Ten years ago, John Judis and I argued in The Emerging Democratic Majority that the country's shifting demographics were giving rise to a strong new Democratic-voting population base. The first glimmerings of this emerging Democratic coalition were visible in George McGovern's disastrous 1972 campaign, we wrote, making the newly emerging majority "George McGovern's Revenge." In the chapter with that title, we described the strengthening alliance between minorities, working and single women, the college educated, and skilled professionals:
What did it matter if McGovern won Alameda County and San Francisco but decisively lost Los Angeles and San Diego? Or that he did better among working women than men, and among professionals than blue collar workers, but still lost a majority of all these voters? Thirty years later, however, these anomalies loom larger. Women are still voting more Democratic than men, but they are also voting much more Democratic than Republican, particularly women who now work outside the home, single women and women with college degrees. Minorities, once about ten percent of the voting electorate, now constitute nineteen percent...They, too, are continuing to vote Democratic. Democrats are winning even more decisively in college towns, and these towns and their schools have become linked to entire regions like Silicon Valley and North Carolina's Research Triangle. And, skilled professionals have become a much larger and a dependably Democratic voting group.
We are now ten years farther down this road and McGovern's revenge only seems sweeter. Barack Obama has just been re-elected, the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to win successive elections with more than 50 percent of the vote, powered by the continuing rise of the coalition described in the book. In the face of considerable economic adversity, Obama won 332 Electoral College votes, nine out of 10 of the most hotly contested swing states, and a second term with coalition that was stunningly diverse. Here are some of the most striking elements:
* Minority voters increased their share of the voting population. Voters in 2012 were 28 percent minority, an increase of 2 percentage points from the 2008 level and a massive 13 percentage point increased from the 1988 level of 15 percent. The share of African-American voters remained at its 2008 level, 13 percent, disproving predictions that black voter enthusiasm would flag and black voters would not turn out for the president a second time. Hispanics, in line with their growing share of the electorate, increased their share at the polls to 10 percent from 8.5 percent in 2008 -- and did so despite similar skepticism about their level of voter enthusiasm. Asian Americans, now America's fastest growing minority group, also increased their share of voters, from 2 to 3 percent.
