Over the past few months, there’s been a lot of speculation about the turnout of the 2014 election. Conventional wisdom holds that off-year elections favor Republicans because much of the Democratic base, young people and minorities in particular, stay home in non-presidential years. That misses the central point that elections are as much about choices as they are about demographics.
While it’s true that off-year voters tend to be whiter and older, a portion of the electorate, usually between 15 and 20 percent, makes a decision based on their current situations and their perceptions of candidates or parties. These people have as much to do with the outcome of elections as the base.
The last two off-year elections were waves. Republicans won big in 2010 but Democrats won big in 2006. In North Carolina, the party breakdown of the electorate was similar in both years and in 2010, African-Americans actually made up a larger percentage of voters than they did in 2006.
This year, the swing voters will be just as important. I believe the demographic composition of the electorate will favor Democrats more than it did in 2010. The Republican legislature has given the Democratic base plenty of reasons to show up. In the May primary, African-Americans voted 30% higher than they did in the 2010 primary while white turnout only increased 13%. Women feel under assault with legislation that limits their health care choices and the GOP is trying discourage young people from voting by making voting places less accessible and denying the use of student IDs. That’s a recipe for a backlash.
In 2012, the swing voters, who are generally less partisan and more self-interested, sided with the GOP. This year, there’s a big dose of buyers’ remorse. They wanted jobs and an end to corruption and cronyism. They got an ideological revolution that attacked teachers and public schools, gave big tax cuts to the wealthy, denied benefits to the unemployed and left half a million people without health care.
These same swing voters are asking what happened to my child’s teacher assistant? Where are those jobs? Why can’t I get ahead? And the GOP answer is Obamacare. Maybe they’re buying that, but I doubt it.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
There are no real “swing voters”. There is only confirmed Democrats, confirmed republicans, confirmed members of other smaller parties with the rest of the voting public (and I stress VOTING public) either holding beliefs that are majority Democratic or republican. The Party that taps into the loosely held beliefs of the lightly aligned group of part-time voters will win at the polls. Example; when the Democratic Party runs a campaign that motivates the Democratic leaning group, the Democratic Party wins. The base and the aligned voters MUST be targeted to win. There are no “swing voters” and a campaign must not waste time nor resources searching for them. Do not dilute a party’s message by trying to appeal to the mythical “swing voters” because they do not exist.
Battle, that’s not true. There is a core of people who pay very little attention to politics but who go to the polls on a regular basis. They make up between 10 and 20 percent of the electorate and the side that wins them tends to win the election. That’s not to say the base is not important, but these swing voters usually make the difference.
I understand what you are saying but that belief, with all due respect, is “Old School Thinking”. The 10 to 20 percent that you speak of maybe disengaged but they are paying attention, otherwise they would not take the time to go vote. They may only go vote because they feel that it is their Patriotic Duty but with that belief comes a set of values that align with one of the two Parties or a third party. They are not part of the “identified Base” but they are lightly aligned, not true “swing voters”. These voters can be motivated to support your campaign if you give them a reason. Therefore when waging a campaign you increase the turnout of your voters with a strong message rooted in the firm beliefs and values of your Party. A successful campaign does not move away from those beliefs and values to water down the message to appeal to people that do not normally align themselves with your message. That is a waste of time and resources. As they say, “You go fishing where the fish are”, not on a pile of dry rocks. It all comes down to having the right message for the current political environment that taps into the mood of the voters and getting them out to vote.