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The "Silent Majority."

lionking said:
I understood that a disproportionate number of blacks don’t vote. Blacks tend towards Democrat. I need more than this back of the envelope nonsense.
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Sure, let's put some numbers on this. According to Statista, the Black turnout rate was 58.7% in 2020. If we take the OP's estimate of about 250 million potential voters and assume that 13% of those are Black, then we have 32.5 million potential voters. Since 41.3% of them did not turn out, that means potentially somewhere around 13.4 million more Black votes, which I tend to agree would go disproportionately to the Democrats.

But at the same time, the White turnout rate was 63.7% in 2020. If we assume that Whites account for about 70% of the 250 million voters, that means there are a potential 175 million White voters and since 36.3% of them did not vote, that means that there would be approximately 63.5 million more White votes under mandatory voting. I'm guessing those would go disproportionately to the Republicans these days, although I will admit that back before Trump, those voters tended to be Democrats.
 
bruto said:
This is indeed a problem, but I imagine that it might prove difficult to combine mandatory voting with voter suppression. Probably a good reason why we will likely never have it.
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Nah, voter suppression is easy! Just have a small number of polling places in solid red areas. Eventually the blue-leaning undesirables will give up trying to vote and just pay the fine. When those dirty hippies don't pay up, you can throw them in jail. It's a win-win!
 
While the Republicans are the side of outright voter suppression I have a gut that neither side really wants to tap into "non-voter" demographics.

1. It's far more politically useful to be able to invoke them as your side without having to like... prove it or anything.
2. They are the one thing that nobody in high politics can deal, an unknown quantity. Right now the Democrats and Republicans are so good at their wizard duel nothing one can do anything else.
 
One factor that gets overlooked is, trump's numbers are not good with voters under the age of 50. As a former co-worker used to say, "Do the math."
 

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Yeah but the "We'll win as soon as the old people die off" (while true for certain values of true in political history) is another one of those things we've just been waiting to happen "any moment now" for about a generation now.

It's not wrong that older people tend to skew conservative and that the simple march of history is toward liberalism, but I don't know if that's the whole story.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yeah but the "We'll win as soon as the old people die off" (while true for certain values of true in political history) is another one of those things we've just been waiting to happen "any moment now" for about a generation now.

It's not wrong that older people tend to skew conservative and that the simple march of history is toward liberalism, but I don't know if that's the whole story.
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Well, let's have a luck at some dandruff - stuff of the top of my head... ;)

Children being brought up by conservative parents in conservative areas are, I suspect, likely to become older conservatives.

Children brought up by liberal parents may rebel to the extent that they too become older conservatives.
 
Demographically, children of conservatives become either independent or liberals/progressives - just like children of churchgoers tend to become agnostics/atheists.
Otoh, anyone who gets Rich becomes a conservative.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Demographically, children of conservatives become either independent or liberals/progressives - just like children of churchgoers tend to become agnostics/atheists.
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That was +/- my experience on both counts.

Otoh, anyone who gets Rich becomes a conservative.
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Also pretty much my observation, with the addition that people who have like two nickels but think they are on the path to becoming rich also tend to adopt consevatism. Those who actually become rich are demographically insignificant.

Mathematically, though, the former can't be true, unless children of liberal/progs tend to become conservatives, in which case it doesn't prove anything politically except that kids go against their parents.
 
I wasn't thinking so much that 'we'll win as soon as the old people die off.' More along the lines of the historic trajectory of our society. We started out as a nation where slavery was legal. Women couldn't vote or serve on juries. We've come a long way. No one today (well, almost no one) would argue in favor of slavery, denying women the vote or restricting them from juries. But once upon a time believing those things would have put you in the maintream.

Winning? Since 1992 only one Republican president won the popular vote. George W. Bush in 2004. In fact, in some states where Republicans are in the majority in legislatures and/or Congressional delegations, the majority of votes cast was for Democrats.
 
Well yeah but we are currently in the stages of running a very scientifically vigorous test that proves that when Conservatives can no longer when within Democracy, they will give up on Democracy, not Conservativism.

And I wouldn't put "Nobody would argue that slavery should be legal" back on the shelf just yet.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yeah but the "We'll win as soon as the old people die off" (while true for certain values of true in political history) is another one of those things we've just been waiting to happen "any moment now" for about a generation now.

It's not wrong that older people tend to skew conservative and that the simple march of history is toward liberalism, but I don't know if that's the whole story.
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Much like near the end of Bush's term it seemed like the Republican party was not going to recover for decades. I believed that at the time, being younger and more liberal as my circle was generally of the same belief. Besides people becoming more conservative as they get older, it does seem like those non-party voters swing away from the party in power over time and back again. That's my impression at least.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yeah but the "We'll win as soon as the old people die off" (while true for certain values of true in political history) is another one of those things we've just been waiting to happen "any moment now" for about a generation now.

It's not wrong that older people tend to skew conservative and that the simple march of history is toward liberalism, but I don't know if that's the whole story.
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It’s interesting in Australia. In the mid 2000s for a couple of elections boomers swung to the progressive (Labor) side, but have gone conservative since. Millennials greatly favour the leftish parties (Labor and Greens) leaving the rightish Liberals well off the pace. Unless the Millennials change greatly, the Liberals are in trouble in future elections.
 
lionking said:
It’s interesting in Australia. In the mid 2000s for a couple of elections boomers swung to the progressive (Labor) side, but have gone conservative since. Millennials greatly favour the leftish parties (Labor and Greens) leaving the rightish Liberals well off the pace. Unless the Millennials change greatly, the Liberals are in trouble in future elections.
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What is considered 'conservative' in Australia? Is it equivalent to the extremist, right-wing base of the Trumpers or what we consider moderate Democrats?
 
Stacyhs said:
What is considered 'conservative' in Australia? Is it equivalent to the extremist, right-wing base of the Trumpers or what we consider moderate Democrats?
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Good point. I wouldn’t call them moderate Democrats (although some of the welfare programs supported by both major parties can be described that way). They have a range of loons, including full-on climate deniers and a couple of libertines, but most of the worst conservative idiots have gone to the United Australia Party (where Clive Palmer’s $100m funding resulted in one Senator) and One Nation (blowhard racists who have 2 senators).

I think it’s fair to call the main Conservative party here very moderate Republicans.
 
lionking said:
Good point. I wouldn’t call them moderate Democrats (although some of the welfare programs supported by both major parties can be described that way). They have a range of loons, including full-on climate deniers and a couple of libertines, but most of the worst conservative idiots have gone to the United Australia Party (where Clive Palmer’s $100m funding resulted in one Senator) and One Nation (blowhard racists who have 2 senators).

I think it’s fair to call the main Conservative party here very moderate Republicans.
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That's the thing: very moderate Republicans can be worked with because they're not crazy.
 
And this goes back to... well not a problem to be solved but "data point to be accounted for" that by definition all the loudest voices come from political fanboys.

First of all the whole of "moderate" is stupid because it has everything to do with loudness and nothing to opinion. Someone mumbling under their breath to kill all the Jews is not a moderate and someone screeching from the rooftops about how angry they are the the popular candidate only aligns with 99.99% of their views is not an extremist, but you wouldn't know that to follow political discourse in this country.
 
I get the impression that nonvoters typically dislike both dominant parties. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders should have shown us, if it wasn't clear before, you have to convincingly put some distance between you and the party you're running with. Make clear you're running with them, not for them.

In 2016, 12 percent of Sanders voters switched to Trump in the general. All the screeching about Sanders voters not being real Democrats--well ever consider many of those who switched over were unrefined nonvoters and non-Democrats, not accelerationist leftist dirtbags trying to sabotage the Democratic Party?
 
Norman Alexander said:
It's called a "donkey" vote. Which is why, in Australia which has mandatory preferential voting, candidates' positions on the ballots are set by (essentially) drawing names from a hat. Followed by the inevitable wailing and gnashing of teeth by candidates who end up further down the card. ;) It's considered the luck of the game, the rub of the green, etc.
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It’s 2022. Both our countries have the technology to present the candidates in a different order on individual paper ballots. And it is even easier to do that on voting machines.

Of course here in America, one party is uninterested in making elections more fair.
 
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