The White Party

Nate Silver studies a Gallup poll on race and party identification:

Gallup has data out suggesting that 89 percent of self-identified Republicans are white; the comparable figure among Democrats is 65 percent...The Democrats...are becoming less white at a much faster rate than the Republicans. Whereas 85 percent of their votes were from white voters in 1976, the number was just 60 percent last November. This is, of course, a helpful characteristic, since the nonwhite share of the electorate, just 11 percent in 1976 and 1980, represented more than a quarter of the turnout in November.