not be equal across states. Different states will start and wind up in very different places in terms of their level of diversity. Unfortunately, while we have good information on where various states are right now, we lack good projections of where individual states are likely to be as the decades unfold to 2050. This is because the Census Bureau has not done state level projections for race and ethnicity since 1995 and those projections, besides being outdated, only went through 2025.

The best we can do therefore is to look at the state level data released from the 2010 Census, compare those data to data from the  2000 Census and extrapolate forward to future decades.  Such straight line estimates have to be treated very cautiously, especially the farther we get from the present day, but they can at least give us a rough feel way for the way diversity might evolve at the state level.

Right now, only four states (California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas) and the District of Columbia are majority-minority.  But that will change fairly rapidly if 2000-2010 rates of change persist this decade and beyond.  In this decade, we would expect Nevada (46 percent minority in 2010), Maryland (45 percent minority), Georgia (44 percent) and possibly Florida (42 percent) to pass that threshhold.  In the 2020’s, Arizona, New Jersey and possibly Delaware and New York should follow suit.  And by 2050, we may also see majority-minority populations in Connecticut, Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington state and possibly even Alaska.

That’s just the roster of possible majority-minority states. It’s important to emphasize how widespread the transformation of the country is likely to be, as diversity spreads deeply into seemingly unlikely states. We can see this by estimating the 2050 minority share in states by using two simple methods. The first applies the 2000-2010 growth rates of the white and minority populations (respectively) to the next four decades.  The second applies the 2000-2010 minority shift in population share to the same time period.  Both figures are likely on the high side and necessarily speculative, as emphasized above, but it’s worth noting that the overall US shift in minority share predicted by the second method is fairly close to the figure from the Census projections.

Kansas is predicted to have 50 percent minority in 2050 by the first method while the second method predicts a somewhat more modest, but still eye-catching 42 percent share. Utah is predicted to have 49 percent minorities by the first method and 39 percent by the second. Pennsylvania is projected to be 47 percent minority by the first method and 39 percent by the second. And states like Ohio and Michigan, as slow-changing as they are, could still be around a third minority by 2050.

These state level changes will be manifested most vividly in the large metropolitan areas where most Americans live. The largest 100 metro areas in the United States, with populations ranging from 514,000 (Modesto, CA) to almost 19 million (New York), include about two-thirds of the US population according to the 2010 Census. Between 1990 and 2010, the combined white share of these metros’ population declined from 71 to 57 percent while minorities rose from 29 to 43 percent. Of that 14 point increase in minority share, 9 points came from Hispanic growth.

These changes drove the number of majority minority large metros from 5 in 1990 to 22 in 2010, including such important areas as San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston, Miami, New York and Washington. If trends observed in the last couple of decades continue, most large metros should be majority minority by 2050.  The list of new majority minority metros is likely to include Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh, Sacramento, Seattle, Tampa and Tuscon. Overall, the minority percentage across large metros should be pushing 70 percent.

As these data show, in the next 37 years, diversity is likely to spread far beyond the traditional “melting pot” states and metros to every corner of the country.  Diversity will increasingly be not just a catch phrase but a lived reality for the overwhelming majority of Americans. The sooner everyone, including conservatives, accepts this, the better off we’ll be.

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican nominee to fill John Kerry’s open Senate seat in Massachusetts, often invokes his background in the private sector as a private equity investor. Perhaps as a result, his campaign has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from other venture capitalists, investors, and bankers — people likely to benefit from his anti-tax, anti-regulation proposals.

A ThinkProgress review of Gomez’s campaign filings with the Federal Election Commission reveals that in addition to more than $600,000 in candidate loans to his committee, he has reported about $646,000 in identified contributions through April. Of that, about half (roughly $330,000) came from investors, bankers, and the like. More than $35,000 of that came from his former colleagues at Advent International and another $12,900 came from investors with various affiliates of Mitt Romney’s old firm, Bain Capital.

An analysis by David S. Bernstein, a former Boston Phoenix journalist, also found that an additional $44,550 came from spouses of those investors, who listed no occupations of their own.

It makes sense that wealthy investors would really to one of their own. The biography on Gomez’s campaign website says Gomez “experienced how onerous taxes and excessive regulation are barriers to job creation.” Elsewhere on his website, he indicates that he wants to reduce the budget deficit through significant spending cuts, but not through new revenue. “We recently raised taxes on the wealthy, and on every worker in America with the payroll tax hike. It is time now to reach across the aisle and work together to enact meaningful spending reductions in a fair and equitable way, without hurting our military preparedness,” he opines. Gomez himself received more than $993,000 last year in salary and bonuses.

Gomez says wants to see key portions of the Dodd-Frank financial sector reform law repealed, complaining “It’s crazy where there are more compliance officers at banks than loan officers.” It comes as little surprise that those in the sector, forced to reform the behaviors that caused the 2008 economic meltdown, are all too happy to bankroll his campaign.

Virginia gave President Obama a fairly comfortable 4-point victory (51 percent-47 percent) victory in 2012.  Yet the Washington Post has just released a poll showing Democrat Terry McAuliffe trailing arch-conservative Republican Ken Cuccinelli by 5 points in the race for the 2013 Virginia governor’s office. Why the discrepancy?

Well, elections will always going to be harder for Virginia Democrats in off years like 2013 than in a Presidential election year due to turnout patterns that favor the other side. But on the evidence of the poll, McAuliffe’s problems may run deeper than just getting voters to the polls. He may also have trouble generating the kind of enthusiastic support Obama received from key demographic and geographic segments of his coalition.

Start with Obama’s minority support.  In 2012, Obama received overwhelming 83-16 support from Virginia’s minority voters, a 67 point margin. By comparison, McAuliffe’s margin among minority voters (57-21) is little more than half of Obama’s margin. This has a great deal to with McAuliffe’s performance among African-American voters, who only favor him by 69-10 in the poll, compared to Obama’s 93-6 in 2012.

Breaking McAuliffe’s support down geographically, he is dramatically underperforming in areas where Obama was strongest in 2012. In Northern Virginia, McAuliffe is only leading by 4 points, compared to Obama’s healthy margin of 16 points. That’s potentially fatal given that this area is Democrats’ strongest in the state and accounts for about a third of ballots statewide.

McAuliffe’s other big underperformance is in the Virginia Beach/Tidewater area. In the poll, McAuliffe is actually trailing Cuccinelli by 2 points, compared to Obama’s strong margin of 12 points. The Virgnia Beach/Tidewater area accounts for another fifth of the Virginia vote.

McAuliffe is not known as a Democrat with particularly strong ties to the base of the party, having functioned mostly at an elite level, particularly as a fundraiser. On the evidence of this poll, it may not be enough for him to call out Ken Cuccinelli as a right-wing extremist (as deserved as that criticism is). If he wants the Obama coalition to power him to victory in the state, they are likely to need a reason to vote for him as a representative of their interests, not those of elites.

If I told you what Elizabeth Colbert Busch was against – President Obama’s budget, many parts of Obamacare – you wouldn’t guess she’s a Democrat. But if I told you what she’s for – marriage equality, a woman’s right to choose, expanding Medicaid — you would never guess this is South Carolina.

Yet over the past few months, Colbert Busch has created a unique recipe for her congressional campaign: one part fiscally conservative, one part socially liberal, and a garnish of ethical problems surrounding Mark Sanford’s recent affair. It’s as if you threw Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi in a cocktail shaker and made sure the resulting candidate never set foot on the Appalachian Trail.

Next week, voters in South Carolina’s lowcountry will decide whether that’s the right mix to represent the first congressional district as Colbert Busch faces off against Sanford, former governor of the state who also held this seat for three terms in the late 1990s, to fill the vacancy left by now-Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).

Colbert Busch has her work cut out for her. Mitt Romney cleaned up in the district last November, taking 58 percent of the vote. Just three Democrats currently represent redder districts in Congress, all of whom are white men.

If Colbert Busch has any hope of winning the May 7th vote, she’ll need to convince a lot of Romney voters that they want a Democrat as their next representative.

And where better to start currying favor with Republicans than by castigating Obamacare? It’s “expensive” and “extremely problematic” she said during a debate in Charleston this week, telling the crowd that it needs “an enormous fix.”

How about the always-contentious issue of labor unions in South Carolina? “I’m proud to live in and support a right-to-work state,” Colbert Busch argued, defending a state law that makes it significantly harder for unions to organize. She also attacked the National Labor Relations Board for fielding a complaint that Boeing had retaliated against striking workers in Washington state by moving a production line to South Carolina. “This is a right-to-work state and NLRB had no business telling Boeing where they can locate,” Colbert Busch said in language more frequently heard from the likes of Mitt Romney and Gov. Nikki Haley (R).

It might be surprising to hear Democrats applauding such lines, but remember the larger picture. Republicans have held this seat for more than 30 years. Desperation will do weird things to people. With polls showing Colbert Busch tantalizingly close to pulling off the upset, supporters can be forgiven for being intoxicated by the prospect of winning. Victory over ideology, at least for now.
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